The 7 Most Unappealing Qualities In People

All credit goes to RYAN O’CONNELL from Thought Catalog. Thank you for this unfaltering wisdom.

1. Faux insecurity

“Oh my god, I am SO fat and ugly! Here are ten selfies of me on Instagram looking so hideous. Aren’t I sick looking? Here, let me take another picture of myself and post it on the Internet, just so everybody knows how gross I am!” Yeah, hi, whoever does this is fucking annoying. First of all, stop criticizing your appearance in front of other people because it makes them comfortable and it makes YOU look like you’re fishing for compliments. Secondly, you can’t put down your physical appearance and then post 10,000 selfies on Facebook. It doesn’t work that way. Everybody knows that if you really don’t like the way you look, you don’t take pictures of yourself or let anyone else do it either. In the past, you better BELIEVE I’ve made people de-tag unflattering photos of me on Facebook. You’re just a bad fucking friend if you do that. It ain’t right. So passive aggressive!

2. Actual insecurity

Still annoying, less terrible though. It shouldn’t be your friend’s job to prop you up every single day. Nobody likes a Debbie Downer. Find a way to love yourself ASAP before everyone around you decides to jump off a bridge.

3. Being competitive

Oh really? You actually care who wins this game of Scrabble? Like, you’re going to get legitimately upset if you don’t win? Great. You’re a super fantastic person to be around. Competitive people are the worst for so many reasons but one of the major ones is that they’re always trying to one-up their friends. “Oh, you got a boyfriend? Well, last night, I went on two dates with two different people and at the end of it, they both wanted to be my boyfriend so…” Ugh, they’re terrible. Like, why are you so threatened by my good news? Why does it scare you when I’m doing well, honey?

4. Name-dropping

Don’t speak (by No Doubt). I know you’re looking for a way to transition into a story about the one time you met Chloe Sevigny but please don’t. Because there is no seamless transition. You’re going to look like a name-dropper no matter how you slice it and name-droppers are TERRIBLE. Plus, everybody has seen or met Chloe Sevigny at one point in their lives sooo bye. (JK?)

5. Entitlement

Newsflash honey: The world doesn’t owe you shit. If you go into this life with a chip on your shoulder, you’re going to be constantly disappointed. And you’re going to complain and complain about your shitty life without ever doing anything about it. Not chic.

6. Holier-than-thou attitude

Oh really, you don’t do drugs or drink or turn in your work late or make mistakes or date the wrong people? Awesome. You’re a blast. And you’re also full of shit. Everyone is fucked up in their own little ways. Stop pretending you’re exception to the rule. There is only one perfect human being in the history of life and her name is Jennifer Lawrence.

7. A Know-It-All

In school, know-it-all’s would get wedgies in the hallway and I think those rules should still apply in adult life. There’s nothing more unattractive than a person who tries to make others feel inadequate and stupid. It’s like, “Nah, boo. You can’t make me feel dumb. I’m not 16 years old anymore. I now know that you’re just insecure and THAT’S sad.” Like, I’m not going to feel bad that I don’t know about this obscure indie band from the ’80s. Why should I?

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

Surrender to the fact that life is not fair.

Life is not fair, it never will be, and was never intended to be.
The sooner we surrender to that fact, the sooner we can realize that the feeling of self pity is useless. It is a waste of our mental strength, mental capacity, and time. The moment we engrain into our minds that life is not fair, that is when we can move past the complaining, and get to addressing the problem. We have no control over what hand we are dealt, the only thing we can do is strategize on how to make the best out of the cards that we are given.

Importance test

One simple test to better avoid overreacting and blowing situations out of proportion: Will this matter in one year?

Your ground…to stand or not to stand?

When arguments and disagreements occur, the one thing we fight for more than anything is our position. We try to stand our ground and defend our stance – and whether we succeed or not in this feat takes precedence over our happiness. When you win a fight or establish validity in your thinking, does that feeling ever match what you anticipated? Do you even think about how you want to ultimately want to feel from the discussion, or are you arguing for the sake of arguing?

More times than not, we start to believe that our positions are more important than our happiness. And sometimes we even get those two concepts mixed up, thinking that one results in the other. We are mislead in that assumption. When you let go and allow the other person to be right, you get to experience inner peace of releasing your built up anger, and the other person gets to experience the joy of being right.

Long term goals are somewhat detrimental.

No matter how hard you try, you will never discover what your future self will truly want or be passionate about. Having long term goals might close your mind and muddle your vision of new interests and passions.

(a) When you set a distant goal, you plan accordingly and strive towards achieving that objective.
(b) As you progress on a decided path, the opportunity cost of leaving increases with every step forward. (given that the step forward is progress towards achieving your set goal)
(c) As opportunity cost increases, the willingness to deviate from the path decreases.
(d) To better recognize what you want in life, you have to explore and keep your mind open to what the world has to offer.
(e) A lessened willingness to deviate from a set course decreases the amount of exploration and/or amount of open-mindedness.

Consequently from (d) and (e), setting a long term goal could interfere with the ability to identify your true and ultimate passions and desires.

You look to the future if you aren’t happy with the present.

If you are happy and love your present life, you will confidently know that you will be equally as delighted (if not more) with where you end up; given that you continue to try your best. The only time we look to the future and develop anxiety about getting to where we want to go…is when we feel as if our currently track won’t take us to our destination.

Patience is essential for inner peace

I cannot stress enough how important patience is. The more patient you are, the more accepting you become of what is, and the less insistant you are of what should be. Patience is being able to take a step back and realize when something is causing a mental snowball. To more easily execute this task, try to empathize and identify true intention. If someone cuts you off on the freeway, assume that he is having a rough day and briefly forgot to look. If someone is taking a long time to bring out your food at a restaurant, your waiter could possibly be new to the job.

Patience is a form of love – both to yourself, and to others.

Detrimental effect of being “right”

Which would you rather be, happy or right?
In hindsight, I can say that there is little correlation between the two – and if there were to be any correlation at all, I believe it to be negative.

Many times, when we assert our opinions and views in the hopes of proving someone wrong, we ultimately damage ourselves. This desire to be right causes both parties to become increasingly more defensive, and often results in bitterness and alienation.

When I get corrected by someone, I do not respond with, “Golly gee willikers! Thank you for proving to me that you are right and that I am wrong. You are so smart, and I appreciate your wisdom and friendship”. On the other hand, what I do think is, “Gosh, you are a narcissistic prick. If I never talked to you again, I would not complain”.

To be listened to and respected is an innate desire for all mankind. Those who listen are typically loved, warmly welcomed, and appreciated. Those who assert corrections are often resented, avoided and alienated.

Everyone is a teacher, and you are the only student.

A difficult yet rewarding mentality we should adopt is that every single person we encounter has been put on this planet to teach us a lesson. The person who is driving 50mph on the freeway is here to teach us about patience, the person who incorrectly made our coffee this morning is here to teach us about compassion, and the person who is never satisfied with our work is here to teach us about work ethic. If and when we successfully live out this mindset, we will turn every negative situation into an opportunity to refine and polish our character.

Live life in the present.

Irrespective of what happened yesterday or what will happen tomorrow, the present is the only thing you have control over. Carpe Diem.

We have all mastered the neurotic tendency of over-thinking, over-analyzing, and over-worrying past events and future concerns. Planning can be beneficial, but it should not affect your ability to take joy in the present. If you always look to tomorrow for a better today, then your efforts will be in vain. ‘Someday, things will be better’. This mental dynamic will only repeat itself so that ‘someday’ will never arrive.

Life is what is happening when we are busy making other plans. -John Lennon
I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened. -Mark Twain

Giving up the glory

We are attention whores.
We consistently interrupt people in their storytelling process to broadcast and demonstrate that our lives are far more important and worthy of the audience’s time. We strive to satisfy this desire of knowing that our accomplishments and experiences are superior to our peers. But this is detrimental.

We do not benefit in anyway from robbing someone of their moment of glory – in fact, we come off as unappealing narcissistic morons. Ironically, when we surrender our need to hog the glory, the attention we used to need is replaced by a quiet and magical inner confidence that descends from letting people have their deserved glory.

Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff

Change the things that can be changed, accept the things that cannot, and have the wisdom to know the difference.

Do Something Nice for Someone Else – and Don’t Tell Anyone About it

When we perform acts of kindness, almost always we boast of our actions. This is because we want something in return. We seek their approval, recognition, and compliments.

We want to hear that we are nice, and that we are thoughtful…but does this stem from insecurities of our own kindness? We seek approval of the things that we aren’t and strive to be. We don’t seek affirmation of the traits that we confidently are.

don’t confuse my personality with my attitude.

my personality is who I am. my attitude depends on who you are.

Albert Einstein once said, “I speak to everyone in the same way, whether he the garbage man or the president of the university.”
This is such a difficult and daunting task. I shall try.

life’s like photography,
we develop from negatives.
worse comes to worse,
take a new picture.

it is better to be hated for who you are, than to be loved for who you are not.

i will always cherish the initial misconceptions i had about you.