My Advice to a Hateful Young Man

The Golden Rule for Becoming Your Best Self

Earlier today, I saw a disturbing post on Reddit.

This was from a guy who asked for advice on how to stop being a dick to himself (his words, not mine). At a surface level, it’s not hard, and yes that’s what she said. But now that my inner 12-year-old got a line written, let’s proceed with the real issue here.

This guy did not feel deserving of any self love and respect.

His post was disturbing because there are way too many people who go through life hating themselves. This man was constantly putting himself down, being incredibly harsh on himself and verbally punishing himself because he hasn’t achieved and done enough yet.

In this newsletter, let’s dive into how to be kinder to yourself.

Note: Treating yourself with more kindness and respect does NOT mean you’ll be getting complacent, kill off ambition or move you towards average. In fact, it’s the cornerstone of success!

Don’t Be a Beater Upper!

Let’s get one thing clear:

If you think that you need to be harsh on yourself and constantly punish yourself in order to achieve more, you are completely wrong! It might work for a few days or a few weeks, but in the end, it will completely tear you apart!

Think about it like this:

Who would you go through any length to help out for?

A. Someone who’s always had your back through thick and thin
B. Someone who always cusses you out, puts your down and shits on you

The answer is obvious.

This man’s (and many others’) problem was that he didn’t realize his kind of thinking actually creates a circle. He was beating himself up because he felt unworthy, but he also felt unworthy because he beat himself up.

Here’s what it looks like:

It’s a simplified version of what I call the Circle of Self Loathing.

Secondly, let me ask you this:

Let’s assume that you base your self worth on the actions you take and the material success (Note: DON’T!). But if we were to assume this, when do you think someone is more likely to take those actions?

It’s multiple choice again:

A. When that person feels down and out about himself
B. When someone feels confident in his abilities

Again, bit of a no-brainer.

That’s why beating yourself up does not work!

You’re basically beating all the confidence out of yourself!

You’re diminishing your own self worth.

There’s a famous little tale of two wolves inside of each of us. One represents hate and evil while the other represents love and goodness. The wolves are constantly doing battle with each other.

The one who wins?

The one we feed!

When you’re putting yourself down and being harsh on yourself, you’re feeding the wolf of hate. It’s the worst damn foundation upon which you could try to build your success! (and life in general)

Reverse the Golden Rule of Life

Your parents or teacher probably taught you the following:

“Don’t do upon others what you wouldn’t want to be done upon yourself”.

What if we reversed this rule?

The reality is that we are way harsher upon ourselves than we EVER would be to other people. People would be completely ashamed if they allowed themselves to talk to a friend like they talk to themselves!

So, we reverse The Golden Rule:

“Don’t do upon yourself what you wouldn’t do upon others!”

For example:

• If you would be supportive of a friend in a rough time, be supportive of yourself in a similar situation!

• If you wouldn’t belittle a friend who made a mistake, don’t be so damn fucking hard on yourself either!

• If you would knock the needle out of a friend’s hand and not allow them to do drugs, set that very boundary for yourself as well!

• If you would encourage a friend to chase their dreams, why not give yourself that same permission and go for it?

• If you would praise a friend for their accomplishments (even when small), don’t diminish your own accomplishments!

• If you would stand up for a friend who is being mistreated, stand up for yourself when you are being mistreated!

Here’s another way to look at it:

Parents will enforce certain rules on their children (good ones at least). Limiting screen time, eating their vegetables, being polite, yadayadaya. One way to both self care and success is to realize that in this analogy, you’re both the child as well as the parent.

Act like it!

Note: As always, in the final section below, I’ll cover how to make this practical for you!

Audio Lesson: Achieve More Without Discipline

People always say that you must have extreme discipline in order to achieve your goals. That’s not true! What if I told you there are ways that require little to no discipline to change your behavior, results and life?

You’d click that listen button below, right?

New on YouTube: Master Your Time!

Warning: The video above contains goofiness and should not be watched by anyone who does not have a sense of humor!

Making Self Love Accessable

Today, we talked about how to stop hating yourself through reversing “The Golden Rule”. It serves as something that helps us with how we feel about ourselves as well as with achieving more of our goals.

But, how can you start making this practical?

My recommendation is threefold:

1. Brute Force the Rule as Needed

When I shared the above with this young man, he told me that he doesn’t do it because he didn’t “deserve” to treat himself that way. But, as we’ve learned, this mindset is the exact reason why he doesn’t feel deserving.

Luckily, there’s something great we can use:

The fact that you can do things you don’t feel like!

Even if it feels forced and there’s a part of you that doesn’t believe it, you can STILL talk positively to yourself. You can STILL set boundaries. You can STILL treat yourself like someone you deeply care about.

It might feel forced and insincere, but do it anyway!

2. Disrupt Your Inner Dialog

Here’s what will likely happen if you’re one of the people that have to “brute force” this rule upon themselves:

You’ll say kind things, like positive affirmation, a few times a day.

However, what happens during the other hours of your day is that you slip into autopilot and go back to your usual hateful treatment of yourself. And this inner dialog during the day more than offsets the positive self talk you’re reinforcing.

Get inside your own head.

Throughout your day, start paying attention to how you’re talking about yourself. When you’re noticing that criticizing voice, interrupt yourself and force kinder self talk instead.

Note;

You will mess this up regularly as you try it, accept that. At first, you might realize it 1 out of 100 times it happens. But as you continue the practice, you’ll start becoming better and better at catching your behavior.

3. Create & Celebrate More Wins

When digging a tunnel, they start at both ends.

We are doing the same thing here, because on one hand we work on changing the inner dialog that allows us to feel better, which ultimately helps take more action. At the same time, start taking more action, to feel better, which ultimately improves our self talk.

This helps because we all crave progress!

If there is one thing that creates happiness, it is the journey of improvement, both personally and professionally. So when you’re taking more action, that helps you feel better about yourself because you can see you’re on the right track!

And importantly:

When you take action or get some sort of result (no matter how small), celebrate your achievement! Take that moment to recognize what you’ve done instead of neglect your progress.