Perhaps one of the greatest regrets one can have is this: finding yourself in old age, staring up at the ceiling from your bed, unable to sleep. You think about the life you’ve lived — the one life you have — and realized you were too scared to live for yourself. You had always been living for another person, other people.
The biggest issue surrounding the concept of not living for yourself is that you might not even realize you’re doing it. You could have been so conditioned to devalue your own wants and uphold those of others that you considered it normal.
This article is here to set the record straight. If you feel like you’ve been living for other people, we’re here to tell you how to start living for yourself.
Diagnosing Your Life
How can you tell who or what you live for? Before we continue, you need to run a little diagnostic on your life.
You have to put yourself in the mindset where you can be 100% honest with yourself. You can’t be afraid of the truth or shy away from the discomfort of changing your view of yourself.
You have to be open with yourself, and you have to be willing to change if you don’t like the result. If you find you’re not living for yourself, you might feel inclined to start making changes automatically.
Here’s how to run a diagnostic evaluation of your life all by yourself.
Check Your Overall Mood
Do you smile and laugh a lot? Do you get much enjoyment out of your life, the friends you have, or the profession you do?
If you find it hard to smile or laugh, that’s a big indicator that something is mentally blocking you. You might not have depression, but you could have something tugging down your mood that makes a laugh bubbling out less likely. This tugging feeling could be the unconscious unhappiness of not living for yourself.
How often do you get angry? Do you lash out at others easily, or does it take a lot to rile you up?
Those who are unhappy will find an outlet on which to release their pent up frustration. This could be yelling at the waiter when they get an order wrong (mistakes happen) or getting engulfed in overwhelming rage when you’re cut off in traffic (road rage is common, but sometimes an enraged response can not be normal).
Anger is a powerful emotion. It can occur quickly and all at once, like a match quickly lighting ablaze a cloth dipped in alcohol. That type of rage happens in situations we can’t control.
But the deeper, more dangerous rage happens when we add tinder to our anger every day, from thoughts of not being good enough, from the knowledge that we’re making a mistake every day in how we run our lives. If you experience a slow-burn of frustration every day, you need to figure out why.
Do you fall into periods of melancholy? Are your thoughts feel too heavy to handle? Do you find yourself crying for no apparent reason?
Sadness, like rage, is another emotion we find difficult to ignore — especially if that sadness leads us to tears.
Crying is a visceral response to our internal affairs. It’s meant to be social, a signal to other humans in our group that something is wrong, but it can make us feel ashamed and embarrassed to cry in front of others, so we isolate our tears and thus the problems that caused them.
Sadness can be the response to realizing you’re wasting your life, that you lack the assertiveness and confidence to live for yourself. Living for other people hurts and comes from a place of low self-esteem. Of course, that realization would make you feel a little heavy.
Don’t ignore your emotions — especially when they get so strong that you can’t ignore them at times, as per anger and sadness. Your subconscious is trying to tell you something, and the only language it has is emotion.
Assess Your Personality
Those who don’t live for themselves often don’t do so intentionally. It’s rather rare that someone would say to themself, “Ya know, today I’m going to give up my autonomy to make my own decisions. I’m going to be a pack animal and let people make my choices for me instead!” Yeah, that never happens, but that’s still the result of not living for yourself.
Be honest with yourself and see if you have the type of personality that makes you want to conform to other people’s expectations and not your own.
Some personality traits include:
- Passivity. You don’t stick up for what you want, so you end up doing what other people want. You don’t view your wants and desires as important, and instead, fulfill the needs of others. You could be a resentful or angry person as a result of continuously failing to uphold your own autonomy.
- A compulsive need to conform. You strongly dislike it when someone looks at you weirdly. You want people’s approval from their first glance. You don’t like ruffling feathers or making waves.You want the approval of those around you in the form of social relationships and the sense that you are a desired member among them — even if these aren’t the type of people who make you happy.
- Anxiety. Because you’re so concerned about what others think about you, you can’t let your mind relax. You constantly worry about not being enough, that what you’ve done was wrong, and now you’ve lost social standing among your peers. You fear mistakes. If you make one, you’ll fixate on it for far too long as a form of punishment.
- Perfectionism. The standard you set for yourself to feel accomplished can be considered way too high. You can’t make a mistake ever. You have to achieve success constantly. You have to ensure you have the approval of those around you at all times. You obsess overreaching your own unrealistic standards.
- Being judgmental. Because you’re so concerned about what other people think about you, you’re constantly in everyone else’s business. You’ll think to yourself how stupid the man’s coat on the other side of the street looks. You’ll mentally chastise friends who say something a little redundant or not useful.You can be a mean girl in your head because you impart the judgment you place on yourself onto others.
- You’re conflict avoidant. You’d rather sweep issues under the rug than deal with them outright. You’ll do anything to avoid discussing a problem because problems fundamentally scare you. Dealing with issues out in the open reminds you that you have unresolved issues in your own life that you can’t bring yourself to discuss.
Of course, not everyone who lives for other people will match this profile. But we’ve pulled out a general trend among those who can’t live for themselves.
These people can’t fulfill themselves from their own approval. This means they don’t have confidence, as confidence is the knowledge that you are great because of all the great things you’ve done for yourself.
Since these people lack confidence, they need to absorb it from other places — other people. Lacking confidence also tends to come with low self-esteem, which is how you value yourself. How you value yourself is tied to the approval of other people, which constantly changes depending on circumstances.
This leads people who can’t live for themselves to feel erratic and unbalanced because they don’t have confidence and high self-esteem at their core. They’re filled with vague and fluid approval from others instead.
And from these core issues lead to other personality issues, such as anxiety and being judgmental, passivity, and the need to conform. Lacking self-esteem and confidence is the biggest issue that no drug can fix — but it has a cascading impact on our lives.
Notice How You Judge Others
We mentioned this briefly, but we felt it necessary to talk more about in-depth.
Being judgmental comes from low confidence and a lack of self-esteem. Because you constantly worry about what others think about you, you place that same pressure onto other people — even if other people are jolly and good and don’t care about your opinion at all.
If you notice that you’re a judgmental person — chastising people for their clothes or what they say or how they look — ponder what’s at the core of that. Chances are, it’s a deep lack of completion in yourself, and so you feel better about yourself by mentally abusing others.
Making the Necessary Changes
As you can see, it’s not fun to live for other people. Your personality tends to turn resentful and bitter, judging people for their choices when you fundamentally can’t live by your own. Living for other people involves habits that will ultimately waste your life.
If you suspect that you live for other people and not yourself, then congratulations! That’s the first step in the arduous journey to turning your life around. You’re entrenched in a series of habits, ruts, jobs, relationships, and other choices that will be hard to change, but you don’t have to quit the life you have altogether. You just need to evolve it.
Your mindset will be the strongest asset you have while you change your life. You have to remember why you’re disrupting your routine, as it will be difficult to be more assertive and to start doing what you want if you’re not used to it.
You have to remind yourself that you’re starting to live for you, no one else. You’re taking your life back. You’re living so that you won’t have regrets when you’re older. If you need to place reminders of these notions where you’ll consistently see it, then so be it. You have to keep your eye on the prize — the life you want to live.
How to Start Living For Yourself
Start Building Confidence
Confidence is perhaps the only superpower a human can get without genetic modification or radioactive spiders. Confidence is what allows someone to magnetize the attention in a room toward themselves. It’s what lets someone talk to the cute person they see at a bar, or to ask their job for a pay raise.
When you don’t have confidence, the world seems stacked against you. The reason you’re not happy is because of external circumstances. Confidence is the missing link to give you the autonomy you want over your life, improve your relationships, and seek the experiences you want.
That’s why you need to work every day toward improving your confidence. It will be what allows you to stop living for others. Once you have confidence, you won’t feel the need to live for anyone other than yourself.
Here are some tips to help boost your confidence:
- Write down your accomplishments. It’s like a life resume. With a sheet of paper and pen, jot down all the things that made you go, “Wow, I really did that!” It could be winning an award, graduating college, landing your dream job, anything that made you feel proud of yourself. Exhaust the list as much as you can.When you’re done with the list of accomplishments, jot down some personality traits you like about yourself as well. You could write stuff like, “I’m ambitious,” “I’m a loyal friend,” “I care deeply about those I love.” These are like the skills that are included at the bottom of every resume.
Once you feel like you can’t add anything else to the list, take stock of what you have. You can look back on what you’ve done and feel good about yourself. You did all that. You’re a good person, even when some days you don’t feel like it.
With this sheet of paper, you can remind yourself as often as necessary that you’ve done remarkable things with your life, and with a little extra motivation, you can add even better things.
- Forbid negative self-talk. If you find yourself saying statements to yourself that you would never say to someone else, it’s time to re-evaluate your relationship with yourself.Negative self-talk comes from the belief that you’re worth whatever negative statements you’re saying about yourself, which instantly comes from a point of low self-esteem. Negative self-talk means you’re not worthy of anything better, which is not true.
So before you call yourself horrible things for running a few minutes late or whatever other mistakes you think you did, challenge those thoughts. Remind yourself you’re better than those negative statements and that you’re worth more. You deserve as much forgiveness, love, and respect as you would give another person.
- Move your body. Exercise is an excellent way to start building confidence. When you exercise, you push yourself to reach a marker, whether it’s running a mile, doing 15 reps of 75-pound weights, or hitting that 100th push up.You have to push yourself to succeed, and doing so automatically gives you a boost in confidence. The endorphins and getting into better physical shape are also plusses.
Practice Assertiveness
Living for other people also means that you don’t have the ability to assert yourself.
Let’s deconstruct what assertiveness means for a second. Assertiveness is the ability to name what you want then enact the necessary actions to obtain it.
Assertiveness would be reiterating to your boss that you can’t work Friday evenings because you value time with your partner — even though your partner repeatedly asks you to work Fridays.
You’re asserting your boundaries to defend what’s important to you at the cost of looking selfish. You’re not since you work like a dog every other day of the week. But Friday nights are important to you, and so you won’t let them go.
When we live for other people, though, we lack the ability to assert our wants because we don’t see our wants as above the wants of other people. Since our wants are inherently inferior, in our eyes, we have no need to fight for them. Following other people’s wants is fulfilling to those with fractured self-confidence.
For example, let’s say you don’t like wearing black. It’s depressing, you think, and you’d rather wear something more vibrant and technicolor. But your friend group only wears dark, muted colors. You stand out, so you decide to pick up some black shirts and pants as well. Though you feel like you’re attending your assertiveness’ funeral every day, you like that you match your friends.
An assertive person would say, “No, I hate black. I don’t care if you like it, I don’t, so I’m not going to wear it.” The assertive person asserts what they want to wear, do, and be. It doesn’t mean being a jerk about everything and always getting your way. You can compromise when you’re assertive; it just means you won’t diminish your wants or needs for anyone else’s.
Therefore, to start living for yourself, you need to start valuing what you want. Then, you need to start defending it. Otherwise, you’ll see your values as inferior to those of the people around you, and you’ll systematically work less for what you want.
Forgive Strangers for Being Themselves
That’s a fancy way of telling you to stop judging people.
The reason we judge people is one part lack of self-acceptance, one part intolerance to your standards of how people should be. As a result, you judge people for failing to live up to your standards.
When you forgive strangers for being different and themselves, you feel less of a need to judge them. You just let people be without an unnecessary comment from you.
And once you stop judging other people, you’ll notice that you’ll lighten up on yourself as well. You judged others because you projected your lack of self-acceptance onto others. As a result, you couldn’t accept them.
Wouldn’t you know, accepting others for who they are means you’ll start to do the same for yourself? Maybe you’ll start to see yourself as an alright — maybe even a great — person whose quirks shouldn’t be looked down upon, degraded, or sought to change.
You are who you are, and you can start to express that person without fear of judgment from others. Your opinion of yourself is all that matters.
When you stop judging others, you’ll notice a boost in your own confidence that manifests into caring less about what other people think. Not only will your own mental health improve, but you’ll attract less judgmental people into your life as well.
Stop Waiting for Happiness to Come to You
We often think that happiness will be an event in our life that fixes everything.
If only I could win the lottery
If only I could get a girlfriend/boyfriend who accepts me for who I am…
If only I had more money in the bank
If only I had better friends
If only I had a nicer car/phone/house/computer
If only I traveled more and met cooler people
Then I’ll be happy.
The thing, though, is that you could get all the things above and still be unhappy. You could find a person who loves you and accepts you for who you are, but they won’t fix you. You could buy everything in a Best Buy and still feel the initial pleasure of your purchases decay into your usual numbness.
That’s why you have to stop waiting for happiness to come to you. No one event in your life can make you happy. Happiness is the emergent property of everything going right in your life.
So to get happiness, you have to fix up your mindset, the way you live, the way you hold yourself, change what you eat and how much you exercise, and reassess your relationships to be more positive. All of these are things you can control and twist so that you feel happier as a result of everything working in your favor.
It’s when we try to find happiness through external means that we fall into a vicious cycle of unhappiness. Let’s say you strive for your boss to tell you that you did a good job. You bust your butt to be the best, use up your weekends working so that you can be the best. Your relationships and physical health take a toll because you’re working so much.
After weeks, your work pays off. You finally get a vaguely positive comment from your boss that sets you over the moon. You’re glowing for the rest of the day and the day after. But on the third day, you realize that nothing has changed. Your boss is still hard to please and likely won’t express approval unless you bust your butt as you did in the past week.
So you do it again, but it feels emptier. You feel like you’re on a hamster wheel going nowhere, wasting energy on something that, yes, feels good and validates you, but doesn’t fix the core problem that you lack self-esteem and seek it from other sources. That’s why you feel like you’re on a hamster wheel.
Happiness comes from surrounding yourself with positive mindsets, relationships, and ambition. It’s both internal and external, but it’s all within your control. If you lack the confidence and assertiveness to make the necessary changes for your own happiness, though, then, of course, you’ll be too afraid to do anything else but call crumbs of happiness from other folks a meal.
Stop Overthinking
Listen. No matter what, you’ll be okay.
If you wear a new dress that your friends make snide comments about, if you get negative feedback from your book manuscript, if you get rejected when you ask a cute person out on a date, you’ll be okay.
You’ll be okay no matter what outcome you’re worried about. Unless it involves something physically dangerous (which in modern society it probably isn’t), you’ll survive to the end of the night with no harm done to your body. You’ll survive. It’s okay.
So stop overthinking about all the ways things could go wrong. Instead, focus on how they could work in your favor. If you can’t stop negative thoughts altogether, at least balance out the negative thoughts with equally positive ones. That way, you avoid inundating yourself with negative overthinking.
Also, stop analyzing everything you did in the past. No one remembers it but you. Everyone’s worried about their own mistakes to care about what you did. That embarrassing moment in middle school doesn’t exist anywhere except in your mind, and it only brings you pain. What’s the point in keeping it?
Let it go and move on with your life so that you can become who you were meant to be. Let go of all the thoughts that don’t improve your mindset, confidence, or perception of life. It’s a high standard to hold, but it’s better than letting your copious thoughts act like lead weights tied to your ankles.
Living for yourself is perhaps the hardest thing we can do for ourselves. There’s so much pressure to be someone else, to be an ideal form of something that takes way too much work to achieve. Instead, follow your own passions and drive, and you’ll see where you need to put your energy.