Do you remember when someone would be cruel to you at school and you would come home crying? What did your parents say to you? They would probably say that it ‘doesn’t matter what they think – it’s only what you think that matters’.
But what do you do if it’s you who is giving yourself the bad review, and if you aren’t happy with yourself? How can you be happy if you don’t like who you are? It’s a terrible way to feel and it will eat away at your self-esteem and your happiness, so how do you go about changing the way you feel about yourself and making yourself happier? Here we will look at some ways to be happier with yourself.
What Matters to You?
First of all you have to ask yourself what’s important to you, what you want to achieve in life and who you want to be. We all have things that are more important to us than other things, and traits that we are proud of, and all of us have some talents and opinions in those areas. In other words then if you value creativity, thinking outside the box and your own art abilities then this should be what you focus on and where you get yourself worth. In other words then, it shouldn’t matter to you if perhaps you aren’t as confident as you would like to be, or if perhaps you are a bit overweight – as long as you have something that you are proud of and that’s important to you. If you can find your way in life and your purpose, then suddenly the pettier things don’t seem quite so important.
Think of Your Friends
If you aren’t happy with who you are then often you will be focussing on the reactions and opinions of the wrong people. Think about your friends and family and the people you love in life – chances are that there are a few people who you hold very closely and who feel the same about you. They obviously like you for who you are, and obviously being who you are means that you are friends with them. So in other words, if you value your friends, then you should value yourself as well.
Recognize Your Ability to Change
But ultimately if you aren’t happy with who you are, then you should realize that you can change that and you can grow into someone who you are happy to be and it’s only being who you are now that allows you to know how you want to change.
In short, perhaps you aren’t happy with your career and your job – then think about the kind of job that would make you happy and how you can go about achieving it. Remember that lots of very successful people had achieved nothing of note probably when they were the same age as you – it’s never too late to be what you’ve always wanted to be. And actually it’s the journey that counts, not the destination, and so as soon as you know what you want to achieve, or how you want to improve yourself, you will find that you start to be happier with yourself.
List Your Positive Traits and the Things You’ve Achieved
But even before you start aiming to improve yourself, you will probably find that you already have many virtues that you aren’t giving yourself credit for. You’re probably smart, kind, generous and you’ve probably lived through a lot. Sit down and write down ten things that you like about yourself and ten things that you are proud of that you’ve done in your life – you can’t leave until you’ve written ten separate items because everyone should be able to come up with ten things.
Find Role Models
We tend to compare ourselves to other people and this is often how we decide if we’re happy with ourselves; it’s hard to be happy when everyone in the media and everyone you know seems to be slimmer, smarter and more successful.
What helps then is to find someone to look up to who shared many traits with you but who manages to make them work. Find someone who works with what you’ve got and you will see an example of how you could be the best that you could be which will make you much happier with who you are to begin with.