I HaTe ......MySeLf

hate my body, I hate my life, I hate my career, I have no will power, I’m awful, I’m a bad person, I can’t keep a promise, I suck at life, how did I get here, why can’t I stop, why can’t I do what I should do, why do I keep failing. Have you ever said that to yourself? Have you ever hated yourself? I have. It was a hobby of mine, finding all the ways in which I’m bad. Looking at all the things I’ve failed at. Going over in detail all the stupid memories of all the times I have ever failed. Trying to think of things I could have done differently and then beating myself up for not doing them back then. I blamed myself for everything that had gone wrong with my life and I hated myself for it. I was 50% right.

I am responsible for everything that happens in my life. Note that I am not saying I am to BLAME for everything that happens in my life, only that I am responsible for it. Blame means that it’s my fault, that I did something wrong but there are many things that can happen to me that are not my fault. There are many things that i am not in control of. However, even if I am not to blame, I am still responsible. It is my life, my responsibility. I may not have caused the issue but it’s in my life and I am now responsible for my actions. That’s the difference between blame and responsibility. Blame is focused on the past, it’s trying to find someone to accuse. Responsibility is focused on the future, it’s trying to find way to solve the issue. So my first lesson was all about responsibility.
I needed to take responsibility for my life and stop taking blame. That was an eye opening experience even though the change is subtle. Rather than telling myself “How could you have let this happen?” I was telling myself “How am I going to deal with this now that it happened?” Note that I am not trying to shift blame. I am not trying to say that someone else is responsible. In fact, I took responsibility for more things than I would blame myself for. In the past I would tend to blame others for many of the things that happened to me. That stopped. Instead, I took responsibility for everything in my life. It was all my responsibility and I was the in charge of changing it if I really cared about it.

The next thing I needed to learn was how to love and accept rather than hate and reject myself. Let’s use my body as an example. I hated myself for the way I looked. I was fat and out of shape. I had never met a food I didn’t like and I couldn’t control my impulse to keep eating. I blamed myself, I blamed my environment and I blamed my friends and family. I also hated myself for it and disliked how out of control I was. However, as I slowly started to shift from blame to responsibility, I also started shifting from hate to love. I didn’t hate myself any longer and wanted to lose weight because of it. I loved myself and I wanted to lose weight because of it. Becoming healthier became an expressions of how much I loved myself and wanted to improve rather than how much I hated myself and want to change.

I found myself in a similar situation recently, after my fight on a stupid issue with my friend. For those of you who have never been through such an experience, I highly recommend avoiding it. I lost friend I love and I hated myself for it. I blamed everyone and everything and I hated who I was and what I had become. It was hard to change from that but I slowly started to make the same distinctions I had before. Yes, I had lost her, but rather than blaming myself, her, my friends, my family or anyone else involved, I took responsibility and determined to change what my life had become. I couldn’t get her back, so can i find a new one of same way i want(ironical ,right?).Rather than hating myself for what I had done and consider myself a hopeless loser undeserving of love, I began to love myself again. Rather than vowing to change because I hated myself, I started thinking of change as an act of love, a way of making myself happier, rather than making myself less lonely. It’s a subtle difference but one that has a lot of impact.
Think about this for a second. What motivates you more? “I want to do this because I hate the current situation” or “I want to do this because I love myself and this will make me happy.” For me, the second choice is much better. It motivates me. It allows me to see a better future and that gives me hope. It shows me who I could be rather than who I don’t want to be. It gives me a glimpse into how wonderful my life could be rather than fixating me on the bad aspects of my life right now.

I know that hate sounds like good motivation but it really isn’t. Hate doesn’t drive you towards what makes you happy, it just drives you away from the thing you hate. That might work, sometimes, but it’s much better to focus on the origin rather than the cause. Hate also puts a lot of stress on you and your emotions. You cannot really be happy while you hate yourself. You cannot achieve happiness when all you focus on is the hate. At some point, you need to let go of that or, better yet, turn it into love. Start appreciating yourself for who you are and for who you can be.

I don't know. This is already too long and I'm hurting my head.