Can you accept yourself?
Answer Yes and No to the following questions:
If you answered yes to most of the questions, you can unconditionally accept yourself.
There is always a gap between who we are and the person that we want to be. True self-acceptance is being able to recognize our personal strength, talents, beauty and also being able to see and accept our behavior flaws, weaknesses, physical imperfections without being too caught up with either the good or the bad.
How to be more self-accepting
Self-acceptance depends on your schema about life, how you see yourself, the people around you and what the world is about.
How has your past affected you and the way you see life?
- Describe a past success in your life.
- How has this successful experience shaped the way you see yourself?
- Describe a past failure in your life?
- How has this failure affected the way you see yourself?
- What can you learn from these past experiences?
Finding out what drives us by understanding what we think about ourselves.
- Write down something that you learned about yourself when you were young. This can be a word or statement that was said about you by your parent, sibling, friend, teacher or someone important.
- Which of these words continue to stay in your mind?
- How do these words affect your self-esteem, happiness, thoughts about yourself and satisfaction in life?
- How does it affect your relationship with others?
- How does it motivate you or prevent you from doing better in life?
- How much of these words are true and how much is false? Give a percentage to each word and make sure it’s backed-up with proof?
- Which word and statement is not true and should be changed?
- Rewrite the same statement and replace those negative, self-defeating words with the correct and positive words.
People who are truly self-accepting have a growth mindset and are flexible enough to learn and grow from mistakes. Self-acceptance is not a one-off goal to reach. There will always be victories and failures in life. Being able to accept yourself as imperfect yet valuable will have to be a mindset and daily choice. You only get better as you keep practicing self-acceptance.
From Self-acceptance to Self-love
Self-acceptance is recognizing that you are imperfect but still a valuable person. Unconditional self-acceptance will lead to self-esteem and self-love.
When you can recognize that you are not just your accomplishments, failure, knowledge or lack of, you’ll accept that neither success or failure defines you. Unconditional self-acceptance will help you to embrace all that you are, free yourself from other people’s judgement and love yourself.
