Being happy with yourself seems so logical, but it's far from easy. For example, did you know that our blog on self-hatred is one of the most read blogs on our website? That says enough about how difficult it can be to be happy with yourself.
In this blog article, we explore ways in which being happy with yourself is possible.
Happier through self-acceptance
You basically are who you are, and sometimes that's hard to accept. We have never lived in a time when you can change so much about yourself as you can now. We know an awful lot about how our psyche works and what we can do with our thoughts.
In addition, we can use surgical procedures to make you look more like the opposite sex than the biological sex you were born with.
So it has also never been easier to not be happy with yourself, because suddenly you don't "have" to accept that you are, for example, a man or a woman. Or you can suddenly accept that you are in the wrong body. It's just how you look at it.
However, self-acceptance is important to be happy with yourself.
Chinese research (also a modern society) shows that self-acceptance is important for feeling better. Among other things, this manifests itself in being more extroverted and less neurotic behavior[1].
So the beauty is that you don't have to change yourself to be happy with yourself. Accepting yourself is already a great step to being happier with yourself.
If you find this difficult, a hypnotherapist can play a role in improving self-acceptance. In fact, hypnosis combined with cognitive behavioral therapy can affect your schema about how the world works, thoughts about your own thoughts and your emotions[2].
That scheme about how the world works, for example, involves your thoughts about how you are "supposed" to behave then, and if you can't do what you think you "should," it can make you unhappy.
This is a problem for people who are perfectionists , for example.
If the schedule can then be adjusted with beliefs such as:
"I'm allowed to make mistakes, everyone does."
"Good enough is good enough."
And those kinds of thoughts, then this helps adjust your feelings about how you "should" function and you can accept yourself, without having to change yourself.
Being confident and happy
Having low self-esteem doesn't help you be happier either. Accepting yourself unconditionally also helps to improve your self-confidence and to suffer less from narcissism (which is ultimately a symptom of total insecurity)[3].
Improving your self-confidence is often also a step toward being happy with yourself, but to improve your self-confidence, it is also important to have an independent self-image. This means that you don't look or think about what others think of you in order to have a self-image, but you decide what your self-image is.
Being able to create this independent self-image in your mind is often related back to your self-esteem. That you feel like you deserve to be who you are[4].
Hypnotherapy helps to gain an independent self-image and good self-esteem for greater self-confidence. One of the exercises to increase self-esteem is the magic mirror exercise.
This is a visualization in which you are suggested to walk through a beautiful house, then suddenly see yourself in a mirror in that house. Along with this, suggestions are given so that you also see what a beautiful person you are, and that you deserve all the beautiful things that life has to offer, that you are strong, and that you have already survived everything to this day.
This exercise will help you quickly see that you are a valuable person worthy of achieving their personal goals.
Another way is to reduce negative talking to or about yourself. That's where hypnotherapy can play an important role in strengthening the ego[5], and thus making people more confident.
Giving meaning to your life
There are multiple ways you can experience being happy. You can do something fun that makes you feel happy during that fun thing or you can do something that gives your life meaning.
This can even be something difficult.
But when you are involved, you feel happier because you are contributing to the "bigger picture."
If you feel like you're not really doing meaningful things right now, it may help to do something that makes you experience that.
- You can look for another job.
- You can volunteer.
- You can start projects to help other people.
All of this can make you feel happier because you are simply more satisfied with what you contribute.
In doing so, giving meaning to your life also helps you to have more self-acceptance[6]. Things you are not satisfied with then, for example, you can check off against things you are satisfied with.
When life happens to you for a while through illness, redundancy or divorce, for example, it is sometimes difficult to be happy with yourself. After all, your body, job or partner has then let you down. You may then get feelings about apparently not being good enough or something like that.
But that way of thinking doesn't help you become happier. Instead, you can think about what the "lesson" is that your body or the life event wants to give you. Hypnotherapy can help you make that spiritual connection with yourself to give meaning to your life by tracing your deepest thoughts and feelings[7].
This is another way you can bring more spiritual meaning to your life, and that can help you feel happier just the same.
Making others happy
So you can give your life meaning spiritually, or practically by doing something for people. The latter is also consistent with studies indicating that working precisely to make other people happy causes you to become happier with yourself[8]. This even helps you become happier than if other people try to make you happy.
And this can already be done with a small action, such as filling the parking meter for strangers. Something that is quite difficult in the Netherlands, but in the U.S. you have vending machines where this is easier with change.
So you don't even have to interact with other people to get this effect done. As long as you know you are doing something that makes other people happy.
Sometimes it's hard to figure out where your talents lie with which you can help others. Especially if you focus on everything you can't do, rather than everything you can do.
A hypnotherapist can help you focus on what you are good at, and this can even be done by looking at past experiences in a different way[9]. That way, nothing has to stop you from making other people happy too.
One way to make other people happy is to become a hypnosis practitioner 😉. Take it from me that even after more than 20 years of being a hypnotherapist, and training new hypnotherapists, that does not bore me and it makes me happy every day.
If you take the HIN's training courses, you can call yourself a hypnosis practitioner after the third course. It is then even possible in combination with a small 1-day course to have your sessions reimbursed by the health insurance company (or partially reimbursed if you ask for more than the reimbursement is).
That way, you can make an awful lot of people happy and, in the process, be happier with yourself.
Want to learn more about hypnosis and exactly how it works? Then come to a free master class.
Or register directly for one of our events and trainings. Then you'll also get many demonstrations of hypnotherapy sessions to watch.
You can take the training either classically in Assendelft or live online. You then participate live in the classroom lessons via an internet connection. Ideal if you are away for the weekend and still want to follow the lessons.
Or if you don't even live in the Netherlands and would still like to take the training.
Click here to learn more about our training programs.
Have a question about one of our trainings? Schedule a 1-on-1 consultation here.
Sources:
[5] https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Efficacy-of-Hypnotherapy-for-Ego-Strengthening-Vasel-Farhadi/c85ca847b592510f73405bddd441aedda825cba4?utm_source=consensus






