Do you feel ashamed of your failures? Can’t you leave behind the mistakes and decisions of your past? Accepting yourself is vital to achieving each of your life goals.
When we talk about accept yourself, we are referring to the state of complete acceptance by ourselves. In this way, accepting oneself involves seeing who you are without having a need to judge defects or virtues.
What is the meaning of self-acceptance?
We could say that to know how to accept yourself We must know each of our attributes, whether negative or positive. That is, in order to accept ourselves we must accept each of the facets of the self. In order to enjoy all the benefits of self-acceptance, we must tolerate even those less desirable and negative parts of ourselves. Wanting to enjoy personal acceptance does not mean stopping trying to make certain improvements in our lives. The reality is that being able to accept yourself is the first step to being able to improve in each of the aspects of your life and your personality.
What does it mean to accept yourself?
In order to start working on yourself, it is vitally important to know what your defects and virtues are. Therefore, introspection and self-knowledge is essential to begin to accept oneself. There are some keys to achieve a personal acceptance
- Unconditional: The first step to achieving self-acceptance is to do so unconditionally. It is obvious that it will be much easier to accept ourselves when we have achieved a goal or have just celebrated one of our achievements, but this feeling should also be there when we make mistakes. According to psychotherapist Russell Grieger, unconditional self-acceptance It involves understanding that you are separate from both your actions and your qualities. That is, in this way you must accept that you have made mistakes or that you have certain defects but without letting them define you. Through accepting yourself unconditionally is the best way to begin to see what our authentic self is really like and what is the most foolproof method to improve each of your desirable qualities.
“You accept that, as a fallible human being, you are less than perfect. You will often perform well, but sometimes you will also make mistakes… You always and unconditionally accept yourself without judging yourself.”
Russell Grieger
- Work on self-esteem: Despite accept yourself is closely related to self-esteem, the reality is that they are two very different concepts. Unlike the personal acceptance, self-esteem refers to how you feel about yourself. Instead, self-acceptance is simply recognizing and accepting who you are.
Thus, accept yourself It is a way to work on self-esteem from the roots. Therefore, working on self-acceptance ends up having an impact on our self-perception and improves our self-esteem in all its aspects.
Why is it so difficult to accept yourself?
There are some causes that are repeated in the majority of cases where people do not achieve accept yourself as you are So much so that factors of our personality such as trauma, attachment and self-esteem are closely related to them.
When someone fails accept yourself as you are It ends up affecting your human need for love and belonging. Thus, by not enjoying this aspect of human relationships, people end up suffering a fight or flight response when faced with situations that test them. So much so that when faced with failure to handle these situations together with others or personally, people end up doing one of these three actions:
- Blame others
- self-blame
- avoid blame
Feeling ashamed or not being able to face these situations, people who cannot accept themselves end up having difficulties in all aspects of their lives. If you think you constantly feel this way, a professional psychologist may be one of the tools you should use to achieve your personal acceptance
Keys to accepting yourself
Although achieving personal acceptance It is a difficult job to do, there are some keys to achieve it in a more accessible way.
- Set an intention: Accepting oneself begins with setting an intention well. So much so that it is vitally important that we are willing to change in order to achieve this feeling towards ourselves.
- Celebrate your strengths: Accepting yourself is much more difficult than it may seem at first glance. So much so that one of the keys to achieving this acceptance It is visualizing our strengths and keeping them in mind at all times. In this way, it can be a good exercise to write down all the goals that we have achieved and each of the virtues that we have managed to improve in our lives.
- Surround yourself with the best people: Sometimes the problem behind accept yourself It’s all the people around us. So much so that it is essential that the people who are by your side are equally positive about your flaws and your virtues (always with a vision to improve, obviously).
- Create a support system: Every time you have a mistake or a failure, it is essential to try to create a support system that allows you to reaffirm yourself or despite the mistake. For example, you can have a gesture to remember all the positive things you have on these occasions.
- forgive yourself: We have all made mistakes in our lives. Therefore, for accept yourself It is vitally important to be able to forgive ourselves in the past. Know that despite the size of the mistake you have made in the past, that person is no longer you. Changing means accepting these mistakes no matter how bad they are.
- Shut up your inner critic: Many understand their inner critic as the voice of reason. These thoughts that arise and criticize our actions are an obstacle to being able to accept ourselves and enjoy good self-esteem. Therefore, you must leave behind this negativity that arises from within you. “Our mistakes and imperfections are not bad, wrong or failures; they are the fingerprints of humanity and opportunities to learn, heal and grow” Marter.
- Lament the loss of unrealized dreams: Many of the problems that arise from not accept yourself They come from our inability to reconcile our idealistic view of ourselves with who we are now. In this way, it is vital to try to leave these dreams behind and try the best with what we have or are now.
- Perform acts of charity: Being empathetic and treating your environment well is one of the keys to feeling better about yourself. Therefore, one of the ways to accept yourself It is trying to create a favorable environment for everything around you.
- Realize that acceptance is not resignation: The acceptance It consists of leaving behind the past and all those things that we cannot control today. The objective of this is to focus your energy on what you can control and help you improve today.
- Be kind to yourself: Perfectionism is a double-edged sword. Many times it is better to be more self-indulgent and try to have a little self-compassion for those defects we have.
The personal acceptance It is the secret to being the person you so much want to be. So much so that not doing so ends up posing a problem for our mental health. Acceptance is the first step to achieving each of your goals and purposes.
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PsychologyFor. (2024). How to Accept Yourself? 11 Psychological Keys to Achieve it. https://psychologyfor.com/how-to-accept-yourself-11-psychological-keys-to-achieve-it/