Self Acceptance on a personal scale

Brene Brown once said “Let go of who you think you are supposed to be and be who you are”. To love yourself means to accept you for who you are and come to terms with it. It means you need to have self-respect, confidence in yourself and unrestricted self acceptance. It does not mean being arrogant, conceited or narcissistic. We all have strengths and weaknesses and we also have the necessary resources needed to improve ourselves to being a better version of ourselves without losing our identity. Each and every one of us is unique and have specific talents and abilities that need to be recognized in order to gain confidence in ourselves.

Although self-acceptance and self-esteem are related, they are not the same. While self-esteem refers to how valuable and worthwhile we see ourselves, self-acceptance implies to a far more global verification of self. Self-acceptance is eternal and free of any requirement. We can recognize our weaknesses and limitations but this awareness in no way interferes with our ability to fully accept ourselves.

When we struggle with learning to accept ourselves we create a tensed environment around us. Our conscience dominates our thoughts, behaviors and emotions. It creates a deep impact in our lives and damages our self-esteem. The first step to loving ourselves is awareness and the second is acceptance.

Here are a few tips on self acceptance:

 Acknowledging our strengths and attributes to maintain a balance in all phases of our lives.

 Making a list of our accomplishments may include people that you’ve helped, personal achievements or difficult times that you have overcome.

 The people we choose to be around play a very important role. Surrounding ourselves with optimistic people builds up our confidence.

 Silencing our inner critic. If you can not say what you are thinking to a loved one it is not sincere, it’s just a callous judgment.

 Being kind to ourselves. Coming to recognize who we are involves loving ourselves because of our flaws, not in spite of them.

We all have twelve months in a year, thirty or thirty-one days in a month, twenty four hours in a day, sixty minutes in an hour and sixty seconds in a minute. Instead of being someone that were not for a couple of hours in a day to please the people around us and to be accepted by them why don’t we be ourselves and accept ourselves for who we are strengths and flaws included.

Adya