How accepting are you of yourself?
If I was to answer that question, I’d have to say not very, but I’m learning. For so long I was tougher on myself than anyone around me. I’d accept everyone else’s mistakes and imperfections because, after all, no one’s perfect. But if I made a mistake or someone pointed out my own imperfections, I’d beat myself up for days afterward. Even today I catch myself thinking about things that happened years ago, and berating myself for being stupid when at the time I really didn’t know any better.
I’d venture to say there’s a lot of people who do that. Beating yourself up takes its toll, both mentally and physically. Diseases such as type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure have been linked to stress. Obesity and insomnia, both of which are precursors to diabetes are also affected by the amount of stress we face each day. So it certainly doesn’t help matters if we add to our stress by being overly hard and negative with ourselves.
We need to learn to love ourselves and accept ourselves just as we are. After all, if we don’t love ourselves first, no one else can. And, if we were all completely accepting of ourselves there would be a lot less stress and high blood pressure and all the nastiness associated with them in the world.
So with that being said, here are a few ideas that you can use in your quest to treat yourself more positively…
1. Believe In Yourself
Norman Vincente Peale once wrote “Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.”
For many people, the reason they can’t accept themselves the way they are is because they suffer from a lack of self esteem. Low self-esteem is the mother of all negative thought patterns. It eats you up inside because no matter how badly you want to do something or say something that would allow you to just be yourself, you’ve conditioned yourself to think you can’t, you’re not qualified, you’re stupid (or others will think you’re stupid) and so you keep your mouth shut and stay hidden in your little corner.
If you can train yourself to ditch the negative thought patterns and replace them with positive thoughts, you will begin to recover some of that lost self esteem. And once you have started to regain your self-confidence you will start to believe that you really can do what you feel you can do.
Then there’s no stopping you, because when you believe in yourself you can do anything you put your mind to!
2. Accentuate the Positive
We’ve all got at least one thing we’re good at. But when you’re beating yourself up you don’t see the good stuff. If you’re doing ten things, you could do nine of them perfectly but when you’re having problems with accepting yourself as you are, then you will only see the one thing you messed up.
It’s the same when it comes to seeing your own positive traits. If you’re not as accepting of yourself as you’d like to be you will tend to focus only on the negative instead of seeing your strengths and talents for what they are.
The way past this is through using positive self-talk strategies such as affirmations, visualisation, and meditation. See yourself for the powerful, positive person you are and you will find yourself moving forward and achieving all those goals you set for yourself.
3. Accept that You’re Not Perfect
You know you’re not perfect. Having imperfections is a part of what makes us human. We were designed to have screw-ups along the way because that’s how we learn and grow. It’s the inability to accept those imperfections that causes people so many problems.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to improve in the areas you think you need it. After all, that’s what self-improvement and personal growth are for. But if you focus on the negative to the exclusion of everything that’s good about you, you are giving in to the negative thought patterns we were talking about earlier.
Not all imperfections are things we can change, and these are often the ones that give us the most trouble. I’m talking about physical and genetic characteristics here for the most part, such as body type, hair color, and even temperment to a certain extent. These are things that we really do need to learn to love about ourselves, accept that they’ll always be a part of our lives, and move forward.
Positive self talk works here too. Talk to yourself in the mirror every morning. Give yourself compliments on how you look, how great you feel, and anything else positive that comes to mind. The only rule here is “No Negatives Allowed.” The more you do it, the better you will start feeling about yourself, and the more you will start to accept yourself as being just fine how you are.
4. Only You Get To Decide What’s Best For You
Sounds like a no-brainer right? But you’d be surprised how often your lack of self-acceptance comes because you didn’t make the decision someone else wanted you to.
Learning that you’ll never please everyone around you is a lesson that often comes at a high price, usually your own sense of self. When you start making your decisions based on what is best for you, you will still make some people unhappy but you yourself will be much happier and more at peace with yourself because you are doing what is best and feels right in your heart.
5. Some Days Even Your Best Isn’t Good Enough
When it happens that even when you’ve given your all, and it just wasn’t enough it’s hard to accept that and tell yourself it’s okay. But in order to fully accept yourself as you are right now you do have to accept that there are days when this is going to happen.
If you’ve done the best you could do at the time, then there is really nothing more to do. Beating yourself up because you couldn’t do anything more is pointless… and negative… and unacceptable. You should be proud of your efforts and the knowledge that you did your best.
Loving yourself and accepting yourself just the way you are is a liberating experience. By acknowledging that you have strengths and weaknesses and being okay with that you open yourself up to new feelings and opportunities that you may never have noticed had you been stuck in the middle of a heavyweight match with yourself.
So… How accepting are you of yourself? Leave a comment and join in the discussion:
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