Photography is difficult. Much more difficult than people give the art form credit for in the digital age, where everything is starting to come with a built in camera.
First: If you have 3 pictures you like? Ditch the rest. For every 20 pictures ... you should only keep 4 anyway. That way you KNOW those 4 are good because you've made the decision to get rid of 15 images you took just as much time to capture. Editing is part of photography.
Selfies themselves are very difficult to take and to actually make look good, which is why I stay away from them. First, if you're using a cell phone to take selfies, cell phones aren't decent cameras to begin with. They're cheep cameras that get the job done but that's about it. Lighting tends to be bad (Too dark of shadows too light brights), settings are often difficult to adjust (aperture shutter speed etc), resolutions are low, images are more pixilated as there are usually less pixels per image vs. a good camera, lenses tend to be cheaper and smaller and on and on and on and on.
On top of just the image quality, selfies taken with a cell phone tend to have the following problems: If you take a picture of yourself (especially with a cell phone) from closer than 6 feet and you're not using a zoom lens, there's probably going to be distortion. One of the big things that makes EVERYONE look more masculine in a portrait that's taken close up without the proper equipment is that they tend to have larger noses in the image than they actually do.
Lighting is also something to consider. There's a reason the term "5 oh clock shadow exists, and that's because where facial hair is, is also where shadows tend to form. Meaning, if your lighting's bad, your face can look flat, undetailed, washed out, or, yes, like anyone almost has facial hair.
If you have a film camera with a timer on it, try to find something (even if it's just a book case) to set it on and take several pictures that way. Even if you need to crop the picture, it'll be worth it compared to using a cell phone.
Some time I need to take a picture of something with my cell phone, then with my camera to fully illustrate the differences.
Unfortunately, when I have my cell phone in my hands I usually don't have my camera with me, because if I have my camera with me I won't touch my cell phone for any reason because I'm too busy taking pictures of ... everything to be able to answer it.
*EDIT!* OH! While I'm thinking about it: Try taking pictures without using your camera's flash (Cell phone or not). Flash photography tends to wash out an image. Pictures that use light, especially natural light like sun light tend to look a lot better.
OH! And light from a cloudy day can be GREAT for photography as it diffuses light, eliminating a lot of harsh light sources and causing lighting to look more even.
