Do you want to stop feeling sorry for yourself?
Are you in the habit of beating throwing a pity party for yourself each time you find yourself in a negative situation?
Do you constantly struggle with negative thoughts about yourself?
If you’re in the habit of feeling sorry for yourself all the time then you need to stop.
This is because you’re not only hurting yourself emotionally and mentally, you’re also stopping yourself from being the best you can be.
Hence, stay with us and discover how you can break the habit of feeling sorry for yourself.
This is so you can be your best self and in the right frame of mind to achieve success in what you do.
How To Stop Feeling Sorry For Yourself
Challenges and setbacks are inevitable in every aspect of life.
There are many hurdles that you’ll encounter daily when trying to achieve set goals.
Even more as a business owner or entrepreneur, you’ll encounter many challenges in business.
You’ll be able to scale through some of these challenges most times and achieve your set goals.
Other times, some of these challenges could be so overwhelming.
Thereby, leading to failures or mistakes in business.
These mistakes could be very hurtful.
Most importantly it is how you react to these mistakes that matter the most.
The same goes for our personal and professional lives.
How do you react to mistakes and failures in your personal or professional life?
Many people are in the habit of beating themselves up due to certain mistakes or failures they encounter in their business, work, or personal life.
They give in to self-pity and regrets each time they encounter setbacks in their lives.
Hence, they feel sorry for themselves.
Feeling sorry or beating yourself up doesn’t change the consequences of your actions or negative events in your life.
It only makes things worse.
We’ll consider more details on this in the latter part of this blog post.
Hence the need to know how to get rid of self-pity and stop feeling sorry for yourself.
Before then, lets’ discover certain things like;
- What Is Self-Pity (the act of feeling sorry for one’s self?
- Signs Of Self-pity
- Negative Effects OF Self-Pity
What Is Self-Pity?
Self-pity is a mental state of feeling sorry for oneself over one’s struggles or challenges.
In other words, it is sadness over one’s problems or struggles.
This is usually as a result of the negative thoughts of thinking that you have too many problems or have suffered a lot in life.
Overall, it is the belief you have of yourself that you have suffered more than necessary over certain issues in your life generally.
Signs Of Self-Pity
A lot of times people who tend to feel sorry for themselves over every little challenge do not realize that they’re struggling with self-pity.
Given this, here are some tips on how to identify self-pity.
This is so you can know how to beat self-pity and stop feeling sorry for yourself.
You can tell that you are struggling with self-pity if you;
- feel depressed and gloomy about every negative situation in your life
- refuse to let go of bitter past experiences
- are always seeking for sympathy from others
- lack self-esteem and confidence in your potentials
- constantly feel unworthy or undeserving of happiness in life
- self-absorbed
- are easily discouraged by negative situations or turn of events in your life
- struggle with self-guilt
- believe life is a battleground where you have to constantly fight
- don’t take responsibility for your actions
- …..among other things.
It’s okay to feel self-pity.
This is because as humans, out of self-love we tend to wish things were different in our lives.
So, we play the victim of negative circumstances so we can feel better for not having most things we crave for and desire in life generally.
However, when self-pity becomes a habit such that it is difficult to get over negative situations, it is bad.
This can stop you from making progress in every area of life as an individual.
Hence, keep these signs in mind.
This is so you can tell when you’re struggling with self-pity and stop the negative habit of feeling sorry for yourself.
Now, let’s consider how self-pity affects lives negatively.
Negative Effects Of Self-Pity
There are so many ways feeling sorry for yourself and playing the pity party can affect you as an individual.
They include;
- Firstly, it stops you from achieving growth and progress in every area of life.
This is because self-pity blinds you to the opportunity of learning from your mistakes.
Thereby, giving you the courage to try again.
Consequently, stopping you from taking action and making progress in every area of life.
- It makes it difficult for you to keep a clear head and think about solutions to your problems.
- Furthermore, feeling sorry for yourself also affects your mental and physical health negatively.
This is because, dwelling on bitter past experiences for so long can lead to anxiety, bitterness, and depression.
These could, in turn, lead to coronary heart problems and high blood pressure.
Overall, the habit of feeling sorry for yourself over every difficult situation can make the pain and hurt linger for long.
Thereby, causing you to be filled with lots of negative emotions that stops you from being the best you can be and making progress in life.
Hence the need for you to know how to stop feeling sorry for yourself.
Guidelines On How To Stop Feeling Sorry For Yourself
Here are things you could do as a business owner or regular individual to stop feeling sorry for yourself.
Learn To Show Yourself Compassion
One of the first things you must learn how to do to stop feeling sorry for yourself is showing yourself compassion.
Showing compassion here means being warm and friendly towards yourself as you go through challenges.
It also means learning to forgive yourself for the mistakes you made.
It is learning to treat yourself nicely, rather than criticizing, condemning, and beating yourself up as self-pity would make you do.
One of the signs of self-pity that we examined today is self-guilt.
That is, the feeling that you’re the cause of the problems or challenges you’re encountering.
Show yourself some compassion by accepting your imperfections and learning to forgive yourself.
When you encounter difficulties, challenges, or failures probably due to certain mistakes you made, show yourself compassion.
Treat and encourage yourself as you would do to a friend who is encountering similar situations.
Thus helping you let go of all the negative emotions of beating yourself up and feeling sorry for yourself.
Build Mental Strength/Toughness
Mental strength is the capacity of an individual to cope with challenges and/or difficult situations.
It is also what determines how you react and/or respond to stress or pressure from challenges.
When you encounter difficult situations either in business, work, or personal life, how do you react to the situation?
Do you sulk up and feel sorry for yourself by wishing things were different or do you absorb the pain knowing that challenges are a necessary part of life and move on?
To stop feeling sorry for yourself, you need to build mental strength.
Your mental strength would help you cope with the pain and discomfort as you encounter challenges.
It would also help you brace yourself up and look for solutions to the problems at hand rather than sulking and feeling sorry for yourself.
Thus helping you develop a positive outlook regardless of negative situations around you.
Refuse To Be The Victim
One of the signs of self-pity is playing the victim.
You feel sorry for yourself because you feel cheated or wronged.
More so, you blame people around you as the cause of your problem each time you encounter a difficult or negative situation.
This is s destructive habit that would ruin your relationships and make people distance themselves from you.
Thus making things worse for you.
When something bad or negative happens to you, don’t be quick to play the victim card and start blaming people around you for your problems.
Sit back, reflect on the situation, and try to figure the part you played in the negative situation you’re encountering.
Take responsibility for your actions, forgive yourself, and move on.
Consequently, helping you avoid self-pity and the need to feel sorry for yourself.
Challenge Negative Thoughts
Another thing you could do to help you stop the bad habit of feeling sorry for yourself is to challenge negative thoughts.
A lot of times when we encounter negative situations we get filled up with negative emotions.
These negative emotions fill us with all sorts of negative thoughts and questions about the situations.
For instance, when dealing with certain difficulties in our daily lives we are tempted to ask questions such as;
- Why me?
- Why does everything I do never seems to work out fine?
- Or why do people hate me so much?
- Why am I so unfortunate?
All these questions would only trigger more negative feelings and would make you feel like the victim all the more.
Even more, these questions would take you deeper down the pity-party state.
Rather than this, challenge these negative thoughts with a more optimistic approach.
Challenge negative thoughts by changing the narrative and thinking of possible situations to the problem at hand.
This would make you feel empowered and motivated to solve your problems.
Thereby, helping you stop feeling sorry for yourself.
Practice Gratitude
Most times when you encounter challenges or difficult situations, it is easy to forget all about the good things in your life.
You forget about all the times you’ve had things going well for you and you focus solely on the negative situation at hand.
Gratitude in this sense is the act of acknowledging and appreciating all the good things in your life even in negative situations.
This is a positive habit that can help you stop the cycle of self-pity in your life.
By practicing gratitude daily, you can develop a more positive outlook on life.
Thus helping you overcome the negative emotions that self-pity causes.
Hence, learn to acknowledge the good things in your life by practicing gratitude.
You can practice gratitude by forming the habit of writing down daily in a gratitude journal at least three things you’re grateful for.
These things don’t have to be so outstanding.
It could be waking up to the beautiful weather in the morning or a surprise gift from a loved one.
By doing this you’ll form the habit of gratitude.
You’ll also develop a positive mindset that would help you get through difficult times in your life.
Consequently helping overcome the need to engage in self-pity and feeling sorry for yourself in negative situations.
Change Your Perception
Another tip to keep in mind to help you stop feeling sorry for yourself is to change your perception.
One of the triggers of self-pity is the negative perception of difficult situations.
Your perception of situations around you would determine how you react to them and the kind of emotions you feel in such situations.
If you are in the habit of feeling sorry for yourself it’s because you always view negative situations in a certain way.
Hence, to stop this negative trait, you need to change your perception of things.
As a business owner, how do you react to negative situations in your business?
Do you see your mistakes in business as failures or a learning opportunity for improvement in your business?
Likewise, as a regular individual how do you deal with the negative consequences of the wrong decisions that you make in your personal and professional life?
Do you sulk up, beat yourself up, and feel bad about yourself or do you take them as learning experiences that could make you a better person overall?
How you choose to see things is up to you.
You could choose to view negative situations from a positive perspective.
Thus, helping you feel positive about a negative situation.
So, change your perception of things so you can stop feeling sorry for yourself in negative situations.
Imagine Worst-Case Scenarios
All over the world, people struggle with hurt and pain on different levels.
In minutes, many people lose their homes, jobs, loved ones, and struggle with different challenges.
What challenges are your struggling with right now that’s making you feel sorry for yourself?
Always remember that things could be far worse than the current state of things in your life each time you start feeling sorry for yourself.
Compare your life with that of other people around you and notice the different challenges that they struggle with.
This is self-comparison in a positive way.
By doing this, you’ll become less self-absorbed with your problems and you’ll realize how fortunate you are compared to others.
Even more, you’ll get to find out that they need help and attention as well.
Thereby, helping you shift focus from yourself and realizing the need to help others.
Consequently helping you to empathize with others and stop feeling sorry for yourself.
Learn To Let Go
Another thing you must learn to do to stop feeling sorry for yourself is learning to let go.
A lot of times, we dwell too long on a particular situation overthinking things.
We try to make sense of a particular situation and we let negative thoughts linger in our heads for too long.
Overthinking things cannot change the situation of things or alter the consequences of your actions.
Rather it only makes matters worse by causing all sorts of anxiety and mental health issues.
What mistakes have you made in the past?
What bitter experiences have you encountered in the past that’s causing you to feel sorry yourself?
Yes, those experiences might be hurtful.
Hence, it is only human that you express your pain or displeasure with the situation.
However, do not linger on them too long.
Express your pain but build courage and move past those experiences.
Thus helping you get over negative emotions and feeling sorry for yourself in negative situations.
Conclusion On How To Stop Feeling Sorry For Yourself
That’s it on the guidelines on how to stop feeling sorry for yourself.
However, another important thing to know is that the decision to stop feeling sorry for yourself lies with you.
While these tips might serve as a guide on the right track, the choice to stop self-pity lies with you.
Even more, for you to decide to stop self-pity, you need to realize how it’s harming you negatively.
Just as we examined with the negative effects of self-pity, it’s keeping you stuck and stopping you from making progress in every aspect of life.
Furthermore, challenges will always be a part of life.
Hence, use these guidelines to learn how to stop feeling sorry for yourself and move on from negative situations.
How has self-pity affected your life generally?
Share your experience with us in the comments section below.
We would love to hear from you.
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