After years of working to become the best version of me possible, I discovered that low self-worth and lack of self-love were at the root of all my problems. I kept trying to fix my problems by addressing the problem; trying to fix or change the external. After years of doing this over and over, I finally realized the resolution is internal. I want to help you avoid wasting as much time as I did, which is why I am helping shed light on the signs that you don’t love yourself enough and how you can start to love yourself more.
After a lifetime of looking outside myself for solutions to my problems with things like body image, self-worth, relationships, and money, I learned that the problem was within. It all stemmed from not loving myself enough and not fully accepting myself. Looking back there are several signs of my not loving myself enough. These are:
- A negative or critical inner dialogue
- Struggling in multiple areas of your life
- Apologizing for yourself
- People pleasing
- Avoiding new relationships and social events
I have been working on becoming the best version of myself possible for about ten years now, but I didn’t set out to do this initially; I sort of came to it by accident. What I initially set out to do was lose the baby weight. And when I did, just as was the case when I lost weight in my early twenties, long before children, the same issues were there. I was still looking in the mirror picking myself apart. It didn’t matter how much weight I lost. It didn’t matter what the scale said or what size my jeans were, I still didn’t like what I saw in the mirror. This pattern has repeated itself at least five times in my adult life, and yet I didn’t see it until nearly six years ago when I started working on my mindset.
Once I started looking beyond just my weight, I started to learn more about the role of our thinking and our mindset, with regard to body image and self-worth. This led me down a path of looking deeper within and further back, which set me on my inner healing journey. As I started to learn how our external reality is nothing more than a reflection of our internal reality, I came to the realization that I needed to learn to love myself completely and unconditionally. The more I work on this, the more reflecting I do, the more clearly I can see the various signs that were always there. My reality was reflecting back to me how much I loved myself, or, rather how much I didn’t.
Have you ever heard the expression that your reality is a reflection of what’s inside you? I’ve heard this said in a number of different ways. There are a few different examples of the reflections in your reality that clue you into what’s inside; what your dominant thought paradigm or belief system about yourself is.
- A negative or critical inner dialogue
This is what I started with then it came to recognizing I didn’t love myself enough. I started paying attention to the things I was saying to myself. I started asking myself if I would ever say anything like this to anyone else. I started wondering how I would feel if my daughter was saying things like this to herself. Then it became clear; I was my own worst enemy. I was tearing myself down constantly.
If this sounds familiar, you need to shut it down now and start speaking life to yourself. Take all the negative comments you make to yourself and flip them around into affirming comments. As you become more aware of where you need to clean up your inner dialogue start reminding yourself you are no longer speaking to yourself that way and state some of your affirmations. It’s also good to forgive yourself for saying negative or critical things to yourself. - Struggling in multiple areas of your life.
Our outer reality reflects how we feel on the inside. Take a look at your life. Where do you see evidence of a less than ideal level of self-worth and self-love? Perhaps it is in your relationships. Maybe it is your finances. It could be in the way you dress or care for yourself. It could be all of these. One of the most glaring for me was relationships, particularly with men. We’ve all heard the term her picker is broken, I am sure. There is truth to this. If you don’t love yourself unconditionally first, nobody else is going to either.
Because I turned every shitty thing anyone ever did to me inward and made it mean something about me, I continued to manifest similar relationships and other things I didn’t want in my outer reality. Fortunately, you can change your mind, literally, and as you do, the rest will follow. I’ve covered various aspects of this in different podcast episodes and blog posts. A few that may be helpful are: Seven Steps for Healing Emotional Triggers; How your Mind is Keeping you Stuck; Get what you Desire: Eight Steps and Stages of Manifestation; and How to Change your Mindset. - Apologizing for yourself.
Are you constantly saying “I’m sorry,” often without really needing to? For example, I’m sorry to bother you…or I’m sorry before asking a question or when you get emotional. I did this all day every day for decades until I started becoming aware and working on myself. I realized it was as if I was apologizing for my very existence or something and how ridiculous that is. The better I started to feel about myself, the less often I did this until it eventually stopped. - People pleasing.
This is a big one and it took me more than 40 years to recognize it as a sign that I didn’t love myself enough. I wasn’t even really that aware of it for decades. I suppose I just thought it was part of my personality. What I eventually realized though is that it was another form of apologizing for myself, for making up for the ways I didn’t feel like I was enough. The thought of someone being disappointed with me or not liking me was unbearable to the point I’d go out of my way to try and make others happy. I’ve since realized this had everything to do with things I experienced in childhood, so I was always seeking the approval I didn’t feel I had as a child through others.
This is another one that started to dwindle in frequency as I worked on myself. As I felt better about myself, as my love for myself grew, I gradually did things from a place of trying to make others happy or to give them what I thought they wanted from me, and I started doing things from a place of what was important to me. - Avoiding new relationships and social events
Do you avoid new friendships or social events? I did this for decades. I always had a variety of excuses I’d tell myself as to why, but underneath it was the fact that I was afraid to let anyone in and I was afraid people wouldn’t like me. There were several times over the years that I’d meet new people who would invite me out here or there and I’d almost always decline. Of course it is perfectly normal not to want to go out to every social event or have interest in every potential new friendship, but when you avoid all of them it could be a sign you need to work on finding more love for yourself.
So, these are five of the signs you don’t love yourself enough that I found in reflecting on my self-healing journey. I hope you find this helpful and find some tools here for how you can love yourself more. The better your inner state is, the better the outer world becomes.
I would love to hear from you, so please share your thoughts in the comments. If you find this helpful and want to continue the pursuit of faith, fitness, and joy with me, please like and subscribe. You can also find Faith Fitness Joy on Facebook and Instagram or check out the Faith Fitness Joy Podcast. Thanks for listening and I hope to see you in the comments and on the socials!