How to Deal With Personal Dissatisfaction

Not loving ourselves can sap motivation we need to make changes we desire

If we can pause, recognize, and greet our feelings of personal dissatisfaction with kindness, they can help us grow. (Dmytro Vietrov/Shutterstock)

I have personal dissatisfactions, and I'd be willing to bet everyone reading this does, too. The more I talk to people about their struggles, the more I realize that we all have some sense of dissatisfaction with ourselves.

We constantly have a feeling that we should be better, more productive, more mindful, and so on.

We may doubt ourselves when we have to speak in a group and wonder if we’re good enough to contribute. Or maybe we are unhappy with certain aspects of ourselves, such as our bodies, the way our faces look, the ways we procrastinate, or get angry, or lose patience as a partner or parent.

In the end, this dissatisfaction spurs us to think we need to improve.

This is a constant condition, and even if we receive a compliment from someone, many of us find a way to undercut it in our minds because we think we’re not good enough for that compliment.

It affects our lives in so many ways: We might not be good at making friends, speaking in public, finding a partner, doing the work we’re passionate about, or finding contentment with ourselves and our lives.

And we don’t like feeling this way, so we run. We find distraction and comfort in things such as food, or alcohol, or shopping. We lash out at other people when we’re feeling defensive about ourselves. It’s at the heart of so many of our problems.

So how do we deal with this underlying problem? The answer is profoundly simple, yet not easy to carry out.

Before I go into dealing with the problem, we should discuss something first: the idea that we need to be dissatisfied with ourselves to make life improvements.

Unhappiness With Self as a Motivator

I used to think, as many people do, that if we’re unhappy with ourselves, we‘ll be driven to do better. And if we were all of a sudden content with ourselves, we’d stop doing anything.

I no longer believe this. I do think we’re often driven to make improvements because we’re dissatisfied with ourselves, and that’s not a bad thing. We have hope for something better.

But consider the following:

When we are unhappy with ourselves, it’s hard to be happy when we do something good. We’re still dissatisfied. So doing something good, then, isn’t the reward it could be.

We also have habits of running from this bad feeling about ourselves, so procrastination and distraction become the default mode, and this gets in the way of our efforts. In fact, we'll never solve the problems of distraction and procrastination until we can learn to deal with this problem of unhappiness with self.

Unhappiness with self can get in the way of connecting with others (because we think we’re not good enough, and so can feel anxiety about meeting others). We can’t solve this, no matter how much we want to improve, until we address the underlying issue.

Even when we make an improvement, the feeling of dissatisfaction with self doesn’t go away. So we try to improve some more, and it still doesn’t go away. In my experience, it never does, until you’re ready to face it head-on.

During this period of self-improvement driven by dissatisfaction, we don’t love ourselves, which is a sad thing.

So is it possible to get things done and make improvements without feeling dissatisfaction with self? I’ve discovered that the answer is a definite “yes.”

You can exercise and eat healthy foods not because you dislike your body and want to make it better, but because you love yourself and want to inspire others. You can do work out of love for the people it will help. You can declutter, get out of debt, read more, and meditate not because you’re dissatisfied with yourself, but because you love yourself and others.

In fact, I would argue that you’re more likely to do all of those things if you love yourself and less likely if you dislike yourself.

Dealing With Dissatisfaction

What can we do about our continual dissatisfaction with ourselves? How do we deal with self-doubt, feeling like we’re not good enough, or unhappiness with certain parts of ourselves?

It turns out that these feelings are perfect opportunities to learn about and become friends with ourselves.

Here’s how:

1. Each time you have these feelings, pause and just notice them.
2. Turn toward the feeling, seeing how it feels in your body. Be curious about how it feels, physically.
3. Stay with it. Instead of rejecting it, try opening up to it and accepting it.
4. Open yourself up to the pain of this feeling and see it as a path to opening up your heart. In this way, getting in touch with the pain is a liberating act.
5. See this difficult feeling as a sign of a good heart, one that is soft, tender, and loving. You wouldn’t care about being a good person, or a “good enough” person, if you didn’t have a good heart. There is a basic goodness beneath all of our difficulties, and we just need to stay and notice this goodness.
6. Smile at yourself, and cultivate an unconditional friendliness to all that you see.

Now, I’m not claiming that this is an easy method, nor that it will cure our difficulties in one fell swoop. But it can start to form a trusting relationship with yourself, which can make an amazing difference.

I recommend that you practice this each time you notice self-criticism, self-doubt, unhappiness with yourself, or harshness toward what you see in yourself. It only has to take a minute, as you face what you feel and stay with it, with unconditional kindness.

If you really want to focus on this powerful change, reflect on it once a day by journaling at the end of the day, reviewing how you did and what you can do to remember to practice.

In the end, I think you‘ll find that love is a more powerful motivator than unhappiness with yourself. And I hope you’ll find a friendship with yourself that will radiate out into your relationships with everyone else you know and meet.

Leo Babauta is the author of six books; the writer of “Zen Habits,” a blog with more than 2 million subscribers; and the creator of several online programs to help you master your habits. Visit ZenHabits.net