Self-Acceptance is the key to true happiness

Who you are is enough

Before we start the discussion

We hear so much about self-acceptance nowadays, but what is it actually? Does it mean accepting your weaknesses or negative habits? Does it mean accepting your behavior, attitude and life style, and doing nothing to change and improve? If you think so, the term self-acceptance seems not to be well understood by you.

Myths about self-acceptance

Self-acceptance does not mean that you accept what you are and do nothing to change and improve. It does not mean accepting your fate and life as it is.

Accepting yourself as you are is only the first step. It helps you realize your good, and not so good qualities, and can alleviate feelings of guilt, lack of self-esteem and unhappiness. Becoming aware and acknowledging your behaviour, habits and your personality, and not being afraid to look at yourself as you are, is an important step to self-acceptance. 

It is so easy to give in to laziness and to find excuses for leaving everything as it is. Accepting your behaviour and weaknesses, and doing nothing to improve, is not the right kind of self-acceptance. It does not contribute to real progress and improvement.

So, what self-acceptance really is?

Self-acceptance is the satisfaction or contentment with yourself and your position, and it is a fundamental pillar of mental health and well-being. It involves a realistic understanding and appreciation of one's strengths and weaknesses. Someone who has developed self-acceptance recognizes their unique worth and has a compassionate attitude towards themselves. They know their limits, but they are not held back by irrational limiting beliefs.

When you accept yourself as you are, you put yourself in a better position to begin improving yourself. Knowing yourself affords you the possibility to see what you can do to improve yourself and your life. Improvement requires that you understand and acknowledge your character and habits, stop comparing yourself and your achievements to others, and acknowledging your skills or the lack of them. This will bring some sort of inner peace, lightness and happiness, like getting rid of a burden.

Each day is a new opportunity to strive to be the very best version of you. Why should we waste time putting ourselves down? When the truth is there is always going to be someone smarter, prettier, someone more athletic and someone "better." We all have our faults, but that doesn't give us a reason to think ourselves unworthy or undeserving of happiness. We are who we are, and individuality is an important value to have.

Happiness and self-acceptance go hand in hand. Your level of self-acceptance determines your level of happiness. You enjoy as much happiness as you believe you're worthy of. I think that in today's society it's hard to step back from busy everyday life and realize what is important. You have to take the time to appreciate yourself. Acknowledging the value within ourselves and who we truly are is challenging, but the reward outweighs the challenges.

"You really have to look inside yourself and find your own inner strength, and say, "I'm proud of what I am and who I am, and I'm just going to be myself."

-Mariah Carey

Live in now, not in past

Self-acceptance is embracing yourself as you are right now, regardless of your past. It is important to understand how to be consciously present in the moment and what that can do for you in your everyday life.

Self-awareness plays a big role in self-acceptance. As you develop the ability to gain knowledge about yourself you will become more and more able to accept and improve those areas where you lack confidence.

Self-acceptance takes some work. You have to be able to get to a place where you know and understand who you are, and that means that you will likely have to make some changes. Self-acceptance also means that you may have to face some fears and step outside of your comfort zone. It’s about being able to separate who you are from what you’ve done. It’s about understanding that everyone makes mistakes, and that's how we learn and grow.

Accepting yourself doesn’t necessarily mean liking every aspect of yourself. That will come later, with self-love. It means being willing and able to experience everything you think, feel, or do, even if you don't always like it. If you don’t accept yourself, you will feel ashamed or embarrassed about who you are.

Nobody is perfect, so are you

Nobody is perfect and everyone has insecurities. If you are comparing yourself to others, stop it right now! It will be a constant choke hold on your confidence. There will always be someone somewhere who is smarter and more successful. That does not mean they are any better than you. There are things that you excel at that other people wish they could do!

A very important part of acceptance is to understand that you don't necessarily have to like things you accept. Acceptance is not the same as approval. If you accept it, don’t think that you are approving of it. A great example of this is the fact that peer pressure is very prevalent in our society. I accept that, but it doesn’t mean that I approve of it. So there can be things about yourself that you disapprove of, but can still accept, in order to achieve absolute confidence.

Why you might lack self-acceptance

A lack of self-acceptance happens for a couple of reasons:

Not being accepted or loved unconditionally as a child. People who have had to experience that pain, will go through life being internally motivated to compensate for that lack of acceptance by seeking it in their relationships with other people.

If the most important people in your life do not accept you as you are, or they are trying to change you this will greatly impact your level of self-acceptance.

Low self-esteem can easily carry on into adulthood, interfering with a person’s ability to lead a fulfilling, healthy life. One of the most important things to know is that low self-esteem is not an accurate reflection of reality or something set in stone. Sometimes the cause of low self-esteem may be rooted, to some degree, in reality, but the idea that your feelings about yourself can’t be changed is simply not accurate.

Uninvolved/Negligent Parents: In many cases, and particularly when we’re young, our feelings about ourselves are heavily influenced by how others feel about and treat us – especially our parents or guardians. This can cause significant self-acceptance problems for young people, as those who are supposed to care for them most may not seem to.

Negative Peers: Just as the way we’re treated by parents or guardians can greatly influence our self-esteem, so can the way we’re treated by peers. Being part of a social group that brings you down – by not respecting you, by pressuring you to do things you’re not comfortable with, by not valuing your thoughts and feelings, etc. – can cause you to feel like something is wrong with you, or that the only way for you to be liked is to do what others want and not listen to your own heart and mind. This is very damaging to how you see and accept yourself.

Trauma:  Abuse – whether physical, emotional, sexual or a combination of these – often causes feelings of shame and even guilt. A person may feel that he or she did something to deserve the abuse, that he or she was not worthy of the respect, love and care of the abuser. People who have suffered abuse may have a significant amount of anxiety and depression associated with the event as well, which can interfere with a person’s ability to lead a fulfilling life.

Body image: Shape of our body is a huge factor in young people’s self-esteem. From the moment we’re born, we’re surrounded by unrealistic images of what women should look like, what the “ideal” body type is. Women’s bodies are constantly objectified in the media, making it seem as though their bodies exist for others. Many young men struggle with low self-esteem associated with weight and body composition – particularly concerning muscle mass. The body of a man is not so much treated in our culture as an object for others, but as a sign of his masculinity. Young men may feel pressured to develop large muscles as a show of strength and manliness; they may also feel self-conscious about their height.

Am I important: It’s easy for young people to feel swallowed up in a world beyond their control. This leads to feelings of ineffectiveness, powerlessness and worthlessness. Though most people don’t experience it until adulthood, it’s possible for young people to go through the infamous “existential crisis” – a time when the meaning of his or her life is called into question. Why am I here? What do I matter? An inability to answer these questions can pose a significant challenge for one’s sense of self-worth.

Unrealistic Goals:  Whether the pressure comes from themselves, authority figures or peers, some young people expect way too much of themselves in terms of school achievement, extracurricular involvement and/or social status. Those who struggle academically may think they should be getting straight A’s all the time; those who perform well academically may try to take on too many other activities and expect to be “the best” at all of them. Young people who crave popularity may expect everyone to like them – something that simply doesn’t happen, because, no matter who you are, you can’t please everyone. The inevitable failure to meet unrealistic goals may lead to the feeling that you are a failure in general.

Previous Bad Choices:  Sometimes we get locked into a certain pattern of decision-making and acting. Perhaps you haven’t been a very good friend in the past. Maybe you didn’t apply yourself in school. Maybe you participated in risky behaviours like drug use or unprotected sex. You might think you’re just “the kind of person” who behaves in those ways. You may even dislike yourself significantly because of past choices, but don’t think you can change courses now. Therefore, you won’t try. You’ll continue making choices that reinforce your own negative self-view.

Negative Thought Patterns:  When you get used to feeling, thinking and talking about yourself in a particular way, it becomes habit. If you have often felt that you’re worthless or inferior, if you constantly think negative thoughts and say negative things about yourself, then you’re likely to go on feeling and thinking the same way unless you break the cycle by challenging your negative thoughts and feelings about yourself.

The above eight causes of low self-esteem aren’t the only ones, but they’re fairly common. The last one – the development of negative thought patterns – may be responsible for the persistence of low self-esteem in most people, regardless of the initial causes.

What is ‘Self-Acceptance Psychology’?

Self-Acceptance Psychology™ is a simple, but powerful new paradigm to describe and understand human behaviour. It challenges the traditional ways of defining “mental disorders,” yet is based on well-accepted and well-researched psychological concepts.

Self-Acceptance Psychology reframes emotional and behavioural problems as adaptive and self-protective responses to fear, trauma, shame, and lack of secure attachment. This conceptual framework has many benefits and can lead to long-term, permanent change. Self-Acceptance Psychology:

• explains human emotional, cognitive, and behavioural patterns as natural, predictable responses to real threats or perceived fears
• is based on facts and scientific research, and hence is accurate and reliable
• is a simple, transparent, and understandable conceptual framework accessible to clinicians and the public
• behavioural explanations lead directly to effective methods of therapeutic intervention and self-help
• provides hope for permanent change through research-proven strategies of mindful self compassion leading to self-acceptance

Self-Acceptance and Self-Kindness

The first attitude fundamental to self-acceptance is to be kind and compassionate about your own self. You are who you are. Make the best of it, and envy no one for what he or she is. Don’t draw comparisons between you and others: Encourage yourself, rather, in your efforts to attain your own highest potential.

Self-acceptance will come progressively as you try to live up to the highest that is in you. Unless you are already in sub-consciousness, you cannot but recognize the fact that an inner conflict exists between your soul’s call to the heights, and the siren call of temptation to the depths. You can’t laugh off soul-longing, though you may try.

True conscience is innate. It is the silent voice of the soul. To achieve self-acceptance, you must be clear in your true conscience. Such clarity comes only when we accept that our higher Self is our eternal reality.

Needless to say, one doesn’t achieve this degree of self-acceptance in a single leap. So long as you sincerely resist your lower impulses, and strive toward your own inner heights, your conscience will be reasonably clear, and you will find yourself able to achieve that measure of emotional and psychic relaxation.

Self-acceptance makes it possible for one to view others also in their own higher nature, and to accept that potential as their own reality. Only from within will it ever be possible for you to know others truly. When you relate to their heart from your own, you will find that they, too, respond to you from that heart in themselves. Heart speaks to heart, soul speaks to soul, and recognizes itself in an infinity of manifestations.

Acceptance leads to the second attitude necessary for finding your own self, i.e.  kindness. To achieve that clarity of conscience which is the companion of self-acceptance, you should practice kindness also toward yourself. You’ll never overcome your failings by hating your shortcomings, nor by hating yourself for indulging in them. Of course, you shouldn’t allow kindness to excuse them. In true kindness to yourself, you should work, rather, to strengthen yourself in virtue. Seek always your own highest potentials. If this means being stern with yourself occasionally, so be it. But never be judgmental.

Kindness is necessary also for understanding other people. In fact, without it, there can never be acceptance of them. By kind acceptance you will find yourself intuitively aware of them.

“I wish I could show you, when you are lonely or in darkness, the astonishing light of your  own being”  ~ Hafiz

Self-Acceptance and Emotional Abandonment

Emotional abandonment means to run away from fulfilling your emotional needs like self-love and self-acceptance. Even young children will entertain thoughts as, “I don’t like myself” and “I’m not worthy” and carry these thoughts throughout their lives.

People tend to think of abandonment as something physical, like neglect. Loss of physical closeness due to death, divorce, and illness is also an emotional abandonment. It also happens when our emotional needs aren’t being met in the relationship — including in our relationship with ourselves. And although loss of physical closeness can lead to emotional abandonment, the reverse isn’t true. Physical closeness doesn’t mean our emotional needs will be met. Emotional abandonment may happen when the other person is right beside us.

In order to get our emotional needs met, not only do we need to know what they are, but we must value them and often actually ask for them to be met. Most people think they shouldn’t have to ask, but after the first rush of romance when strong hormones drive behavior, many couples get into routines that lack intimacy. They may even say loving things to each other or “act” romantic, but there’s no intimacy and closeness. As soon as the “act” is over, they return to their disconnected, lonely state.

Healing Inner Wounds

Everyone encounters some form of pain on their life’s journey. It begins in childhood and continues throughout life and none are immune to it. How you respond to your inner wounds will determine your attitude and actions throughout life.

Reversing this trend is possible. Quite often, therapy is required to heal the wounds of childhood. Much of this is done through the relationship with a trusted, empathic therapist over time. It also entails examination of the past and both feeling and understanding the impact of the parenting we received. Goals include not only accepting the past, which doesn’t necessarily mean approving it, but more importantly separating out our self-concept from the actions of our parents.

Feeling worthy of love is essential to attracting and maintaining it. In the same way that we might shun a compliment we don’t feel we deserve, we will not be interested and able to sustain a relationship with someone who is generous in loving us.

Practice Self compassion as a healing method for your emotional wounds. Self-compassion does not mean feeling sorry for yourself and it is not self-pity. It means developing a nurturing relationship with yourself foremost. Similarly, self-compassion is not a sign of weakness. It implies being your own guardian, best friend and healer. It’s considered that self-compassion and self-acceptance are essential ingredients to living a fulfilling life, more so than high self-esteem.

Self-compassion and self-acceptance means to eliminate expectations of oneself. It starts with the smallest gesture of loving yourself when you’re angry, scared, confused or tired. Start cultivating a supportive inner dialogue instead of allowing the inner critic to take hold. Learn to embrace your worthiness.

It begins by gazing into the mirror and declaring you are worthy of love. Notice the feelings and sensations that arise as you make the declaration. Some people are brought to tears while others delight in the self-affirming dialogue. Become your own best friend and soul mate.

“The worst loneliness is to not be comfortable with yourself.” ― Mark Twain

How to enhance your Self-esteem and embrace Self-acceptance:

You are much more than the situations in your life and the judgments of those around you. A big part of what defines you is how you react, adapt and respond to such circumstances. There are things you can do, here and now, to change how you feel about yourself. The first step is to realize that this can only come from within you. Raising your self-esteem will require a combination of changing the way you think and changing what you do. Here are some proven methods to boost your self-esteem and live a fulfilling life.

Pick positive peers: You’re in control of who you give your time and energy to. It’s easy to pick friends based on who’s most popular; while this crowd may boost your social status, it can also clobber your self-esteem when your “friends” put you down or encourage you to do things you’re not comfortable with or proud of. You need friends you can be yourself with, who value the person you really are. Surrounding yourself with supportive friends who care about you can help you maintain a healthy level of self-esteem.

Get help for trauma: Counselling and therapy sessions for trauma is very important. If you’re not comfortable talking with parents or guardians about trauma, consider asking them if you can see a therapist or counsellor for reasons you’d rather reserve for private sessions.

Psychotherapists and life coaches can help you come out of the emotional pain that either you might be undergoing now, or, you might have experienced in the past and still holding on to. Healing can break the cage of trauma and set you free.

Start thinking about your body differently: It’s not easy to stop seeing our bodies as objects for pleasing others or meeting some pre-established standard. But we can change the way we think about them. Your body is the house of your soul; it’s the vehicle through which you experience, navigate and have an impact on the world. When thought about from this perspective, there is no ideal body type. The way your body looks and what others think of it become far less important than how well it functions. Both men and women with body image issues run the risk of relying on their bodies to attest to their worth, rather than using them as instruments with which to pursue worthwhile goals in the world. By shifting your thoughts about your body, you gain a very different sense for how it should be and how you can attain that goal. Rather than destructive practices, you adopt healthy eating and exercise habits to improve your physical well-being. When you’re chasing an unrealistic “ideal,” you always feel far away from it. When you make healthy changes, though, you’re immediately helping your body work better.

Get involved in something bigger than yourself: One of the best ways to find meaning in your life is to get involved in something bigger than yourself, to have an effect on the world around you. Start by acknowledging the fact that, out of over seven billion people on the planet, not one is like you. Sure, you may have lots in common with many people, but none of them has your exact perspective, experience, interests, desires and goals. Use this to boost your sense of self-worth, and think about how to be of help to people in the world around you.

Set realistic goals: Realistic goals set you up for a sense of accomplishment, for something to be proud of. Don’t try to be better than others. Aim to work well with them. Also, set reasonable social goals. Aim for cultivating a few meaningful relationships rather than a plethora of shallow ones. Don’t expect everyone to like you; this just doesn’t happen. It’s hard, but remind yourself that your worth is not determined by the judgments of others.

Forgive yourself: What you’ve done in the past does not have to determine your course of action and decision-making from here on out. It’s important to forgive yourself – not to let yourself “off the hook,” but to accept that some of the choices you’ve made were not the best and resolve to do better in the future.

Challenge negative thought patterns: Breaking the cycle of negative thought patterns requires some persistence, but the process is fairly simple. Start by identifying negative thoughts. By replacing baseless negative thoughts with more realistic and constructive ones, you give yourself a chance whereas before you would have given up or not tried – you make it possible to prove your old negative thoughts wrong. Another way to counteract negative thoughts about yourself is to make a list of your strengths. It’s easy to focus on the things we don’t like about ourselves and to ignore the things we may actually love; this prevents us from cultivating our strengths. The first step toward doing so is acknowledging them.

Let’s sum it up

Self-acceptance is not a luxury but a vitally important psychological need. Its survival value is obvious. To face life with assurance rather than anxiety and self-doubt is to enjoy an inestimable advantage: one’s judgments and actions are less likely to be distorted and misguided.

The foundation of the practice of living consciously is respect for the facts of reality, respect for truth – recognition that that which is, is. Such a practice reflects the understanding that to place consciousness in an adversarial relationship to existence – to evade or dismiss reality – is to invite destruction. To work at cultivating such awareness within oneself is a noble pursuit, even a heroic one, because truth is sometimes frightening or painful, and the temptation to close one’s eyes is sometimes strong.

Whether the awareness we need to expand pertains to the external world or the world within ourselves, to strive for greater clarity of perception and understanding, to move always in the direction of heightened mindfulness, to revere truth above the avoidance of fear or pain, is to commit ourselves to spiritual growth – the continuing development of our ability to see. Whatever other virtue we may aspire to, this one is its base.

The practice of self-acceptance is the application of this virtue specifically to oneself. Self-acceptance is realism – meaning respect for reality – concerning ourselves. It is the acceptance of our thoughts, emotions, and behaviour – not necessarily in the sense of liking, condoning, or admiring – but in the sense of not denying or disowning. Self-acceptance is my willingness to stand in the presence of my thoughts, feelings, and actions, with an attitude that makes approval or disapproval irrelevant: the desire to be aware.

Accept yourself unconditionally, you don’t need other people to approve you.