How to Overcome Self-pity and Stop Feeling Sorry for Yourself
Are you constantly wallowing in self-pity? Are you constantly feeling sorry for yourself? Would you like to stop feeling sorry for yourself? You can stop self-pity and take charge of your life. You can overcome self-pity, stop feeling sorry for yourself, get rid of negative thoughts and become a mentally strong person.
Change your scarcity mentality
You feel sorry for yourself because you don’t believe that you can get the things that you want. You believe that you can’t get the love, happiness, and contentment you desire in life or that you are not good enough for it.
You need to change your scarcity mentality. Believe in abundance and that there is enough to go around for everyone and that you deserve a portion of it all.
Look at the brighter side
Self-pity results from looking at your life and just seeing all the wrong things that are happening.
Constant thoughts such as, “I am not making enough money. I am terrible at making and sustaining great relationships. My career is going south” will only lead to more negative thinking.
The moment you think about one bad thing your mind goes to the next worse thing. Start looking at the brighter side of things. Sure you are not making enough money, but are you healthy?
Sure you don’t have the dream relationship but you must have something to be grateful for! Learn to practice gratitude and see your outlook on life turn to the positive.
Self-compassion
Learn to love yourself with all your flaws. Acknowledge that you have weaknesses but embrace them. Understand that no one is perfect, stop pressurizing yourself to be perfect.
You have to love yourself for others to love you. By loving yourself, you start to believe in the good things in life and this gives you a positive outlook towards life. I saw this book, Love yourself as if your life depends on it. Try checking it out and give yourself some compassion.
Practice unconditional positive regard
Stop putting conditions on when to love yourself.
Don’t say, “I will feel better about myself when I achieve this weight. I will feel better about myself when I am in a great relationship. I will love myself when I finish that degree or get that job”…
Instead, practice unconditional positive regard. This is loving yourself without conditions. Love yourself with all your flaws. Love yourself even if you want to improve yourself, love yourself for who you are today. Only love will propel you to better yourself.
Observe your self-talk
If you constantly think ‘poor me’ every day you start believing it. Indeed, poor you!! Your self-talk will convince you that you are good enough and you start living as if you are not good enough. You start to self-sabotage. Your thoughts and talks turn into beliefs.
Listen to how you talk to yourself. If you tell yourself, ‘you are dumb and don’t deserve any love’, picture yourself telling that to someone that you love. Think of their face and how that statement will hurt them.
If you can’t say that to someone that you love, how can you tell that to yourself? Surely, you must love yourself more than you love another person. Observe your self-talk and see how it is leading to self-pity and start correcting it.
Improve yourself
Work on improving yourself physically, mentally and spiritually. Personal development will improve various parts of your life. Even better, it will give you a project to work on and what’s better than the project being you?
By improving yourself, you will feel better about yourself and not pity yourself all the time. When you work out, for example, you will feel stronger, sexier, and have some positive energy.
Help others
Helping others will help you feel good about yourself. This may be a selfish reason to do it, but it will improve your positive self-talk and help you feel like a good person.
Even better, helping others will help you see the hardships of others and appreciate yourself more. When you see how others are having it tough, you won’t pity yourself so much. You will be grateful for what you have.
Do something you are good at
If you wallow in self-pity it’s probably because you feel that you are not enough. Do something that makes you feel good or something that you are good at.
If you are good at creating, create something. If you like singing, find an audience and sing. If you are a runner, take part in a marathon and run your little heart out. Doing something that you are good at will give you an energy boost.
Stop overthinking
It is all in your head, and you can put a pause on it. When you overthink, you create scenarios in your head that don’t exist. You then start living in these scenarios as if they are real. Stop thinking too much about things that are not really. Try to get out of your head and look at the situation as it is.
Stop caring what others think of you
You might be wallowing in self-pity because you are so concerned about what others think of you. You compare yourself to others and when you feel that you don’t measure up, you start going down the drain of self-pity.
Here is the harsh truth, no one is thinking about you. They are all so absorbed in their lives.
Practice positive affirmations
Sometimes you have to speak positive energy to yourself. It may sound weird but you need to say good things to yourself.
Self-pity comes from saying all the wrong kind of stuff to yourself. Why not replace this by saying all the right kind of stuff to yourself, just loudly this time.
Positive affirmations and positive self-talk will give you a boost of confidence, change your mindset and help you embrace positivity. Here are some affirmations that you might find helpful.
Build resilience
You will always find challenges in life. How you deal with them is what matters. If you will curl into a corner each time and feel sorry for yourself, then you have some tough days ahead.
To stop self-pity, you need to build resilience. Make yourself more adaptable and flexible. Open up your mind and become so elastic that challenges can stretch you far enough but they can break you. Building resilience will make you more versatile and adaptable to adversities.
Stop taking things personally
Every time you personalize the events that are taking place in your life, you think everything in life is out to get you. I wrote about this in the 3 thoughts that could completely transform your life.
Taking things personally is such as when something bad happens, you keep thinking ‘bad things always happen to me’. Instead, start thinking ‘bad things happen’ and this is not just to you but to everyone else.
This change of mindset will reduce victim mentally and help you face challenges when they’re thrown your way.
Don’t have zero days
I read this on a post on Reddit.
Zero days mean a say that ends without doing a single thing towards your dreams or goals. Don’t let one day pass where you haven’t contributed to your goal even in the smallest way.
Even when its 11:55 pm and you are almost having a zero day, do so something small. Do one pushup, write one sentence, just do something to contribute to your goal. This way, you will self-improve gradually but in the right direction.
Forgive yourself
Self-pity can arise when you feel regret and shame for all the wrong things you have done in the past. You could be feeling self-pity because you wasted your 20s and you are full of regrets.
What’s done is done, you need to forgive yourself. Whether you wasted money, ability, time with the wrong people, you need to write it down and note all the things you forgive yourself for.
Put it down on people and remind yourself that you acknowledge what you did and you forgive yourself for it.
Self-educate
While you improve yourself, self-educate. Learn some new skills, ideas, and improve your mind. Read books that will help you understand why you behave the way you do and how you can improve your life.
Read books that will help you become more productive, more disciplined, books that will change the way you think and fiction books to relax.
You are not a reader? You can develop a reading culture and become a reader, it is never too late.
If you don’t like reading or can’t find time to read, start listening to audiobooks instead. Audible has a free trial membership that helps you read a few books for free before you decide if audiobooks are your thing.
Alternatively, discover Blinkist that summarizes some of the most impactful books in 15 minutes summaries that you can read or listen to.
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