5 Ways To Hurt Ourselves Without Realizing It

Taking care of oneself implies, above all, knowing how to respect and love ourselves without conditions, whether we are handsome or ugly, sad or happy, whether we succeed or fail. Something that a priori seems easy to do, actually becomes a very difficult task if we take into account the education received or the number of messages that advertising, cinema or music have sold us and with which in some way, By transforming them into demands, we hurt ourselves.

It is as if one were “selfish”, “proud” or “conceited” for loving oneself, for congratulating oneself from time to time or patting oneself on the back. “Be humble and modest”, they have always told us or “don’t believe it, you lose everything”.

If not, the result is usually that we put our interests and needs aside, we put them in the background and, therefore, we stop taking care of ourselves. Most of the time because of that need to be approved by others or because of the extreme desire to be perfect and not make mistakes in the eyes of others.

You take care of yourself?

Perhaps you have felt identified with the introduction of the article and you have already realized that you do not take care of yourself emotionally and that sometimes and as a consequence you hurt yourself. However, I recommend that you analyze these points and reflect on whether you need to love yourself a little more.

You hurt yourself if …

You hurt yourself if you demand to be perfect

Demanding yourself to be perfect is an unrealistic goal, as we can never achieve it, no matter how hard we try. Human beings are continually making mistakes and it is thanks to them that we learn and improve, but we will never be infallible in anything.

If you think you can achieve perfection, you will waste too much energy. The only thing you will do is get frustrated when things go wrong and in the end you will end up abandoning your goals, precisely because with them you cannot meet your expectations.

You hurt yourself if you don’t indulge yourself

If you do not give yourself gifts from time to time, do not allow yourself breaks or vacations or do not forgive yourself if you have not acted as “you should” you are clearly neglecting yourself. It is all very well to be responsible and try to meet our objectives or goals, but it is extremely important to reward yourself from time to time for doing so.

You hurt yourself if you say “yes” when you really mean “no”

In this case, you give more importance to the needs of others than your own and this is a total lack of respect for yourself. You can do favors from time to time, as long as they agree with our personal principles and criteria, but we are not obliged to say yes to everything at all.

There is no excuse, be it a family member, friend or acquaintance, if we do not want to do something we do not have to do it and, if the other person takes it badly, it will be their problem and not ours.

You hurt yourself if you allow yourself to be carried away by the opinions of others

You think that others have the absolute truth of things and that your opinion is not so valuable … why?

Each person builds their reality based on what they have heard out there or how they have been educated, that does not mean that everything they think is real. Therefore, the healthy thing is to listen to the opinions of the people, but without it penetrating us in an absolute and dominant way.

You hurt yourself if you don’t allow yourself to live in the present

Your mind is a traveler and it is always in the past or in the future, it does not rest and comes to the present. Therefore, you do not enjoy what you have in hand at this very moment, you miss it and this is also neglecting yourself.

If you regret too much about what happened and you could not solve or worry excessively about what may come but has not yet arrived, you are not living in the here and now and you are hurting yourself.

How do you take care of yourself?

If after analyzing the five points, you have realized that you do not take enough care of yourself, it is time to start doing it. Obviously, you have to learn to self-respect and for this you have to start doing the opposite of what is exposed in those five points.

If you are very demanding of yourself and you think you have to be perfect whatever you do, it is convenient that you change the requirement for a preference and that you accept yourself regardless of your results.

If you only give and never receive anything from yourself, start rewarding yourself for every achievement, even a small one. Take that well-deserved vacation or buy yourself that dress that you like so much. Learn to say no, without excuses, firmly and assertively, without fear of the other’s reaction. If he is a good friend, he will understand.

Remember that the opinions of others are those of others. They will become yours if you allow it. Everyone has the right to think, say and express what they want, but you also have the right to believe what you want. Be guided by your own intuition.

Make an effort to bring your mind back to the present when you notice that it is gone. To do this, look around you, describe what you see, what you hear or what you feel. Enjoy what you are living and think that what happened can no longer be solved and what will come, we’ll see.