Nobody likes me.

What should I do?

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Choose your focus.

If you are starting by believing the underlying assumption that you are bad and that you have to fight to be seen and that you don’t fit in, your brain will naturally looking for proof that this is the case.  When your brain finds supporting evidence for these thoughts/beliefs, it latches onto them – “See?!  I was right.”  But the truth is that if you change your theories or beliefs, you will likely then find that those are true. 

The truth is that the truth is never so black or so white – the truth is that you both belong and you don’t belong.  And that is true for every single person. 

So stop fixating you attention on supporting the hypotheses that you are not valuable, that you are forgettable and that you are discardable. 

If somebody gave you the assignment to go about your day looking for proof that people don’t care about each other or proof that we are ruining our planet or proof that people are destructive and mean, you would be fixated on that throughout your days and, no doubt, find many examples of such badness.  If you did this long enough, you would become convinced that the world was a terrible place and you would start seeing badness everywhere you looked. 

If, on the other hand, the assignment had been to find examples of goodness in the world – to find kindness and peace amongst people, you would start filtering your experiences looking for those examples.  And soon you would become convinced that the world was a beautiful place with plenty of kind loving people. 

You looking for either of these examples doesn’t change their existence.  They both always exist, but you get to choose your focus. 

I am certainly not advocating closing your eyes to the things going on in the world – because if we don’t see them, then we aren’t motivated to try and help solve them.  So I am also not advocating closing your eyes to your own flaws, but you can choose to focus on finding supporting evidence for the theories that you want to prove, the theories that will lead you where you want to go in life. 

The goal is to notice it all and know that you will both belong and not belong – and both are ok.

The reality is always somewhere in the middle – the reality is often that sometimes you will be rejected and sometimes you won’t be. 

I recently read a good analogy of this:

A father told his daughter, “Congrats on your graduation. I bought you a car a while back. I want you to have it now.”
Before I give it to you, take it to a car dealer in the city and sell it. See how much they offer.”

The girl came back to her father and said: “They offered me $10,000 dollars because it looks very old”
Father said: “Ok, now take it to the pawn shop”.

The girl returns to her father and said: “The pawn shop offered $1,000 dollars because it’s a very old car and a lot of work done”.

The father told her to join a passionate car club with experts and show them the car. The girl drove to the passionate car club. She returned to her father after a few hours and told him, “Some people in the club offered me $100,000 dollars because its a rare car that’s in good condition.”

Then the father said, “I wanted to let you know that you are not worth anything if you are not in the right place. If you are not appreciated, do not be angry, that means you are in the wrong place. “Don’t stay in a place where no one sees your value.”

Know your worth and know where you are valued.
A diamond doesn’t shine on the bottom of a cave.

I am not entirely sure who should receive credit for this story, but it’s a powerful one. 

You don’t need to be accepted by everyone to be valuable. 

In fact, you only need to know your own value and be your own self and then see what happens.

You are valuable.  Find the people who value you.