Why do I Hate Myself?

For many years, I'd get a little pissed off everyone somebody suggested that it was possible for me to love myself. What woo-woo nonsense was this? It struck me as the kind of thinking that could only be produced by someone who was soft in the head.

Personally, I found myself very irritating. I thought I looked like a vacuous baked potato and showed the initiative and critical thinking on might expect from such a potato once it had been smeared onto a plate. What was to like?

Whenever a book or a guru or a mentor so much as implied that self-love was possible, I'd feel very impatient, because I felt they were preaching nonsense. Nice idea, I thought, but impossible to execute.

I forget which convention it was. I know it was several years ago. I know I was by myself in a hotel and participating in a convention. I can't recall now if it was a church music thing or a nerd event, but I very clearly remember sitting in the hotel restaurant and ordering breakfast.

As I mulled over my schedule for the next few hours, a thought hit me: “I'm having fun. I enjoy my own company.” My word. I was finding myself fun. I was finding myself companionable, in a weird way.

This was my first toehold on the mountain of self-love.

For many, many years, I'd assumed that I wasn't actually all that worthy of respect or love. I'd dismissed the thought of self-love as a task for posturing yoga babes.

And then I was confronted with the experience of it. Self-love isn't a pipe dream. It's a very real thing, and it's quite attainable.

Self-hatred, meanwhile, sucks. It hurts us very badly. It prevents us from doing things we're completely capable of doing. It spurs us to do things that do us avoidable, needless damage to ourselves and to others.

It hurts our careers, our love lives, our creativity, our agency, our friendships, and our wellness.

It's miserable to experience. It feels like being a kitten in the pouring rain.

There’s a misconception that holds us back from loving ourselves. That misconception is that we'll be worthy of self-love when we improve ourselves, or that we'll finally develop self-love once we've hit some external milestones of improvement.

This is why we go on diets, try new morning routines, hack our habits, etc, and still feel stuck.

We work very hard to improve, but we don't feel better. We still hate ourselves.

So we keep trying and failing to improve ourselves, but we fail and then we feel worse.

This is horrible. It's a terrible misuse of our time. Instead, we should focus on BEING ourselves.

Things become much, much better if we know

-which activities we like to do

-what we're good at

- how we like to do things

For example, I'm an idea person with a short attention span. I like to move fast. I like to jump into a project quickly and leap right out of it just as quickly. I want to do things in ways that are novel, unexpected, creative.

Therefore, I shouldn't commit to any project that is long-term and requires consistent effort over time, doing very similar tasks all the time.

I have tried this several times, and this kind of situation makes me shrivel up into embarrassment, failure, and chronic absenteeism.

But if you put me in a position where you need maybe a few hours or a month of my time? And I can brainstorm a lot? And I can work fast and hard and get things done? And then leave, free to do the next thing?

Oh my goodness. That's me being a toddler in an aisle full of sugary breakfast cereal. I'm fueled by rockets and extreme enthusiasm.

I am extremely cool and responsible and effective in that kind of situation.

The trick is to know how I'm wired and then heavily prioritize things that suit my wiring. It's also to refuse to do things that don't suit my wiring.

When I'm acting according to my wiring, my fundamental attributes, I enjoy my own company, and I respect myself.

I want this for you.

You would probably like to know what your innate attributes are, so you do things your way as you cook a pot of spaghetti or wait in the lobby of a corporate building for an interview or decide whether or not you're going to rent your garage to your mother-in-law.

I'm guessing that you'd like to have a sense of personal sovereignty: this is my wiring, so I will choose to do these things that I want to do and enjoy doing, and I will do these things in a way that suits me. Everything else is not the correct fit for me.

And, I bet you enjoy yourself mightily when you give yourself permission to operate that way.

If you don't know what your main, innate attributes are, take a look at my plant oracles. You might find yourself described there. Once you've labeled which attributes are yours, you can shape actions through them, and, by doing so, shape your life.

I haven't covered every plant in the world, however, so you may want to find another plant to observe.

You can find yourself by looking carefully at plants.

Here's how.

Play the Secret Snug Society Game. It might take you an hour the first time you play it. The next time it will likely be much faster. The more times you play, the more insights you'll get about plants, you, and your life.

As you play, think about the plant. What features make it distinctive? Does it bloom at night? Is it tough? Is it drought-tolerant?

Then compare it to yourself. Do you bloom at night or are you a morning person? Are you at your best when you're grown hard, like a dandelion in a windy, rocky meadow on top of a mountain, or do you do better when you're surrounded by support, like an orchid in a greenhouse? Do you do surprisingly well when you don’t have access to many resources?

Every time you ask a question like this, you're coming to know yourself a little more.

You might learn that you're a morning person who thrives around care and support but likes to make do with what you've got lying around.

You might also learn that you're a night owl and a loner, and you feel grounded and empowered when you have plenty of resources at your disposal.

Once you know these things about yourself, you can shape your life to support these attributes.

To play the game, you draw a picture of a plant that catches your eye. This picture doesn't need to be any good. You can keep the picture to yourself if you want to, no problem.

The idea is to consider the plant. What is it like? Are you the same or different? It's not a competition. What you're doing is seeking clarity. The question you're really asking is, “How do I work?”

Here's what you should do next. Get some art supplies (paper and pencil count!), step outside, and draw a plant.

What willn you find out?

Post your art if you want to, #SecretSnugSociety. If you're feeling brave, post your insights.