I have very low self-esteem due to being ugly

You are right, people get treated differently. It isn't just physical appearance. People get treated differently for many reasons and almost everyone has at least one thing they can say isn't fair because of how or where or when they were born.

Here is what some subjectively physically unattractive people did with themselves....

[img] http://ballerwives.com/wp-content/uploa ... -klum.jpeg
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Now how did these people end up with attractive spouses? Well, they focused their energy on helping others in some way or another. They provided a service, a product or idea, they became intelligent, productive, charming people that new how to overcome a bit of trivial adversity.

Oh yeah, I can't leave out this guy...

Stephen Hawking...talk about being dealt a slight punch in the gut...yet despite physical appearance and disability he married, twice and had several children.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/12/ ... 221137.jpg

I'm so sorry you feel that way. I'm also a teenager and have definitely experienced low self esteem. I just want to let you know that just because you don't like the way you look, doesn't mean you'll never meet a girl who will want to date you. Looks are important, yes, but they're not everything. If you really want cosmetic surgery, and you're sure it will make you happier, that is an option. Just make sure to think long and hard about it, because it's no small matter. But either way, remember that you can still be successful and have a good life regardless of the way you look. And even though you don't like your appearance, there may be someone out there who does. Also, you're loved! By your family, friends, and God (not sure of your religion, but I hope this encourages you anyway, and please don't be offended if you don't believe in God [he still loves you though ]).

Anyways, I hope this makes you feel better. This is your life and your decision. It might sound really cheesy, but if a girl won't date you because of your looks, forget her! Regardless of your appearance, you can find love, so don't feel completely hopeless, okay? Teenage years are tough, but even when you feel like you've hit rock bottom, there's nowhere to go but up!

Richard@DecisionSkills wrote:You are right, people get treated differently. It isn't just physical appearance. People get treated differently for many reasons and almost everyone has at least one thing they can say isn't fair because of how or where or when they were born.



Now how did these people end up with attractive spouses? Well, they focused their energy on helping others in some way or another. They provided a service, a product or idea, they became intelligent, productive, charming people that new how to overcome a bit of trivial adversity.

The thing about that though is that a lot of guys like that only have beautiful women because of something else they have like riches or fame. I wouldn't want to be with someone like that who only has an attractive partner for something other than myself. If a girl wouldn't be with me when I'm a regular guy, I wouldn't want her when I have money or something else like that.

Michael090293 wrote: The thing about that though is that a lot of guys like that only have beautiful women because of something else they have like riches or fame. I wouldn't want to be with someone like that who only has an attractive partner for something other than myself. If a girl wouldn't be with me when I'm a regular guy, I wouldn't want her when I have money or something else like that.

This is one of the biggest misperceptions, that any attractive woman that is in a relationship with a physically unattractive man, cannot be attracted to him for any other than superficial or shallow reasons. This is simply patently false.

Women are attracted to men with confidence. Seal did not attract Heidi Klum because of his money or fame, she had plenty of that already.

The physically unattractive lead singer or bass guitarist or drummer of a no name band, not famous and not making any money still makes plenty of women weak in the knees. Why? Confidence.

Michael090293 wrote:It's not fair

Life isn't fair in many directions -- one of them being all the GOOD things about you that OTHER PEOPLE lack.

I would encourage you to decide to be happy as yourself and be willing to search within and figure out one thing you're GOOD at that MATTERS TO YOU.

Then work on getting better at that every day in small ways.

You'll gain confidence. You'll grow in self-esteem naturally.

Then you'll become more and more aware of OTHER good things about you, and along the way you will attract people to you.

Focus on growing you.

Hey there!

First, I would just like to say that while your teenage years can be extremely hard, and it is such a transitional time, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Here you are now, learning about yourself, learning about the world, learning about others, and it can be such a confusing time.

Your teenage years are an EXTREMELY small fraction of the rest of your life. You have the power to be and do whatever it is that you want to do. The first thing you have to work on is your mindset. Forget the girls and the popularity and all of that, because guess what, when you look at the big picture, none of that matters. I know that right now it seems like it does, but after high school, and even college, you will be so focused on your life that what happened in high school will be a distant memory.

So, back to your mindset, you are what you believe you are. If you believe you are ugly, others will think that as well. If you think you are not smart, others will think that as well. If you believe that you are good looking and you have a lot to offer someone, then someone will believe it too! You have to be confident in who you are, because you are here for a reason. You have something special to offer the world. A happy life start with YOU; believe in yourself and others will believe in you, and if they don't, then you don't want them in your corner anyway.

There has to be something that you like about yourself. Don't just focus on your looks, but also your personality. If you are confident, care about people, do things for others, be kind and generous, people will gravitate towards that, because at the end of the day, people want to be around a GOOD person, not necessarily an attractive one. AND... most people, once they mature and realize what's important in life, go for the people with the good hearts and good personalities, because that is what lasts forever; looks fade. Someone might not be the hottest person on the planet, but if they have a good personality, they WILL be found to be attractive.

So please, don't be so hard on yourself. Figure out what you do like about yourself and then be confident about it. Hold your head up high, and know that there is only ONE YOU on this planet and you only have ONE LIFE. Learn to love yourself, be confident about who you are, no matter what anyone else says (because there will be haters everywhere no matter what) and a happy life will naturally follow.

I wish you the best and hope that you find the beauty that is within you and the beauty that is within your life!!

Lets tell you something ,the secret to atract girls its not beying beautyful its about having confidence in you .I know a lot of beutyful guys who are alone because are shy and i know a lot of ugly guys who have beatyful girlfriends .Learn how to pass your shyness and low esteem and you will succed .I have faith in you

we are ugly compared to someone else that looks better than we do.
i am a good looking guy that used to think that he is ugly and no one is going to love him just because i was having problems with how i perceive myself due to the fact that i was setting the bar so high.
(Focus on those who are uglier than you)

"Although beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, the feeling of being beautiful exists solely in the mind of the beheld." - Martha Beck

Hello - As Martha Beck puts it, beauty is something you believe. There are people that will find you attractive and as you said, there are people that find you unattractive, but what do you think about yourself? That is what matters. When you begin to believe that you are beautiful/handsome, then YOU ARE!

You don't need people to tell you that.

And people may treat attractive people different than others, but it also depends on your level of self-esteem. People feed off of the energy that you have, if you walk around as if you are ugly, and like you don't deserve better treatment, then people will treat you that way.

I know this to be true because I consider myself to be a beautiful woman, but at one point in my life, my self esteem was shot, and it showed. People treated me like dirt, they barely spoke, and they barely paid attention to me. But now, that I have confidence, I walk into a room and I demand their attention because I know within myself, I am worth being paid attention to. And it's not about my beauty, my body, or anything superficial like that, it's about me - as a person - and the asset I am to this world. Looks fade - but the gift that your existence is to the world, can last forever.

So - believe in yourself, believe that you are attractive (inwardly and outwardly), believe that you are worth good treatment and act accordingly. You can do it!

~royaltywriter~

Well you will always be ugly so there is no point in being depressed about it, its not going to help.

life is hard, for everyone of us do you think the girls that ignore you are perfecly happy with there own look? but there is good news. its not about the looks really, its about the confidence. people with bad looks tend to have low confidence thus getting threated worse than people with high confidence. true you didnt ask to be ugly and you had no choice, but you have the coice to work on your confidence. women dont care about your looks as long as you are confident (the pics from richard are just a few examples) dont worry pal, in 5 years after you worked on your confidence like crazy you will think back and laugh at the worries you had.

Two main things contribute to self-confidence: self-efficacy and self-esteem.

We gain a sense of self-efficacy when we see ourselves (and others similar to ourselves) mastering skills and achieving goals that matter in those skill areas. This is the confidence that, if we learn and work hard in a particular area, we'll succeed; and it's this type of confidence that leads people to accept difficult challenges, and persist in the face of setbacks.

This overlaps with the idea of self-esteem, which is a more general sense that we can cope with what's going on in our lives, and that we have a right to be happy. Partly, this comes from a feeling that the people around us approve of us, which we may or may not be able to control. However, it also comes from the sense that we are behaving virtuously, that we're competent at what we do, and that we can compete successfully when we put our minds to it.

Some people believe that self-confidence can be built with affirmations and positive thinking. We believe that there's some truth in this, but that it's just as important to build self-confidence by setting and achieving goals – thereby building competence. Without this underlying competence, you don't have self-confidence: you have shallow over-confidence, with all of the issues, upset and failure that this brings.

How we see ourselves is a very telling picture of what people around us see. If we project a lack of confidence, it's often glaring. It can also be misinterpreted as attitude or some other form of social discourse that makes people feel uncomfortable around us. And if you allow yourself to embrace these ideas, you are essentially torpedoing your own ability to move forward.

I grew up in the 70's and 80's. I was graduating high school and getting into college when the MTV age was born. Talk about peer pressure. Sheesh! The whole world was plugged into music videos 24/7. Paul Stanley dancing about singing " Heavens on Fire". Bon Jovi pledging, " I'll be there for you" while some girl in the crowd drops her face in her hands crying. Motley Crue singing, " Girls, girls, girls" while their female fans throw themselves at them in glee. Aerosmith's Steven Tyler laying down on stage singing " Love in an Elevator". Oh and three quarters of all these clowns walking around with a potato in their pants (literally). And lets not forget the resident "babe" to offer services to all these idiots but Madonna singing, " Like a virgin." Yeah... NO PRESSURE.

In the 80's it was hard to know if you were supposed to be a hopeless romantic or a male whore. Try growing up with those social messages and no sense of identity and see what mishaps you get yourself into. I promise I could have everyone in this forum on their backs crying from laughter. One day I might have to share some stories just to brighten the mood. I think that can provide it's own medicinal merits if I can demonstrate how foolish we look trying to follow what we perceive as the "popular crowd". So let's examine these ideas you have about "looks".

I had two stages of my life that reflected a great deal of what I thought about myself. My first stage was as a young person in middle school and high school, I never really took any serious investment in my appearance. I had what one might call a bowl style hair cut (for the 70's) and that never really changed once I got into high school because I made no investment in myself. I didn't think I was being noticed because I didn't want to notice myself. I over-interpreted every glance as a personal judgement on myself. That was very easy to do because subconsciously I went looking for the "shame" I thought I carried naturally. So I saw it in everyone around me.

If I saw people laughing, I assumed they were laughing at me. If I saw people not looking at me, I assumed they were willfully ignoring me. And if I found a girl I did like, I didn't try to be a person and just get to know her. I went home and put on music and romanticized the ideal version of me being with them which only further buried me in my quiet desperation. I can't tell you how many life times and families I created with some of these people. I think I already had three kids with each of these girls in my head before I ever told these people my name. That was my desperation crying out.

And when I would sheepishly try to communicate with them like they were a Goddess, they would react to me in a kind of removed way (because I didn't understand my behavior was off, not how I looked). So I would be crushed by my own diagnosis of the problem. " Oh it's me again. They don't like ME. It's the way I look." So every dream I created in my imagination was destroyed. So I sought out my favorite artists to help me embrace my depression. Eric Carmen saying, " Never gonna fall in love again". Gilbert O'Sullivan reminded me, " Alone again, naturally." And Barry Manilow cried in my ears, " I can't smile without you." How the hell I made it out of that emotional trap is a damn near miracle.

So as much as you have convinced yourself you are no good, you MUST KNOW you have worked hard to get yourself there. People don't put you there, you do. Sure there are people who will say bad things and unkind things because they are cowards and they see someone in front of them who is vulnerable, so they prey on their insecurities to watch them squirm. Those kinds of people are the real losers in life and you need to not acknowledge or otherwise credit their remarks.

The only way you turn this ship around is to painfully stand in that mirror and say, " F*ck it. I AM worth it." That became my second stage. It's hard. You feel embarrassed after all the years you've spent shaming yourself. But the way you conquer that is by making a plan to invest in YOURSELF. Quit looking around and start looking INSIDE. Want a certain body type? Go work your rear off and reach that goal. It's work for anyone who is fit, so do the work. Want a certain hairstyle? Go get the style you want. Want to wear certain clothes that YOU like? Go get those clothes and enjoy them. But the number one rule through all of this? You do these things because YOU want to do them. Don't do it because you need a reaction from someone. Do it because you need a reaction from yourself!

You ARE worth it! And once you develop confidence you'll find out that is ten fold more attractive than anything you can wear or do to yourself physically. A confident person is someone everyone likes to be around. If you take the time to invest in yourself you start creating short term goals that offer demonstrated ability for yourself. As you achieve each one, you find out it's what YOU think that matters, not what you guess everyone else thinks. Define yourself and through that you WILL find happiness and likely company of those you want to be around because you'll be choosing them instead of you waiting around for someone to choose you. Quit dreaming about things and get to work on making those dreams a reality. I'm living proof. I kicked Eric Carmen out of my musical playbook decades ago.