Have you ever heard the phrase “you should love yourself”? Loving yourself is a hard thing to do especially in this day and age. It took me 26 years to understand what it means to love myself. I hated myself before that and my actions just proved that I did. The problem was that I didn’t admit it to myself and always tried to escape my reality. The other problem was that all that bad behavior was just accepted in our society. I almost drunk myself in a coma and it happened twice. People just joked about it and told me to condition my body so that I could drink more because that’s apparently what you should do. You have to act like a tool to be considered cool.
But it wasn’t only alcohol that showed that I didn’t love myself. I didn’t care about anything. I just did fitness to impress girls just like most guys. Nobody thought about the health benefits back then. It was all about biceps curls and chasing girls. Aside from that I ate nothing but crap and didn’t care about sleep. I eventually fell into a deep dark hole and almost killed myself. But life didn’t end the day that I was going to end my life. Somehow life just started. Life took a 360 turn and I found hope again. Something that I hadn’t felt in 3 years.
The thing that I noticed is that a lot of people don’t love themselves these days and I can’t blame them. It’s very hard these days because of all the pressure from society here in the West. It’s even harder when you go your own way and stuff completely hits the fan when you have a shitty past. But all that stuff doesn’t matter. It’s all irrelevant because you can learn how to love yourself and I’ll tell you how.
The Subtle art of loving thyself: Reinvent Yourself On Your Own.
I dropped out of college 3 years ago. People put a lot of pressure on me to get a job as soon as possible. Any job was ok for them but I refused to give in. This somehow accidentally led to the fact that I took a whole year off from everything. The only thing that I did was training twice a day and writing one blog post a day. It took me a whole year to learn about the concept of a rest day but the crazy thing is that it was a defining year. In that way, I got to know myself because I spend a lot of time by myself.
I went to coffee shops on my own, restaurants and so on. I still do that to this day on. So I spend at least 30 min a day with myself. I want to be able to reflect on how I think, feel and so on. That’s the only way to learn to know yourself. You actively ask yourself who you are and why you think about certain things. The funny thing is that I eventually found out that I always knew what I wanted. I was 9 when I saw Bruce Lee on television and I wanted to fight. I was 10 when I decided that writing would be my thing. The answer is already there. You just have to do some digging to find yourself again. You won’t find yourself on Google so you better start dating yourself.
The Subtle Art Of Loving Thyself: Forget About Escaping Reality. It Doesn’t Work.
People do everything to escape their reality these days and it’s easy as well. The only problem is that running away from your problems doesn’t solve anything. You’re only gonna make it worse. Worse might be an understatement since running away from your problems might push you into a depression (trust me on this one). Here’s the thing that most people don’t get. Everybody faces negative emotions but they also arise for a reason. It’s up to you to find out why you feel like that. Just ask yourself “why do I feel like this”. This question is hard to answer but helped me out a lot.
You can also try to escape your problem in every single way but it’ll only grow bigger and get a lot of momentum. You’ll feel lost then because you have suddenly a lot bigger hill to climb. Slay the monster while it’s still small, all the energy put in slaying the big monster could have been used to chase your dreams.
The Subtle Art Of Loving Thyself: Write About How You Feel.
Writing heals the soul and clears the mind. I wrote a lot when I started my journey and it helped me for sure. That’s probably the reason why I’ve got so many blog posts, I had a lot of problems. Sad but true. This is probably an overlooked aspect of our society. People just like to share corny quotes on Instagram. Most people just want the attention but they don’t want to put in the work. That’s also the reason why not a single problem gets solved. Because deep down they don’t want it bad enough. The pain needed to make a change isn’t bigger than the pain of remaining the same because they set the wrong priorities. Other people’s attention seems to be more important than solving the problem.
We live in a weird world which is also flat according to some self-proclaimed scientists. Sometimes I wonder why things still surprise me.
The Subtle Art Of Loving Thyself: Forget About The Past But…. (Learn From It).
Your past doesn’t matter because the past doesn’t define your future. Well, it does and it doesn’t. You’re not a product of your past, you’re a product of what you do right now. So maybe you did dumb things in the past but you can break that pattern right now and change your life. Your actions right now define your future, not your past actions and not your future dreams. So many people blame their shitty past when they have a shitty life right now. But that’s just an excuse. You can always make a change and that change has to happen right now.
Break the habits and change your life. I was going to end up in prison or be homeless according to some people. I could have been dead because I was going to end my life yet here I am. I’m writing this blog on a train to Bremen. I was home for 2 days after a 3 months trip to Thailand. I’ll travel to Greece after this trip. I also have some interesting fight offers. My past might have been shitty but my future is bright. Very bright….
That was only possible because I changed my actions and habits.
The Subtle Art Of Loving Thyself: Be You And Don’t Apologize For Doing It.
Society pushes you to go to school, be a good boy/girl, get a degree and so on. You know the drill. This might work for some people but I doubt that this is applicable for every single person on earth. I hated that shit and I hated normal jobs as well. At one point I hated it so much that I was considering to thrash my office just to get fired. Eventually, I didn’t trash my office, although it was very tempting and just quit to travel to Thailand.
You have to realize that you’re not everybody. You have your dreams and desires and nobody can define those for you. It would be pretty weird if people could. Yet that’s what happens to most people. They just do what other people tell them to do or do what’s cool. They never do what they like and that’s why they don’t love themselves in the first place. Those people are always trying to fill a bottomless well and that’s probably the reason why they’re never happy. It requires a lot of energy and they don’t get any reward for it.
Loving Yourself And My Life.
I like fighting. It’s even safe to say that I love it. My family hates it and tries to convince me to get a normal job in a big firm and work my way up. This is where you’ve got a dilemma. Do you take the easy way and make your family happy but yourself unhappy or do you do the opposite? I took the other approach. I chose me and I haven’t regretted it a single minute. Neither should you. Your parents might have given you life but they shouldn’t ruin it. Trying to make other people happy is the most unfulfilling thing you can do. Those people will ask more and more of you and you’ll just turn into a giant pile of misery. People who care about you will be happy if you go after what you want even if they don’t like what you do. I have a friend who doesn’t like fighting but she watched it when I fought and was very happy for me that I won. That’s a true friend.
The Subtle Art Of Loving Thyself: A Story That Might Open Your Eyes.
There was once a girl who lived in a small town in Belgium. She came from a very wealthy family and she found the love of her life in her twenties. Eventually down the line, the man asked her to marry him but he had to get her father’s approval (happened a long time ago). The father said no but also made his daughter chose between her boyfriend or the heritage. She chose for the money, never had a husband again and she regretted the action when she was in her 50’s. She had 7 houses, more money than she could use but she said: “what’s the point of all of this if I’m not happy”.
People Can Be Cruel.
The point is that some people will do cruel things to make you abandon your goals/happiness. One of my family members has told me multiple times that she doesn’t want me to date a girl from another origin. Another family member doesn’t want me to fight and so on. Do you know what all these people have in common? They claim that I am selfish but they are selfish ones. Family member X wants me to stop fighting because of all her colleagues their kids are either lawyers or doctors. I don’t have a degree and want to fight in a cage. That doesn’t sound worth talking about according to her.
Family member Y never left Belgium, has no clue what’s happening in the world and just doesn’t want to learn another language.
The one thing that they have in common is that they tell me what they want but they never ask me what I want. What if I’m happy if I fight? What if the love of my life turns out to be from another country?! Do I have to give up my happiness because they have other ideas about how my life should be?! I don’t think so!
You can only make one person happy so chose you! life is to short to be a people pleaser! I also just don’t want to die with regret! I’ll make myself happy and they should take care of themselves and their happiness. It’s not my problem if they can’t figure it out. The same goes for you. Don’t let others ruin your happiness.
But Alex, Won’t People Judge Me If I Take This Approach?
Yes. Some people will judge you. Others will even start to ignore you. Some will come back after they see how happy you are and realize they made a mistake. Others will never come back. I just wonder if you want people in your life who try to control you and make sure that you’re just miserable. I would choose my happiness over them every day of the week. Just my 2 cents.
The Subtle Art Of Loving Thyself: Your Environment Matters.
Where will a flower grow the most? A toxic soil or a fertile soil? The answer is easy right?! The same goes for you. You can only grow if you’re surrounded by people who support you. You just try to accelerate and brake at the same time when you live in a toxic environment. Or you give in and you’ll be unhappy and depressed. The people in Thailand supported me while that isn’t the case in Belgium. Here people look down on me because I’m achieving all the things that I said I was going to. They just give me more shit now because that doesn’t fit the “you’re a loser who won’t achieve anything because you don’t have a degree.” Not everybody thinks like this of course. But I don’t need 2 hands to count the people who support my goals in Belgium.
So make sure that you’re surrounded by people who want the best for you. They will uplift you and you’ll uplift them. It’s a beautiful experience and people who don’t support you just don’t belong in your life period.
The Subtle Art Of Loving Thyself: Life Is A Struggle But It’s Up To You How You Struggle.
You’re going to struggle in life but it’s up to you how you struggle! I experienced this first hand in Thailand. I struggled in the gym while I was training. Life outside the gym was great and peaceful. I won’t claim that I never felt sad or faced some frustration but it was manageable. I just faced less dumb shit. The dumb shit that I used to face in Belgium all the time. We’re born to face struggle so you’ll invent your struggles if you don’t choose your struggles. For example my week after the fight I had more dumb struggles than usual just because I couldn’t train. So I couldn’t impose struggle on myself. It was a rough week. I was happy to be in the gym again.
The same goes for you. Make sure that you get challenged every single day. You’ll be grateful down the line.
The Subtle Art Of Loving Thyself: Relationships Are Not The Answer.
People who don’t love themselves convince themselves at one point that they can find love by loving another person. That mostly results in a toxic relationship. How can you expect to make another person happy if you can’t make yourself happy? How does that even work? It’s also quite obvious that you’ll fall into a dark hole if you turn single again. Your whole source of happiness is gone so you’re on the hunt once again. This is a never-ending cycle of fake happiness and frustration. It’s also a never-ending cycle of tons of corny quotes on social media.
The Subtle art of loving thyself: Realize It’ll Take Time.
Loving yourself takes time! It’ll take a lot of time if you decide to do it on your own. You probably have a lot of stuff to figure out otherwise you wouldn’t have read this post. But it’s possible and the sooner you realize and implement these things the better. Your life will improve drastically! Trust me on this one!
Well, that’s all I can do. Now it’s up to you. It’s time to master the subtle art of loving thyself.
Check Out My Latest Book!
I released a book on Amazon while I stayed here in Thailand. It’s called “The Year Of The Alpha: 366 Lessons On Adding Meaning To Your Life”.
The book contains 366 life lessons that I learned over 3 years and people who read it loved it. Just look at these reviews.
The Year of the Alpha is filled with vast and important lessons for life. They are key ideas that, once lived, will change your life forever.
Have met Alex in person and he is a free spirit with a hard work ethic! His life tips are no BS and hit straight to the core!
This is a book to call you out when you know you need improvement. It doesn’t bother with trivial things it gets right i the heart of the matter and if you want to change this book is the read for you.
A very clear, grounded, no-nonsense book on living a more healthy and conscious life. An easily digestible introduction for those starting out, and a helpful refresher for those already on the path. You’ll learn from this and you’ll use it.
You can buy the book here. It’s available on Kindle and paperback.
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Till next time
Alex
