How To Stop Hating Yourself: 5 Steps To Keep That Feeling Away

In this new article you’ll learn how to stop hating yourself.

If you are tired of wanting what other people have and wishing that you were someone else, this guide is for you.

You can learn how to love yourself and how to start taking your own happiness seriously. You have the power to change your life. This process starts by changing how you view and valuate yourself.

This guide will offer you five easy steps and strategies on how to develop more self-confidence and self love. Through this process, you will learn how to create the life that you have always wanted and how to attract the right people.

When you move through life filled with self-hatred, it is impossible to form satisfying relationships or to recognize and enjoy the many pleasures that come your way.

I will teach you how to identify the source of your self-hatred and how to move beyond it. It’s going to show you how to stop automatic negative thoughts or ANTs.

By doing so, you will learn:

How to overcome the anxiety and depression that self-hatred often causes.
You will think better thoughts, take better actions
You live a better life overall.

How To Stop Hating Yourself:

1: Think Back To Your Childhood And Take Stock Of The Negative Messages You Received

Self-hatred is not a normal emotion or state of mind. In the interest of self-preservation, most people like themselves and want to make good lives for themselves.

Unfortunately, people are often given the wrong messages during the earliest stages of their lives. They are made to feel unwanted, unloved or even stupid.

Although kids are often able to recognize themselves as being better than these comments suggest, these ideas are internalized. They can go on to cause a lifetime of heartache.

This is why it is important to identify the source of your self-hatred. You might think that your negative emotions only date as far back as your last bad relationship or bad experience. In reality, however, this emotion probably dates back to your earliest years.

More importantly, it is probably the reason why you have had so many bad relationships or bad experiences. If your childhood was entrenched in negativity, you will keep creating these same circumstances for yourself throughout the years.

You will surround yourself with people who continue to send the same negative messages.

The only way to change this is by identifying the negative messages that you have internalized and then replacing these with positive messages.

If you remember that you were called ugly, fat or stupid as a child, you must start reprogramming your mind to know that you are beautiful, perfectly proportioned and smart.

Just like other people have had the power to shape your mind about who you are, you have the power to shape your mind about who you are as well.

Quick Tips For Erasing Past Messages:

Take a long walk at least three days each week and use this time to reflect on your past.

Becoming conscious of how negative statements have affected your life will allow you to consciously address this problem.

Write a letter to the person who played the greatest role in shaping your negative opinions of yourself.

Tell this person how his or her comments hurt you. You can send this letter or keep it. The act of expressing these thoughts will help you to heal.

Forgive the people who have hurt you throughout the years.

This may take time but you should actively work towards forgiveness. Recognize that people who are verbally abusive were likely abused themselves. The ability to forgive will set your free from the binds of your past.

Write a letter to yourself.

Forgive yourself for any mistakes that you have made and regrets you might have. This will give you the opportunity to move forward guilt-free.

The Benefits:

You will at last be able to start seeing yourself for who you truly are. Although you might have been surrounded by careless people throughout your childhood, this does not mean that you have to spend your entire life bearing the weight of their careless words.

When you discover that you only think of yourself as being worthless, stupid or unwanted merely because someone told you that you were, you can start shaping new and better opinions of yourself.

This is far better than simply repeating these same, harmful messages to yourself again and again.

2: Start A Journal And List Your Attributes

You have good qualities.

Everyone does.

Most people fail to recognize the good things that they do for others and the many selfless actions that they take.

Start a journal and fill it with nothing but a list of your attributes. Push yourself to make new entries everyday and do not stop until the entire journal is full.

If you have a hard time getting started you should recognize that your efforts at self-improvement are an attribute. People who want to feel better about themselves are making a proactive step to becoming better, healthier and more productive individuals.

This is something good that you can say about yourself and it is a wonderful place to start.

When you start being particularly hard on yourself, take time to revisit your journal. Read through the different entries that you have made and reflect on the positive things that you have done.

Think about why you did these things.

Were you courageous even though you felt afraid?
Did you stand up for others when no one else would?

The more that you try to think about the different positive aspects of your personality, the more you will be able to see yourself in a positive light.

This is a major step in learning to love who you are. Never write anything negative about yourself in this journal. This is not a study of why you should hate yourself. It is an effort to learn more about why you should love yourself.

Quick Tips For Recognizing Your Attributes:

Write down several of your strengths.

Recognize how you have persevered in spite of your hurt.

Make quick notes in your journal concerning the type of person you want to be.

Devise strategies for moving closer to becoming this person.

Make an effort everyday to do something good for someone else and something good for yourself.

Record these efforts in your journal.

The Benefits:

Keeping a journal is a great way to chart your growth in this process. More importantly, keeping a journal that lists all of your good qualities is going to help you change your way of thinking.

People who hate themselves are programmed early in life to do so. This may be intentional programming or unintentional.

You have to make a purposeful effort to reprogram yourself by changing your way of thinking. Your journal and the included lists are going to be your most valuable tools in this process.

They are going to force you to actively change your mind about how you feel about you. They are going to prove to you that you have good qualities, that you are likable person and that you do have value.

Your journal will also prove helpful when you get ready to tackle Step #3.

3: Shut Down Your Automatic Negative Thoughts

Just as every person has good qualities, every person is also plagued by automatic negative thoughts or ANTs.

These are thoughts that pop up at random and they have no real value or purpose except to tear people down. When you are ready to try something new or are interested in approaching a new person, this is when your ANTs are going to come roiling to the surface.

You will probably start listing the reasons why you are too stupid to try something new or too unlovable to be worth knowing. When these thoughts pop up, most people find themselves giving up on trying something new or on meeting a new person, even before they have tried.

This is why self-hatred can be such a lonely and miserable experience.

You have to learn how to shut these thoughts down.

Just because all people have automatic negative thoughts, this does not mean that they have to be controlled by them. Think back to your journal and the different entries that you have made.

When your mind tells you that you are stupid, respond by listing one of the items that you have written down in your journal.

This is a fight to gain ownership and control of your mind. You must battle the internal voice that is always beating you down.

You can do this by building yourself up.

Remember that you are valuable, good and worthy of good things. Although this is an internal fight, there may be times when you have to wage this battle with other people.

Your life might be filled with negative people who constantly tear you down. Whenever you are confronted by one of these individuals, counteract their statements by telling them that you are a good person.

If someone calls you ugly, stupid or worthless, tell them that you are priceless, beautiful and brilliant.

Make positive statements (1) to yourself and to others, even if you don’t believe them.

By speaking positive words and thinking positive thoughts, you will eventually come to believe in yourself and start viewing yourself in a positive light.

Quick Tips For Controlling ANTs

Get rid of the people in your life who tear you down.

Stop keeping company with false friends who do not support your efforts to love and value yourself.

Engage in activities with positive-minded people.

Join the gym or a sports league. Active adults tend to be more positive-minded than those who lead sedentary lives.

Remember, people who feel good about themselves will be supportive of your efforts to feel good about yourself as well.

Try diaphragmatic breathing when you feel anxious or stressed.

This is breathing with your diaphragm. Simply place your hand on your belly. When you inhale, your belly should extend but your shoulders should not puff up. Practice breathing while watching your hand move in and out with your breaths.

Breathing through the diaphragm is calming and will help to shut down negative thinking. Inhale deeply through your nose, hold your breath for several seconds and then slowly release the air through your mouth.

Several minutes of diaphragmatic breathing has been shown to alter brain patterns and reduce stress hormones.

The Benefits:

Some people never make an effort to change or fight against their automatic negative thoughts. They spend their whole lives filled with anxiety, depression and self-hatred. You don’t have to. When you take up this battle, you will be preparing yourself for a life of action.

If you can battle your own mind and win, nothing can stop you. Best of all, everyday is a new opportunity to wage this war and win it. If you find yourself getting beaten down by automatic negative thoughts, go back to your journal and get ready for a new fight on the very next day.

By staying persistent, you will change the way that you see yourself and you will become far less affected by what others say about you too.

4: Recognize Your Right To Love Yourself And Be Happy

Some people feel guilty about loving themselves.

It almost feels sinful.

The truth, however, is that those who love themselves tend to be better people than those who hate themselves.

They can be nice to others because they are not constantly riddled with anger, depression and despair. They are less jealous, because they believe that they are worthy of good things and that they can get what they want out of life.

Self-hatred is limiting and you will not be able to lead a good life or be good to others until you get rid of your self-hatred. This means that you owe it to yourself and everyone around you to learn how to stop hating yourself and how to be happy.

It is important to note that not everyone is born being happy and optimistic.

Happiness and optimism are choices.

You can choose to keep living your life in a state of self-hatred, jealousy and depression or you can choose to recognize and fight for your right to be happy.

Not only are you going to feel better about who you are, but others will feel better about being around you. Your spouse, children, friends, co-workers and associates will recognize the difference in your attitude.

Quick Tips For Learning To Accept Your Right To Be Happy

Write down three things that you want in life.

Make a list of steps that you need to take in order to get these thing. Recognize that jealousy is often rooted in the believe that you are not capable of getting what others have.

Prove to yourself that you are.

Make sure to give yourself one day each week to relax and regain your sense of balance.

This should be a day dedicated to pampering yourself.

- Curl up and watch your favorite movies,

Read a good book or give yourself a pedicure.

This is all about learning how to enjoy spending time alone and doing good things for yourself.

Take up a new hobby or go back to an old one.

Foster your natural skills. If you love to paint, dance, take pictures or writer poetry, do these things with abandon. Recognize that you have the right to do what makes you happy.

The Benefits:

As soon as you recognize and accept your right to love yourself and to experience happiness, this whole process will be easier and your life will become much better.

The negative messages that you received during the early stages of your life have likely made you feel that you are deserving of sadness and depression.

People who feel worthless do not consider themselves as being worthy of happiness. You have to change this type of thinking. Just like you are training yourself to combat negative thoughts, you must actively fight against the idea that you are unworthy.

Tell yourself that you are lovable and worthy of love.

Tell yourself that you do have the power to be happy and that you deserve happiness.

Add these statements to your journal and speak them out loud to yourself in the mirror or while driving alone in your car.

The true benefit of these efforts is that the more that you do these things, the more that you will begin seeing yourself as being worthy (2).

5: Change What You Don’t Like About Yourself

Sometimes self-hatred is actually rooted in things that people want to change about themselves.

Surprisingly, these are often things that people have the power to change. They simply haven’t pushed themselves into action or they haven’t started seeing themselves of being worthy of these changes.

For instance, you might hate yourself because you feel fat, awkward and unattractive. You have the power to change these things! You probably keep talking yourself out of making an effort by listening to your automatic negative thoughts.

One effective way to beat your negative thoughts is by taking action when they start to discourage you. If your automatic thoughts tell you that you are too fat to get a date, start working out and start being more social.

You are never going to break your negative thinking patterns until you start taking real action.

Before committing to any program of change, however, you have to know that change doesn’t happen overnight.

If you want a better career, a better lifestyle or a better body, give yourself time to get these things. Make sure that you do not put so much pressure on yourself to become someone or something different, that you grow discouraged and give up.

While you diet, get new professional training, start rebuilding your finances or doing whatever it is that you need to do to become who you want to be, you have to make a constant effort to love yourself. Just like you are right now.

This love is going to give you the strength that you need to keep pushing forward. It is going to bolster your belief that you are worthy of the happiness that you are seeking. It will also ensure that you are actually happy and content, once you have reached the goals that you have set.

When you start working towards a state of love, there is one other important change that you will have to make.

You have to change the people that you are around.
Stop being tolerant of people who tear you down.
End relationships with people who do not make you feel good about yourself, lovable and worthy of love.

Quick Tips For Making Change

Try something new everyday, even if it is just a new food.

This will get you in the mindset of shaking things up a bit. Self-hatred can turn people into creatures of habit. Do all that you can to throw yourself out of old ruts.

Get active.

Join the gym or start walking or riding a bike several times per week. This will boost your endorphins and help you to gain and maintain a positive mindset.

Write a list of habits that you want to break and then post this list in a visible area.

Create a jar for slip-ups. Every time you revert back to old, bad behaviors, put a quarter in this jar.

When it is full, donate the money to your favorite charity.

The Benefits:

You cannot expect your life or the way that you feel about yourself to change until you start taking action.

The real problem with hating yourself is the fact that self-hatred can keep you from taking action, especially in the areas that you need to be most active.

Self-hatred tears people down and the automatic negative thoughts that come with it, prevent people from building themselves back up.

Making an effort to change the things that you don’t like about yourself will not make you learn the art of self love overnight. It will, however, make you feel more confident.

It will strengthen your new-found sense of value and self-worth.

It will also start moving you closer to becoming the very person that you want to be.

Summary:

You have to challenge your negative thinking before you will be strong enough to start taking actions to change what you don’t like about yourself.

You also have to accept that you have a right to love yourself and to feel happiness, before you can see that you are worth the actions you must take.

Keeping a journal is going to keep you strong throughout this process. It will serve as a constant reminder that you are good, valuable and worth caring about.

I want to thank you for taking the time to read my article about how to stop hating yourself. I sincerely hope its contents have been a good help to you.