Chapter 7 you may not like yourself

"Love yourself" is a sign of a healthy, mature life and should not be interpreted as self-righteous.To love yourself is to accept yourself, calmly, objectively, with self-respect and a sense of human dignity. Dr. Smanley Blanton has a book "Love...or Death", which states: "A moderate amount of self-love is a reflection of a person's health. A moderate amount of self-esteem will be of great benefit to work and achievement. " That's true. "Love yourself" is a sign of a healthy, mature life and should not be interpreted as self-righteous.To love yourself is to accept yourself, calmly, objectively, with self-respect and a sense of human dignity.

Psychologist A. H. Maslow also talked about deceiving your feelings in the book "Stimulus and Character"."Some of the concepts emerging from recent functional psychology theory are natural ease, self-acceptance, impulse perception, and complacency," he said. A mature person doesn't have time to think about how inferior they are to others. They don't worry about not having Bill Smith's self-confidence or Jimmy Jones' positive attitude and can-do spirit.He is always self-critical, he is well aware of his weaknesses, but he affirms that he has basic goals and motivations, and then he spends his energy improving rather than bemoaning his weaknesses.

He has the same tolerance for himself as for others, so he has no troubles in himself. Is liking yourself as important as liking someone else?Psychologists would say that if we can't like ourselves, then we can't like others.The man who hates everything and everyone else, who despises and abuses his fellow man, necessarily manifests himself more strongly in his self-loathing. Dr. Arthur T. Jessier, a professor of education at the Columbia University School of Education, proposed that education should help children and even adults understand themselves and help them establish a mature attitude of self-acceptance.In his new book "When a Teacher Faces Himself", he believes that the life and work of a teacher is full of struggle, gratification, hope and pain, and self-acceptance is particularly important for a teacher.

Now, more than half of the hospital rooms are occupied by people who hate themselves, while thousands of emotionally and mentally distressed people are still waiting in line outside, these are people who cannot get along with themselves. Here I am not going to analyze the reasons for this unfortunate situation.I only suspect that—we live in this fiercely competitive society that only emphasizes the value of material success and social status, and catching up with others is the goal of all—has something to do with the mental illness of modern people. In the book "Progressive Life: A Study of the Natural Growth of Character", Robert W. White, a psychologist at Harvard University, once said that a concept is now popular: "Anyone should adjust himself to adapt to the situation around him. environment.” Dr. White said: “This idea misleads people to believe that the ideal person is one who adjusts to a fixed life pattern, tedious life rules, harsh external constraints, or succumbs to the pressure of fulfillment. Whatever is possible, try to adapt. Such a result can only make people lose their way and lose the possibility of growth and creation—in short, they succumb to pressure and lose their potential for creativity and development.”

I very much agree with what Dr. White said.Few have the courage to stand alone or know exactly what they stand for.Social and economic groups dictate our behaviour, and we live and think similarly to our neighbors.If we allow our personality to conflict with the environment around us, we will be nervous, worry about gains and losses, feel helpless, and no longer like ourselves. A few years ago, one of our female trainees was perplexed by this conflict.Her lawyer husband is an ambitious man who likes to be aggressive and arbitrary.Their social circle consisted of so-called celebrities like himself, whose achievements were measured by social status.The lady seemed very quiet and humble, but in this kind of circle she only felt oppressed and humbled.Those people didn't know how to appreciate the good qualities she had.She became depressed and lost her self-confidence because she couldn't live up to the demands of those people.She doesn't like herself more and more.

There is no need for this woman to be so distressed. She should not change herself to adapt to the environment, but should adapt to herself-accept herself happily and relieve the pressure of trying to change herself.She should also understand that "I am born to be useful", and everyone can only act according to their own personality, not copying others. The first step for her to reinvent herself is not to measure herself by other people's standards, but to establish her own values ​​and apply them to her life, while also learning to be alone and less self-critical. People who don't like themselves always like to find fault with themselves.Moderate self-examination is healthy, constructive, and necessary for self-improvement, but don't let it become a compulsion that will paralyze us and prevent us from positive action.

One evening, after my husband finished his lecture, a female student in his class approached him complaining that he was not speaking as expected. "As soon as I got on the podium," she told my husband, "I felt very timid and awkward. The other students seemed so calm and confident. But when I thought about my shortcomings, I was discouraged, which made it even more difficult to say that I had prepared in advance. Good words." After listening to her complaint, Dale answered her question with a simple sentence that I will never forget: "Put your shortcomings aside, it is not your shortcomings that make your speech fail, but your lack of strengths."

Yes, it is often not a defect that makes a speech, a person, or a work of art fail.In Shakespeare's plays, historical and geographical mistakes are everywhere, and in Dickens' novels, some passages are too sensational.But who cares?These great works still live on and shine brightly; their virtues outweigh their faults and make them negligible.We make friends because of their merits - regardless of their faults. If you want to improve and stand out, you must focus on your strengths, show your best side, and let go of your shortcomings.We must correct our mistakes and forget them quickly.

Feelings of guilt and inferiority are things you must never have.If we are stuck in both states of mind, it is impossible to respect or like ourselves, and at the same time resent others for having both states of mind.What we have to do is bury the past and start over. In the process of trying to like ourselves, we must develop the capacity to accommodate our flaws.This doesn't mean lowering your standards, allowing yourself to be lazy or not doing your best.We all understand that no one is always at their best.It is unfair to force others to be perfect, but it is egoism to demand perfection from oneself.

I was part of an organization a few years ago where there was a lady who was an absolute perfectionist and everything she did had to be exact.But her work was rarely seen as successful by others.For a simple report, she has to think for hours before submitting it; when giving a speech, she will talk endlessly around the topic, which makes the audience tired; her home never welcomes uninvited guests; when holding a banquet, she will arrange all the details in advance appropriate.The woman painstakingly achieves an almost mechanical perfection at the expense of joy, spontaneity and warmth.Such perfection is actually boring.

Demanding that you constantly strive for perfection is a ruthless ego.They can't stand that they are just as good as others, they must surpass others, and must be noticed.Instead of focusing on giving all of themselves and all of their talents to do everything well, they focus on surpassing others and putting themselves on the shelf of perfection. A perfectionist is also human, so he will experience failure like everyone else, but he cannot tolerate himself, look beyond failure, and can only hate himself as a result. Be less hard on yourself, stop and laugh at yourself once in a while, and you'll like yourself more. In the previous chapter, I suggested that it is necessary to give ourselves some alone time every day so that we can understand ourselves.Solitude is a huge help in trying to like yourself.Dr. Leo Bartimer, director of the Shelton Psychiatric Association in Baltimore, Maryland, once said: "In the past, people used to reflect on what they did that day before going to sleep at night. Now it seems that this is still a good way to know how to treat others and treat others well." A good way to do it yourself." If we can't stand it ourselves, we shouldn't expect others to be happy when we're around them.Harry Emerson Fosdick said that people who cannot bear to live alone are like "a pond blown by the wind, which never stops, and which never finds peace and reflects something good about itself." In the process of trying to be alone, we can find a post, a reference, and an original position for our mind to keep in touch with the outside world.Anne Morrow Linberg has a sentence in the book "Gift from the Sea": "A person can only find connection with others when he is in contact with his own core. I think that loneliness can make me the most Quickly find my core, my inner essence." Loneliness provides us with a relatively objective condition to observe life. "Be still and realize that I am God." That's the advice in the Psalms of the Bible, and it's a good one.Solitude is to the soul what fresh air is to the body. Sending contentment and happiness to others is tantamount to placing a burden on the one we love and then extracting happiness from it.Liking, respecting, and appreciating ourselves is as much a part of a healthy personality as liking, respecting, and appreciating others.