Psychology

How to accept yourself

Sharing is caring!

One of the hardest things in life to do is trying to accept yourself for who you are. Unfortunately most people don't get to the accepting themselves stage until they are older. There comes a certain time in your life when you just say 'I can't please everybody, so I am going to be myself' and you accept yourself. It's a very powerful thing to be able to do this, it's just a pity we couldn't do it when we were younger. Obviously there are exceptions to the rule, there are a lot of younger people who have accepted themselves and don't try and please everybody, but for the most part we are trying to gain the acceptance of others in our lives.

Remember the 4th November 2008, Barack Obama became the 44th US President. He won by taking 53% of the overall votes. 53%! that is great however it means that 47% of Americans who voted (all 58 million of them) did not want Barack Obama to win the presidential race. Do you think Obama is sitting in the corner of the Whitehouse berating himself that 58 Million people did not want him to be in the Whitehouse? No, he will get on with the job at hand and in so doing will win over some of the 58 million people by being himself and doing what he thinks is right for his country.

acceptAccepting yourself

It's all very well saying accept yourself but how do you go about accepting yourself?

You simply tell yourself that life will throw some crap at you and other people will dislike you, simply because they have different ideas from you or are jealous of you, or are envious, or just think or an idiot. Whatever the reason is that someone dislikes you, don't try and win their vote, move on and strengthen the relationship you have with the people you care about.

If you concentrate on winning the votes of people you don't like and who don't like you, you are taking your power and energy away from the people that really matter.

The power of acceptance and honesty

When you are honest with others you will be honest with yourself!

Honesty is very under-rated in our society, it's very rare you come across someone who is honest with you in a non aggressive way. Whenever someone asks my opinion on something about themselves I always ask if they really want me to be honest. Now that person will always come to me if they want a really honest answer about something but they will stop coming to me if they just want their ego stroked which is what a lot of people are doing when they are saying something like;

'Do I look fat in this?'

'Am I going bald?'

'Am I as good looking as them?'

You know the types of question I mean. The thing is, if you have someone at work who does this all the time and asks you 'Am I….' questions and you pander to their ego and tell them what they want to hear they will keep asking you 'Am I….?' questions. Now when you interrupt this pattern and say to them 'do you want the truth?', this makes them step back and obviously they will say 'yes!', tell them the truth in a polite and caring way. Guaranteed they will never come back to you with 'Am I …..?' questions, however you will gain their trust and they will come back to you with 'Can I get you opinion on this….'

By being honest with others you will start to develop honesty with yourself. When you develop honesty with yourself you will develop acceptance of yourself. For example unfit people know they are unfit because they never go to the gym and sit in front of the TV all day munching on a bag of fish and chips with a can of diet coke (that cracks me up!) , but they still have the gall to ask 'Do you think I need to go to the gym?' EH! YES YOU DO LARDY!!!!!! That person knows they need to go to the gym but they ask someone else they know will stroke their ego and say 'No, you don't need to go to the gym Lardy, you're bones are just bigger than every else's' so Lardy is happy with this and dips the hand back into the fish and chips again. Lardy knows they need to go to the gym and when they realise this they will get up of their lardy bum and just go, no need for stroking of the lardy ego.

So, be honest with yourself.

Some questions to ask yourself:

Do you really like your job? (An energy and soul killer)

Do you really like your friends? (A lot of people say there is nothing they can do about this one, yes there is, drop them!, okay you've been friends for a while but if they put you down, make you feel horrible, and drain you energy, drop them).

Do you like your body? (The easiest thing in the world to change)

Do you like your personality? (If you met yourself on a night out would you like yourself?)

By being honest with yourself you will eventually gain acceptance of yourself and believe me when I say that your life will become much easier and you will enjoy it a hell of a lot more.

Some Amazing Comments

Comments

About the author

Steven Aitchison

Steven Aitchison is the author of The Belief Principle and an online trainer teaching personal development and online business.  He is also the creator of this blog which has been running since August 2006.