9 Tips for Self-Acceptance
Self-acceptance is a skill. It takes practice and courage to look at both the positive and negative, and to learn to receive, trust, love, and accept all aspects of ourselves - our abilities and limitations, our strengths and weaknesses, our successes and mistakes.
Here are 9 ideas to practice:
1 - Own Your Weird
We all have weird, different, unique, awkward, and quirky. Inward acknowledgement and acceptance of who we are, what we feel, what we deal with on the daily, our quirks and challenges combined with an outward communication of our issues is a deeply self-respecting and self-acknowledging experience that contributes to self-acceptance and inner peace. It can also help others to feel more comfortable in their own skin, with their own quirks and challenges. It takes courage to be transparent with others, to let our guard down and share beyond the superficial. Practice being open and vulnerable with others for the sake of respecting yourself - don’t look for anything in return - do it for you.
2 - Forgive Yourself & Others
We often think of forgiveness as something that will automatically or naturally come when certain requirements have been met such as a resolution or restitution. Waiting around for others to do their part will rarely result in an opportunity to feel the power of forgiveness. Forgiveness is more about a process that a person can choose to go through, regardless of whether or not a resolution has been reached. Forgiveness allows us to decide how past actions will control future feelings, decisions, choices, and reactions. We often hear the phrase “forgive and forget” which is not practical or reasonable. Forgiveness isn’t about forgetting, nor does it require that a person continues to accept abuse. It is about deciding if/how something we did, or that was done to us (whether intentionally or not) will continue to control or impact us. It can be a grueling process, which may include facing past traumas and finding personal healing, setting boundaries with self or another person, accepting that we can only control the choices of ourselves, choosing to be brave and opening our heart and trusting again (knowing that we can’t control the outcome and may be hurt again), separating a person’s actions from who they really are, ending a toxic relationship, and separating our self-worth and self-love from another’s choices.
3 - Accept Compliments
Most people have mild to moderate difficulty with accepting compliments – it is far too common in our world. When we don’t acknowledge compliments from others, we are sending a message to ourselves that what we did and what we do is not important or of value. We are minimizing our efforts and our experience. Over the years as I have worked with clients to help them break these unhealthy habits, I have identified what I call the Four Levels of Accepting Compliments. Here they are:
Level 1: No acceptance at all. Despite how blatantly unhealthy this is, the vast majority of people flat out reject compliments from others. They do this by minimizing their accomplishment or deflecting the compliment. Some people will even flat out disagree with the compliment offered.
Level 2: Level 2 is really level one in disguise. At this level, people will outwardly express acceptance or gratitude for the compliment offered but inwardly they are pulling a Level 1 big time.
Level 3: Level 3 is where we begin to make progress. Level 3 is a true acceptance of the compliment, or at least a sincere effort to believe. It is a vulnerable experience to let down your guard and truly trust someone else’s expression of gratitude or positivity directly linked to you and/or your actions. At this level there is an outward and inward acceptance of what is being stated.
Level 4: This level is something we should all strive to master. Level 4 is really Level 3 plus a bonus. At this level we add our own positive feeling of ourselves to the compliment given. For example, if someone says, “that shirt looks really good on you”, you respond with an acknowledgment and then say something positive that you are feeling about yourself. For example, you might say, “yeah, I think it really accentuates my blue eyes”.
A major challenge with Level 4 is that we often feel like when someone gives us a compliment it is only appropriate to compliment them back. This is a bad habit that needs to be discarded right along with the other unhealthy traditions or patterns which we at times have mindlessly accepted and perpetuated. In actuality, most people feel like a compliment in exchange for a compliment has a more obligatory feel to it and comes across as less sincere. Another challenge with Level 4 acceptance is that people feel like complimenting oneself is synonymous with bragging or being prideful. Again, just a perpetuated distortion that needs to be tossed out with the trash.
4 - Choose Kind Friends
Our friends have a significant impact on us and how we feel about ourselves. It is important that your friends are not only kind to you but are also kind to themselves. The indirect contradiction inherent in scenarios where friends extend kindness to others but not to themselves makes it difficult to trust the sincerity of the act or expression offered. To have kind friends, one must be a kind friend too. A great slogan to follow is “Don’t lift someone else up by tearing yourself down and don’t tear someone else down to lift yourself up. Just lift”.
5 & 6 - Decrease Negative Self-Talk & Increase Positive Self-Talk…and Actions
“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” is clearly a messed up statement. Because of the damaging consequences of negative self-talk, we typically are the number one perpetrators in our own lives. Most of us are closet criticizers, bashing ourselves in our minds when no one else knows the better. We sadly engage in such negative thoughts many times a day. Have you ever stopped to consider or even calculate how much this adds up to over time? Over the weeks, months and years we have thousands upon thousands of counts of self-abuse - mental, emotional and verbal. It is time to correct the problem. Catching and correcting negative self-talk is tedious and difficult but it is possible and it is necessary. Get on it! Simply not being unkind to ourselves is a wonderful start but it is not enough to change how we actually feel about ourselves. We must actively love ourselves to achieve feeling differently about ourselves.
7 - Get Real with Comparisons
Stop trying to stop comparing yourself with others – it’s natural and is helpful when done in a healthy manner. Quit exaggerating and using faulty data in your comparisons. Bad data produces bad outcomes. We tend to generalize others’ greatness as well as our own perceived patheticness. We are vague and pull things out of context. Being accurate and honest about our weaknesses is not self-deprecating and can lead to efforts to improve ourselves or to change our expectations and goals. Be humble in your comparisons. Humility is not just an ability and willingness to acknowledge our mistakes and weaknesses but also a willingness and ability to acknowledge our successes and strengths. Don’t try to rescue others in their attempts to acknowledge their own weaknesses and mistakes. Offer comfort and support but let them own it. Don’t seek excuses for your own weaknesses and mistakes. Own them. Seek comfort and support from others. Celebrate others' successes as well as your own!
8 - Make and Keep Commitments to Self
We have a bad habit of giving ourselves the leftovers. When we constantly and continually prioritize others’ needs over our own, we set up a feedback loop that, over time, convinces us that we, as well as our needs and wants, are not as important as others. Distortions set in. We begin to put others before ourselves, not out of deliberate decision making and love but rather because we believe we don’t deserve to prioritize our own needs. This becomes problematic, contributes to a lack of self-acceptance and can cause significant damage to our identity. Constantly and continually serving only ourselves is selfish and so understanding the difference between self-care and selfishness is extremely important. To put our own needs and wants on the same general level as others is not a selfish practice but a practice in self-care, and when we take care of our own needs we have more energy and bandwidth to share with others.
9 - Accept What You Can’t Change
Most of us understand the idea and accept it without argument but we rarely actually operationalize it. It is often left as a vague idea in the back of our minds and ends up contributing more to guilt and anxiety than acceptance and peace. Get concrete with this concept! We really make progress with this principle when we write down the things we can influence and the things we cannot and then consider concrete and deliberate ways we can create acceptance. Maybe it will be keeping perspective or acknowledging and processing your feelings (even when it is painful), maybe it will be letting go or practicing the skill of patience, maybe it will be choosing not to dwell on a past decision that can’t be changed or choosing to compromise. Maybe it will be lowering expectations or searching for how you can grow and thrive, despite what can’t be. Make the lists. Process through it with someone you trust. Decide how you will achieve the acceptance.
