Do you accept yourself? It might sound like an odd question; after all, what does it even mean
to accept yourself? Don’t we all accept ourselves as a regular part of living
our day-to-day lives? As it turns out, self-acceptance is not an automatic or
default state. Many of us have trouble accepting ourselves exactly as we are. Personality
stays the same, and yet it changes over a lifespan. The ebb and flow of
human experience come with social challenges and the development of a confident
level of self-worth. Self-acceptance is a contributing factor in
improved overall psychological wellbeing.
What is the Meaning of Self-Acceptance?
Self-acceptance is exactly what its name suggests: the state of complete acceptance of oneself. True self-acceptance is embracing who you are, without any qualifications, conditions, or exceptions. For an academic definition:
“[Self-acceptance is] an individual’s acceptance of all of his/her attributes, positive or negative.”
This definition emphasizes the
importance of accepting all facets of the self. It’s not enough to simply
embrace the good, valuable, or positive about yourself; to embody true self-acceptance,
you must also embrace the less desirable, the negative, and the ugly parts of
yourself.
It’s not easy to accept the things that we desperately want to change about ourselves; however—counterintuitively—it is only by truly accepting ourselves that we can even begin the process of meaningful self-improvement. In other words, we must first acknowledge that we have undesirable traits and habits before we start off on our journey to improvement.
Unconditional Self-Acceptance
To begin working on ourselves, the
first step is not just self-acceptance, but unconditional self-acceptance. It’s
relatively easy to accept ourselves when we just did something great—won an
award, fell in love, or started a fantastic new job—but accepting
ourselves at our lowest and with our faults and flaws in stark relief is the
real mark of unconditional self-acceptance.
Unconditional self-acceptance is understanding
that you are separate from your actions and your qualities. We accept
that we have made mistakes and that we have flaws, but we do not let them
define us. We accept that, as a fallible human being, we are less than
perfect. We will often perform well, but we will also err at times… We always
and unconditionally accept ourselves without judgment.
Self-Acceptance vs. Self-Esteem
Self-esteem is more closely
associated with psychological affect than self-acceptance. While it is an
important piece in the global understanding of an individual, it does not
alone create a psychological well human being. Self-esteem refers to how we
feel about ourselves—whether we feel we are generally good, worthwhile,
and valuable—while self-acceptance is simply acknowledging and accepting
that we are who we are. Full self-acceptance can lay the
foundations for positive self-esteem, and the two frequently go hand-in-hand, but they concern two different
aspects of how we think and feel about ourselves.
What does self-acceptance look like? Examples (Situations)
How do we know when we have “reached” self-acceptance? “Can you look in the mirror and truly accept the unique, wonderful work-in-progress person staring back at you?”
We will know that we have achieved our goal of self-acceptance when we can look at ourselves in the mirror and accept every last bit of what makes us who we are, and when we no longer try to mitigate, ignore, or explain away any perceived faults or flaws—physical or otherwise. Self-acceptance can look different for each of us, depending on what we have struggled with and which pieces of ourselves we’d rather not think about. Here are some examples of what self-acceptance might look like for a variety of people:
1) A man going through a divorce who feels like a failure because of it might experience self-acceptance as acknowledging that he made some mistakes and that his marriage failed, but that does not make him a failure.
2) A woman struggling with anorexia may accept herself as a human being with an imperfect body, acknowledge that she approaches her imperfection from a harmful perspective, and commit to working on this perspective.
3) A student who works hard only to receive Cs and the occasional B in college could reach a point of self-acceptance in which he realizes that studying and taking tests is not his strong suit and that this is okay because he has other strengths.
4) A girl with low self-esteem who actively ignores facing her self-doubt and self-defeating beliefs might experience self-acceptance through acknowledging and confronting her negative beliefs and cognitive distortions, and realizing that not everything she thinks is true.
5) An employee who struggles to meet the goals set by a demanding boss may accept herself by accepting that sometimes she will fail to deliver, but that she can still be a good person even when she fails.
Techniques to enhance self-acceptance:
A) Practice relaxed awareness:
As opposed to constant
distraction, or concentrated focus, relaxed awareness is a soft
consciousness of our thoughts, feelings, pain, self-rating, and judgment,
etc. It’s an awareness of our existence.
To practice: close your eyes for a
minute, and instead of pushing thoughts away or trying to focus on your breath,
just softly notice your thoughts and feelings and body. You might
see negative thoughts or emotions — that’s OK. Just
notice them, watch them. Don’t try to turn them into positive thoughts or push
them away. You can do this practice for 5 minutes a day, or up to 30 minutes if
you find it useful.
When we practice relaxed
awareness, you’ll notice things — negative thoughts, fears, happy thoughts,
self-judgments, etc. We tend to want to stop the negative thoughts and
feelings, but this is just a suppression, an avoidance, a negating of the negative.
Instead, welcome these phenomena, they are a part of our life, and they are OK.
Hug the bad feeling, comfort it, let it hang around for a while. They are not
bad but are opportunities to learn things about ourselves. When we run from
these “bad” feelings, we create more pain. Instead, see the good in them, and
find the opportunity.
B) Let go of rating yourself:
Another thing you’ll notice, once
you start to pay attention, is self-rating. Individuals are far
too complex to be given a global rating. It has been found that humans
who don’t rate themselves either with good or bad have a higher level of
psychological wellbeing and move into lives that are flourishing. Those
seeking approval in a variety of areas may find discomfort when allowing
feedback to fuel a self-rating. We rate ourselves compared to others, or rate
ourselves as “good” or “bad” at different things, or rate ourselves as flabby
or too skinny or ugly. That doesn’t mean to let it go, but just to notice it,
and see what results from it. After realizing that self-rating repeatedly
causes soreness, you’ll be happy to let it go, in time.
C) Compassion & forgiveness for yourself:
As you notice judgments and
self-rating, see if you can turn them into forgiveness and compassion. If you judge yourself for not doing well at something, or not being
good enough at something, can you forgive yourself for this, just as you might
forgive someone else? In some cases, we don’t need to forgive, but instead to
understand what was not within our control. Think about what you’re grateful
for. Include things about yourself. If you aren’t perfect, what about
your imperfection can you be grateful for? Feel free to journal about
these things each day, or once a week.
D) Learn from all parts and emotions:
We tend to try to see our
successes as good, and the failures as bad, but what if we see that everything
is something to learn from? Even the dark parts — they are parts of us,
and we can find interesting and useful things in them too. When you are
feeling negative emotions, see them as a separate event, not a part of you, and watch them. Remove their power over you by thinking of them, not as commandments
you must follow or believe in, but rather like passing objects.
E) Talk to someone:
Sometimes we get so in our heads
that it’s difficult to separate our thoughts and emotions, to see
things clearly. Talking through these issues with another person — a friend,
spouse, co-worker — can help you to understand yourself better. Use the talking
technique together with one of the above techniques.
F) Laugh at it:
How do you stop judging yourself? Laugh at it. A big
laugh helps you look deep, notice your self-judgments, and push through the
steps to accepting part of yourself. This might help when the voice inside your
head wants to make you miserable. Giving yourself the full and unconditional
permission to be human opens you up to thoughts and feelings as adventures,
rather than self-punishing patterns. Irrational thoughts and cognitive
distortions are limiting to personal development and achievement of the good
life.
Content Curated By: Dr Shoury Kuttappa.
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