In a world obsessed with looks, everyone wants to be attractive. The better your appearance, the more career opportunities, relationship options, and friendships you attract.

Unfortunately, not everyone can maximize their looks. Some of us are unlucky and lose the genetic lottery, left with an appearance that doesn’t match society’s standards.

Dealing with being an ugly man is tough. Some people are rude to you for no reason, some make fun of you, and some ignore you altogether, as if you don’t even exist.

It can be tempting to get plastic surgery, or inject yourself with steroids. But these only provide temporary solutions, ones that also cause health problems in the long run.

Despite what you’re going through, though, you can still be happy. You can obtain freedom, peace, and fulfillment regardless of how society perceives you.

In this article, we’ll discuss how society treats unattractive people, why you can still be happy, and examine 8 powerful strategies to deal with being ugly. Let’s begin.

The Uncomfortable Truth About Our Society

I’m not gonna waste your time or sugarcoat things. With your level of physical attractiveness, it’s unlikely that you’ll get a partner. Moreover, it’s also likely that some people will disrespect you just because of your looks.

The vast majority of people in our society focus on aesthetics, without considering one’s capabilities. Those who win the genetic lottery and obtain the perfect looks (above average height, ideal face proportions) receive special treatment.

This phenomenon is known as the halo effect: the better you look, the more others are inclined to compliment and help you, and vice versa. While there are some people who are capable of unconditional respect and empathy, most are unable to recognize the intrinsic value everyone possesses.

When you are physically unattractive, you are often automatically perceived as a weirdo, asocial, or otherwise dangerous and dysfunctional individual, simply based on your looks.

No matter how much people tell you to just be confident, this advice won’t work: people will often see you as too annoying, attention-seeking, or ignore you altogether.

Lesser chances of getting a partner, less close friends, less work opportunities. These are the things you have to face. But do they automatically doom you to a miserable life? No, they don’t. Despite your condition, you can still be happy.

Why You Can Still Be Happy

We’ve been brainwashed by society to look for happiness in the wrong sources. Since we were kids, we were told that happiness lies in getting nice cars, clothes, a big house, having a large social circle, and being in a relationship.

While these things can definitely enhance your quality of life, they don’t determine your happiness. You can have all external successes, wealth, status, relationships, yet still feel miserable and unfulfilled. Why?

It’s because long-term happiness can only be obtained through connecting with oneself. We look for fulfillment everywhere, except where we actually need to search: in our own minds, thoughts, and actions.

For the most part, we cannot control the outside world. That is, you can earn some extra money, maintain good health, build friendships, but there are factors outside your control that can ruin these in seconds.

If you shift focus to befriending yourself, improving your character, working on meaningful goals, and clearing your mind, you can build a stable foundation of long-lasting happiness.

It may sound complex and hard to grasp now, but as you keep reading, you’ll better understand how to build internal happiness, and learn to enjoy life regardless of external circumstances.

8 Ways to Deal With Being Ugly

The following sections will discuss how exactly you can train your mind to stay happy, offering various strategies, habits, and exercises to help you obtain true fulfillment.

The first thing you should do is find areas you’re competent in.

1: Find Areas You’re Competent In

When you’re unattractive, it’s easy to focus on your shortcomings. People around tell you you’re creepy, irresponsible, incapable, and this external feedback can cause a self-amplifying loop of falling performance.

Take a few deep breaths, look at your life as an external observer, and note the things you’re good at. You may not even notice it, but you are good at your job, whether it is carrying things in a warehouse or creating accounting reports.

Similarly, you can also be good at writing, singing, reading complex texts, lifting weights, solving Sudoku, and many other areas.

Whether you’re aware of it or not, you have many innate abilities you can develop through practice. The first step to deal with being ugly is recognizing your abilities, and evaluating yourself by actions, not appearance.

Write down everything you’re good at, no matter how small it is. Think of how these skills and abilities can help you and the world around you.

When you know what you’re capable of, it becomes a lot easier to accept yourself as you are. And that is the next step we’re gonna take.

Related article: How to Be Happy in Any Situation

2: Accept Yourself as You Are

Social media and advertisements constantly bombard us with perfect, unrealistic expectations. We’re constantly told that we aren’t good enough, that we won’t be happy without this new skin-care product, Stanley cup, or haircut from TikTok.

Most people never question these statements, and greatly suffer from it: when pursuing these unrealistic ideals, they constantly compare themselves to ridiculous artificial standards, and loathe themselves for not matching them.

Listen. Life is not a competition. It isn’t about who earns the most money, gets the most girls, or buys the latest gadgets. At the end of the day, we’re all a part of the Universe meant to help and uplift each other.

Instead of comparing yourself by parameters you cannot control, focus on your strengths, accept your looks, and decide you’ll respect yourself unconditionally.

There is nothing you can do to change your nose size or face symmetry without harming your health. What you can do is shift your attention from the unchangeable to the controllable: thoughts, aspirations, actions, habits, and pursuits.

Speaking about actions: once you’ve accepted yourself and rejected societal conditioning, the next step of your journey is deleting social media.

Recommended article: How to Enjoy Life as An Introvert

3: Delete Social Media to Deal With Being Ugly

I often see a lot of people argue that ceasing comparing yourself to others is impossible, because it is part of human nature. Indeed: it is nearly impossible to fully stop comparing yourself with people in various areas.

However, it is a lot harder to do if you’re consistently influenced by external stimuli. In most cases, social media is 30% brainless content, 40% people posting highlights of their lives (hiding the bad parts), 20% softcore porn, and only 10% good content.

People often justify using social media by saying that “they use it to connect with friends”, or “it helps them be more creative.” More often, though, they simply use these apps to get quick dopamine hits, without putting in significant effort.

There is no reason to use social media other than to overstimulate and mentally torture yourself. Instead of wasting 3-4 hours a day killing your mental health, you can invest them into more productive activities (which we’ll discuss in the next section).

Delete social media apps (Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, X, etc.), and deactivate the accounts if you wish. Make the decision that you won’t get back on them again, and will instead focus on other pursuits.

When it comes to YouTube, you can modify it to better suit your needs. Disable YouTube Shorts, mark unwanted videos in your feed with “Do not recommend”, and like videos with genuinely helpful content (guides, ambient playlists, your personal interests).

Although it is difficult at first, deleting social media can help you better deal with being ugly, cease anxiety, and save time for genuinely helpful activities: habits and hobbies.

Related article: Digital Detox Challenge: How to Fix Your Life in 30 Days

4: Find New Productive Hobbies

In the previous sections, I talked a lot about actions, decisions, thoughts, and how they determine happiness. Unlike your appearance and material possessions, you are fully in control of what you think and do.

Happiness is mostly determined not by external circumstances and events, but by our perceptions and beliefs about the world. Therefore, if you train your mind to pursue goals and filter out negative thoughts, you will obtain peace and contentment.

You probably already have some hobbies, like drawing, watching YouTube, or researching various topics. Nevertheless, there are some other great hobbies you can add into your life:

• Meditation
• Reading
• Weightlifting
• Cooking
• Learning languages
• Coding
• Woodworking
• Writing
• Playing an instrument

I recommend to start with 5 minutes of regular meditation, reading 10 pages a day, and going to the gym 3 times a week. These are the basic good habits that will improve your mental health, confidence, and overall well being.

Starting new hobbies can be hard, especially if you’re used to passive scrolling and consumption. However, if you start small and integrate them gradually, like I described above, you’ll do them automatically in as little as 3 weeks.

The more consistently you’ll do positive actions, the more they’ll feel like second nature. You’ll derive pleasure from the mere act of doing them, so push through the initial discomfort, do new hobbies daily, and remind yourself of the benefits to come.

Once you’ve incorporated these hobbies into your life, another effective way to deal with being ugly is helping others through volunteering.

Recommended article: How to Incorporate Meditation Into Your Daily Life

5: Engage in Volunteer Work to Deal With Being Ugly

Almost everyone in modern society is becoming increasingly lonely. People are more connected than ever, yet even more detached and isolated. Why is that?

It isn’t just the social media and shifting work culture trends to blame here. There is another factor that contributes to the loneliness epidemic: lack of purpose.

Most of us simply exist, without pursuing or completing anything worthwhile. Every day is the same, with no concrete goal:

If an average person’s day consists of doing meaningless tasks, eating processed foods, consuming mindless content, and getting inconsistent sleep, is it any wonder they feel so empty and detached from the world?

I believe that the solution is simple: volunteering and working on your purpose. While the latter requires time to discover and implement, the former you can start immediately.

Why Volunteering Matters, and How to Do it

Think of where your help would be useful. Donate unnecessary clothes and items to a local orphanage, join a volunteering organization, collect trash in a park nearby. In short, contribute to your community any way you can.

One of our most important needs is the need to feel valuable. You don’t necessarily need external feedback to satisfy it. What you need to do is provide help that creates measurable results, contributing to people’s happiness.

Volunteering will enrich your life, give you new connections, and help you respect yourself despite flaws in appearance. It’s a great way to deal with being ugly while improving your life simultaneously.

Lacking friendship and a romantic partner has a little benefit, which is the additional hours of free time. Along with hobbies and volunteering, I recommend you pay special attention to reading and learning.

6: Read and Learn About Various Topics to Deal With Being Ugly

Most people stop reading after they finish high school. They never read another novel, documentary, or sometimes even article after graduating, spending all their free time on mindless scrolling.

With such a dull and unproductive list of activities, there’s no wonder the majority of people feel so unhappy, even despite having great living conditions.

Reading isn’t just about consuming information. It’s about expanding your worldview, questioning invalid beliefs, and obtaining solutions to problems. As you’re reading this article, you’re getting value in forms of knowledge about unconditional happiness.

We live in a world full of opportunities to learn. Never ever has there been so much knowledge available to absorb and use in our daily lives.

Use the Internet to your advantage by reading about different topics (economics, history, psychology, etc.) to develop yourself and expand your worldview. Seek ways to immediately use what you’ve learned to expand your brain and skillset.

1 hour of daily scrolling gives you emptiness, mild depression, anxiety, and insecurity over looks. 30 minutes of daily reading develops you, keeps your brain healthy, and gives you things to talk about with others.

One of the most crucial ways of dealing with being ugly is discarding the need for external validation.

Related article: 15 Things to Do Instead of Scrolling on Social Media

7: Discard the Need for External Validation

I’m sure you’ve seen quite a lot of videos on YouTube talking about how it’s impossible to get dates when you’re unattractive. Indeed, as we’ve discussed before, most people care way more about appearance than personality when choosing a partner.

That shouldn’t stop you from enjoying life and making other valuable connections. I’ve seen a lot of people jump from relationship to relationship, desperate to not be lonely.

Listen. It’s easy to think that loneliness is when you’re alone, but it’s an incorrect belief. In reality, loneliness arises when you don’t feel connected with yourself and your community. You can be surrounded by hundreds, yet still feel isolated.

To be stable and long-lasting, happiness needs to be built on a stable foundation, something you can control. Can you control how others perceive you, what your partner does, or whether they’ll still love you after 30 years? No, you can’t.

Can you, however, control how grateful, abstinent, honest, free, and hardworking you are? Yes, and these qualities make you happier. That’s why you should pursue them and work on improving your character.

Regularly assess whether what you think about is in your control. If it’s something you can’t control, discard it. If it’s something you can change, like fitness or knowledge, work to develop it.

This way you’ll obtain inner freedom, detach from external validation, and stay happy despite your unattractiveness. The last step to improve your life while ugly is challenging negative beliefs.

Related article: How to Be More Stoic: 10 Ways to Become Unbeatable

8: Challenge Negative Beliefs to Deal With Being Ugly

Most people live unconsciously, acting out their childhood conditioning. Our conscious mind is responsible for only 10% of actions and thoughts we generate. The other 90% are managed entirely by our subconscious.

Nature created us this way to save resources and minimize stress the brain experiences. It’s thanks to the subconscious that we’re able to brush our teeth, make tea, and even work without a conscious thought.

However, this mechanism has a serious downside. It contains the belief system that dictates our actions and thoughts. If the beliefs within it are incorrect or destructive, we’ll do self-destructive actions, even if we try to stop.

The unconscious beliefs that “I am a victim” and “alcohol helps me relax” are the reason why we keep sabotaging ourselves and making poor choices, even if we understand their consequences.

To deal with being ugly and obtain unconditional fulfillment, you need to evaluate your beliefs, check if there are destructive ones, and discard them through logical analysis.

How to Beat Your Limiting Beliefs

Sit down in a room without any devices. Turn off your laptop, carry the phone to another room, and open a journal. Afterwards, try your best to write down all beliefs you have about yourself, life, and other people.

Evaluate whether the beliefs you have help you in life, and whether they cause you to think or act the way you later regret. If a belief neither helps you nor makes you feel good about your life, it is destructive.

Take some deep breaths, look at the belief objectively, and think if you truly need it in your life. If the answer is no, discard it immediately. After the journaling session, consciously decide to act the exact opposite way to that belief.

For example, if you thought being alone causes loneliness, try to spend more time in solitude, doing things you fully enjoy (remember: no porn or social media, this stuff is bad for your brain).

The mind is powerful, and the greatest virtue is learning to control it. Apply this and other techniques from above, and you’ll learn to enjoy life, no matter how you look or how some people treat you.

Recommended article: How to Overcome Limiting Beliefs (5 Step Guide)

The Bottom Line

Modern society is obsessed with looks and material status. Those with attractive looks, wealth, and fame are worshiped, even if they commit horrible acts.

In a world like this, it’s crucial to obtain unconditional happiness that doesn’t depend on external validation, fame, or materialism. Even if you have an unattractive appearance, you can still enjoy life and be at peace. All you need to do is:

• Find areas you’re competent in
• Accept yourself as you are
• Delete social media (and improve YouTube homepage)
• Build better habits and hobbies
• Engage in volunteer work
• Read and learn daily
• Discard the need for external approval
• Find and challenge negative beliefs

Start with small steps: have a walk without your phone, meditate in silence for 5 minutes, and lift weights to enhance your body.

Daily wins, no matter how small, will build up your confidence, helping you achieve more and more over time. Remember: you don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.

Dealing with being an ugly man can be difficult, but without hard work, it’s impossible to be happy. Remember your inherent worth, be a good person, and make correct decisions. Good luck, and see you soon, brother.

If you liked this article and found it useful, share it with someone who might need this message and leave a comment below. See you next time.