How To Stop Hating Yourself

If you are a man that struggles with some type of self-worth, you don't really know if you have value, you question your own worth, you question whether or not you matter, you question whether or not you're good enough constantly, and you struggle with a core quality of confidence. The truth is that most of the things that are out there are not going to help you fix the challenge that you are experiencing internally because the majority of the content that is out there, especially in the, the manuscript or the red pill, not to knock all of it or any of it, but a lot of that stuff is telling men, you, women are born with value and men, you are not born with value, you have to build value, you have to build this out. And what that does is it tells men, it actually reinforces the wound. So what men end up doing is they go out and they develop more competency, they get better at doing things, they get more skills and more assets and they build up financial wealth or they, you know, get the accolades and the achievements and the accomplishments. And they think maybe if I just do more or I'm better, I get better at doing the things that I already know how to do that will help me feel more confident and it'll develop a sense of self worth inside of me. But it's a false equivalency. It is not true. Okay. And the reason for that is twofold. Number one, the reason for this and this is the trap is that the majority of therapeutic content out there, the majority of especially the red pill content and some of the manuscript stuff out there, what it's telling you is if you just get better at doing things, you're going to feel better about who you are. And it's true and false at the same time. You will feel better about yourself in terms of a self esteem standpoint. So great for that. Right. If you lack self esteem in terms of your perspective, because self esteem is how well can I do things? How much can I do and how well can I do them? And if I can do them very well, then I feel good about myself. I feel like when I do things, I can do them well and that's valuable for the world. But that does not fill the void for the men who feel like I don't matter or the men that feel like I did, which is something's wrong with me. So if you're a man that has dealt with a lot of shame, you have a lot of shame inside of yourself. You've experienced abuse or neglect or abandonment or some type of trauma. It's not going to fill that gap. You can get as good as you want. You can be the best in the world at what you do. And this is what I've seen time and time again, because the majority of the men come to me and work with me when this exact thing happens. They get very good. They win the awards. They win the achievement. They reach the top of the mountain and they still don't feel good enough. They still feel hollow, empty. They still don't like themselves. They don't like who they are. And they still feel broken inside. They still feel like something's fundamentally wrong with them. Like they don't have worth or value or like they do not matter. And that is because no amount of self esteem is going to fill in the vacancy of self worth. No amount of confidence or competency is going to fill in the hollow sensation inside of you of I don't know if I fundamentally matter. And the reason for that is that self worth, the knowing of self worth is something that is installed in relationships. And so when you are an infant, when you're a little child, when you're a baby and a little kid, a toddler, you know, you're three or four, you're five years old, what's meant to happen is that in relationship, you are meant to express that you have a need and that need gets met. And it reinforces inside of you psychologically within a sense of self, within a sense of identity. My needs matter, air go, I matter. And it's a very simple cycle. But when you have trauma, when you have experience neglect as a kid, you can't differentiate between your needs and your sense of self. They are one in the same. So what happens for a lot of people is that they grow up in an environment where abuse happens, neglect happens, abandonment happens. And what they receive is my needs don't matter. Therefore I must not matter. Or they experience some type of hardship, right? They get verbal abuse. They're told you're so stupid, you're such a POS, you're never going to amount to anything with the hell's wrong with you. They get criticized, hyper, hyper criticized, you know, whatever the scenario is and what they receive is there's something wrong with me. And it doesn't even have to be direct. It can be the indirect silence from a parent. It can be the neglect of not checking in on you emotionally and not having any clue or any interest about who you are. And for a child again, what they receive is there must be something fundamentally flawed or wrong with me that that primary basic need isn't getting met. And what happens is that the sense of self within that individual becomes covered up with shame. And so where there should be an unequivocal experience of knowing that you matter, that you have worth and value. And I want to say that again, where there should be an unequivocal knowing that you matter, that you have worth, that you have value, which is what self worth is. It's an unquestionable unquestioning knowing that you have worth and value. It's not a concept. It's not a maybe. It's a I experience. I know that I matter. I don't need to question it. I don't need to try and prove it to other people. I fundamentally know inside of myself that I matter. That's what self worth is. And so when these interruptions happen, it creates a fracturing within your identity within your perception of yourself that then says something's off with me, something's wrong with me, something's flawed or broken about me, something's defective about me. Some variation of that starts to manifest. And the identity, the personality that starts to form on top of that can do a whole bunch of things, right? It can go down this path of trying to prove that you have worth and value. So you get very good at things and you become very performance based and you try and prove to other people that you're worthy, endlessly. You try and prove to women. You try and prove financially. And unfortunately, this is what a lot of modern society incentivizes you as a man towards. It's how much can you produce? And if you produce more, your status goes up and then you have worth and value. And this is a flawed game. This is a rigged game because I've worked with billionaires. I've worked with famous athletes. I've worked with famous musicians and entrepreneurs and hedge funds and you name it. And there is no amount of success that fills in the question mark of, do I fundamentally matter? Do I like who I am? Do I feel like I have worth? Because that question is answered relationally. And so one of the things that we need to understand is, yeah, if you lack confidence as a man, it might benefit you to go and get very good at certain things that allow you to provide for yourself, to have responsibility, to be able to protect yourself, to be disciplined, to have impulse control. All of those things are going to be exceptional at helping you build self esteem and that's good. Nothing's wrong with that. But you can build up all the self esteem in the world and you can feel good about what you do and you can feel competent in it what you can do and you can feel capable in all of those things. You can make a lot of money and be successful and have the awards and the adjeevans and still fucking hate who you are and still at your core, lose who you are. And this becomes problematic because for many men, our rational mind says, just get super good at doing shit. Now that might be the first step because maybe you don't like who you are and you don't feel good at doing anything. You might be the guy watching this who's like, I don't have self worth and I don't have self esteem. Okay, got it. I get that because I was that guy. I was the guy. I didn't feel any type of self worth. I felt fundamentally broken and I also felt like dog shit at pretty much everything I did. I didn't feel proficient and capable and competent at most of the things that I did. And so what did I do? I started to get very good at doing certain things. I learned and Focused in. on becoming exceptional and masterful at certain things in my life, and my confidence started to really grow. My sense of self-esteem started to really grow because these are developmental stages that every human being needs to go through. In order to develop self-esteem, we have to go through the developmental stage between the ages of 5 and 12 that says, "What can I do? How many things can I do? How well can I do those things?" That's really what produces self-esteem. That's what a lot of online psychology and therapy, maybe not therapy, but the online psychology, the manuscript, they're really teaching. Here's how to feel good about yourself based on what you can produce and how much you can do. The other part of it is a deeper, earlier developmental interruption that asks the question, "Am I okay and is my world okay?" Specifically, "Am I okay? Do I matter? Do I have worth? Do I have value?" Not for what I can do, not for how well I can do things, but simply for who I am. Again, that is a relational piece. A couple of things that we need to know, that I would love for you to know, that you can start to implement, in order to develop this. The first step that we have to take is separating what's called personhood from behavior, separating your sense of self, your self-perception from what you do and how well you do it. If you are always measuring, gauging, how well you do things as an indicator of your sense of self, that is going to reinforce the shame that exists inside of you and it is only going to go towards building your self-esteem because we need our sense of self, our personhood, to be separate from what we do. A great phrase for this that I use for my son is, "I love you for who you are, no matter what you do. I love you for who you are, even when you make mistakes." When my son messes up, and this is something that I've had to use on myself, so I would encourage you to use the following phrase on yourself, "I am a good man, even though I got that wrong. I am a good man, even though I made that mistake. I am a good man, even regardless of how well I just perform. I am a good man, even though I just won that award. Whether it's good or bad, but especially the negative stuff, I am a good man, even though I messed it up. I'm a good father, even though I made the mistake. I'm a good husband, even though I made that mistake." We start to separate, "Here's who I am, from here's what I just did, or here's how I've been performing." We start to reconnect with our sense of self as being inherently good, regardless of the things that we are doing externally. In doing that, we reinforce our sense of self-worth. We reinforce, "I have worth and value, regardless of how I perform." Those things are still important. You probably still have a family that relies on you and colleagues or employees or friends that rely on you to be responsible and to be competent in all of those things. I'm not negating that. I'm not saying that when you make mistakes, it doesn't have a consequence. I'm saying when you make mistakes, it's not an indicator of whether you're fucked up or not. It's a huge difference between, "I made a mistake and I need to learn that mistake and that will help me be more competent or be more capable or be more responsible next time, make a better decision next time." Versus, "I made a mistake and it's an indicator that something's fundamentally flawed and broken inside of me." In all theologies, in all religions and all spiritual practices and all therapeutic modalities and all psychological modalities, there is the concept of the personhood of the self and the self is not broken. It is never broken. It's never flawed. It's never defective. There's nothing wrong with it. The personality, the ego, the sense of identity that goes on top of it. This is the part of you that begins to take on those perspectives. For many people, part of the challenge is that they've never experienced the differentiation. They've literally lived their whole life as if they are that broken sense of self, that flawed sense of self. They carry around. They operate from this personality, from this ego, from this identity that says something's wrong with me. I have to be perfect. Otherwise, it reinforces that I'm messed up. No. We have to be able to separate the two. Young Carl Jung had a great quote where he said, "You cannot heal what you cannot separate from." In many ways, we have to separate from the shame, from the insecurity, from the judgment, from the projection, from all of those things, to experience, I am good simply because I exist. I am okay simply because I am here. Now, the other part to this is, so that's with ourself. The other part to this is we have to find a quality of worth and value within relationships. I had a buddy of mine, Josh Radner, who I think we talked about this on the interview that I did with him years ago. He was working with the therapist and the therapist that I think would be a good idea for you to get a dog so that you can experience what it's like to be loved by something for no reason at all. What the therapist was really saying is, "I want you to experience a relationship where it's not about what you've done or accomplished, where somebody simply loves you for you." It's like that song. She likes me for me. I don't remember the rest of the words or who even did it, but maybe some of you will know and you'll put it in the comments. It's the experiencing that somebody really genuinely cares about you just because you exist. Somebody loves you because you were there. For a lot of men, they have adopted this fundamental belief structure that says, "Nobody cares about me outside of what I can do or what I can provide for them." That's a very realistic, very lonely, very depressing belief structure that ultimately is not true. Are there people, women, men who want you simply for what you can do? Sure. Are there people who will leave you when your capacity to achieve and perform an accomplished breaks down? 100% not denying any of that. There are relationships, many of them, where you experience love for the sake of love. I love my daughter. I love my wife. I love my son for who they are. I just love them because they are in my life, because they are my family, because I chose them, because I chose my wife, not because they can do things for me, or based on how they perform, or any of those other things. Sometimes we have to begin to relate to people from a place of, "I love you for who you are, not what you can do for me, not your performance, not what you can accomplish or achieve. I just love you for who you are." And vice versa, to allow ourselves to be cared for, to be loved for who we are, not just what we do. Now, a part of this is that we have to bring transparency into the relationship. We have to bring openness, honesty into the relationship, to be able to ask for our needs to be met, because for a huge amount of people that have experienced this interruption to, "I matter," right? "I matter." The extension of it is, "My needs matter." And so, for a lot of the men that I have worked with, the guys who really struggle with self-worth at the core, they don't believe that they can have their needs met, they are terrified of asking for what they need, or they exert a tremendous amount of control often unconsciously to ensure that their needs get met. So, people that lack self-worth and have a lot of shame, do not trust they control. And we have to relinquish the control and begin to operate from trust to experience a deeper quality, a deeper understanding of "I matter." "I have worth. I have value." And we do that by saying, "I'm going to trust you enough to express what it is that I need in our relationship. I'm going to be open enough. I'm going to take the risk to expose that I need something." And that's not being needy, that's not being dependent. it's being honest. So sometimes it's saying, notice something, sometimes it's asking for something. Sometimes it's saying, "Hey, this is really hard for me to say, but I could really use X, Y, and Z. I love it when you do X, Y, and Z. I'm actually not interested in X, Y, and Z. And that's what I need." And when we do that, when we start allowing our needs to be exposed, to be seen, to be met, we start to understand, "Oh, actually, I do matter." And it's simply two-fold. So I'll end with this, I'll leave you with this, and then I would love for you to leave your questions comments in the comment section below. There's two parts to self-worth. One, it's treating yourself from a place of "I matter." Not I'm broken, not I'm defective, not I have to prove myself, it's treating yourself from the place of "I matter." So one thing that you can do is ask yourself the question, what choice, what decision, what action, what behavior, would I take if I really believed I mattered? And you start to act from that place, with yourself, what actions, choices, and decisions, and behaviors, would I make if I believed I mattered and then do that then? Do that now. The second thing is what choices, actions, decisions, requests, or knows, would I deploy in relationship if I knew I mattered? And you start to express those needs, wants and desires, into your relationship, and it reinforces that you matter because it gets reciprocated, your needs get met. And it reinforces, "I actually do matter." So this is a breakdown for today. I know it's a big one. Let me know your thoughts below. Please don't forget to comment it forward with somebody that you know needs this and could use it. And until next week, kind of being setting off.