Feeling Sorry For Oneself is a Chronic Disease

All through my life, I’ve felt incessantly sorry for myself.

When I try and remember my childhood, I remember feeling victimized by anyone and everyone. I remember feeling constantly unhappy.

I’ve gone through intense anguish and trauma a few times. I believed the rest of the world was at fault. Whenever I tried to analyze my faults, I would go into “I’m no good” feelings.

Feeling sorry for my life became a habit.

When I started a journey of self-transformation, I journaled regularly. When I looked back at my journal entries, I saw that I had scribbled some thoughts on building fighting spirit.

I decided to make an article out of it.

If you feel sorry for yourself more often than not, this article may help you.

Feeling Sorry for Yourself Saps Your Fighting Spirit

Stories of successful people contain one common denominator.

They overcame struggles by displaying courage. They possessed fighting spirit in large quantities. Fighting spirit, however, doesn’t come easily. If it was so easy, the entire world will have it in large quantities.

Feeling pain is common to all of us. Feeling sorry for ourselves is a choice. We lose some of our fighting spirit when we feel sorry for ourselves.

When we make it a habit to feel sorry for ourselves, we say goodbye to any fighting spirit we have.

Pity Parties Keep Progress Away

Pity parties are addictive.

Taking responsibility for our lives involves work, commitment and inner strength. Feeling sorry for ourselves requires none of the above. Pity parties often include blaming others. Of course, it is their fault, I am flawless. As absurd as this sounds, most of us believe this at some time or the other. And we are so caught up in our stories that we lose sight of reality.

Reality is my drug. The more I have of it, the more power I get and the higher I feel. — 50 Cent.

Here’s the thing — when we feel sorry for ourselves, we direct our energies away from progress.

And when we don’t progress, we are unhappy with the results and feel sorry for ourselves.

A vicious cycle.

Let us break away at once — let us say goodbye to pity parties.

Stay Away from People Who are Unhappy All the Time

Life throws curveballs at everyone.

Everyone goes through pain. Different people have different pain thresholds. Some people, however, want to remain in pain.

Robert Greene’s 48 Laws of Power contains the following law: Avoid the unhappy or the unlucky. Greene has a reason: They will infect you with their unhappiness. Of course, you should be there for your friend who is going through a rough patch and needs your shoulder to lean on.

Greene simply asks you to stay away from the people who make a mountain of every molehill, the people for whom complaning is second nature, the people who can never be happy no matter what life offers them.

When I was a perennial complainer, I didn’t understand why some friends stopped talking to me. I do now. And I agree with their decision.

Now that I’ve recognized the insidious nature of complaining, I am going to stay away from the perennial complainers.

I don’t want to get infected — it is not fun — I’ve been there and I don’t want to go back.

Gratitude is a Potent Antidote

The moment where we experience gratitude, we can’t feel sorry for ourselves.

It’s not possible for a single moment to hold both these thoughts at the same time:

• I am the most unluckiest dude (or dudette) to enter this planet.
• I am so grateful for the blessings in my life.

True, the minute after we practice gratitude, our mind may feed us with “woe is me” stories. But that exact moment when we practice gratitude, we are denying entry to negativity. Repeat this insanely for tens of thousands of times, and our outlook will change.

When our outlook changes, it will appear miraculous.

But it is no miracle.

It is simply a result of our relentless gratitude practice.

Turn Your Life Around — Stop Feeling Sorry for Yourself

Let us resist the urge to feel sorry for ourselves.

Let us work on building positive virtues over time. During this time, our old conditioning will appear time and again — let us try to be mindful of this, but accept the inevitable slack. Replacing old habits with new ones take time — let us give ourselves ample time to cultivate positivity.

Building internal strength is a worthwhile pursuit. When we do so, we will no longer allow ourselves to be tossed around by the vagaries of other people.

We will be in control of our life, and we can choose our responses consciously.

Let us not fritter away our life by feeling sorry for ourselves.

This is a glorious life — let us make the most of it.

Image Credit: Paola Chaaya from Unsplash