Stop Loving Yourself
The pop psychology of today has conditioned us to believe that we should always love ourselves. But what if we are mediocre? If we keep celebrating ourselves without confronting that mediocrity — loving ourselves unconditionally regardless — we will never improve.
So you need a measure of self-loathing. I know the word is triggering to some, but I don't mean you should hate yourself for who you are. You need to be self-aware enough to identify the mediocrity within. Cultivate enough disgust for that mediocre self that you are compelled to change it.
All meaningful transformation originates from a place of disgust. You despise the status quo to such an extent that you are driven to disrupt it. This notion of loving yourself regardless of who you are or what you bring to the table is crippling — and, frankly, annoying.
You are not supposed to love yourself endlessly. You are not supposed to love anybody endlessly. Don't hate people for who they are, forgive them wherever possible — but loving them unconditionally is its own form of stupidity.
How can you improve if you are deeply in love with yourself? How will you enrich someone's life unless you master the art of accepting flaws — beginning with your own? You cannot genuinely accept someone else's flaws until you have identified and reckoned with yours first.
We can only tolerate other people's idiosyncrasies when we can see beyond our own. That is precisely why this endless self-love doesn't work. It turns your gaze inward, away from the ways you might be an inconvenience to someone else. Accepting that you could be a problem to someone requires a clear-eyed awareness of your own shortcomings.
Ironically, the ones who are quickest to apologise for their mannerisms are generally the ones who don't need to. They loathe themselves too readily — which is a separate affliction and deserves its own essay.
So cultivate disgust for the parts of yourself that fall short. I cannot stomach someone who casually announces, "Oh, I'm just not good with maths" or "Sorry, I'm bad at reading signs." What exactly am I supposed to do with that? Why should I be expected to absorb it?
That is entitlement dressed as self-deprecation. And you have every right to be disgusted by such behaviour — in others, yes, but especially in yourself. It is only once you fix something that you realise it was fixable. Then you can decide whether to distance yourself from people who won't, or try to help them become better.
Too much of anything is corrosive. Being excessively self-critical is equally damaging, because then you are viewing yourself purely through an external lens — as a subject to be judged rather than a person to be developed. The goal is to cultivate enough awareness that self-improvement becomes a continuous, natural instinct.
So, regardless of what Instagram psychology preaches, be harder on yourself when the occasion demands it. God knows the world is starved of good people.