Having a lack in self acceptance can hinder your personal growth and every other area in your life. It can affect your confidence and prevent you from unlocking your full potential. Self acceptance is accepting yourself and all of your personality traits as they are, no matter if they’re positive or negative. Practicing self acceptance and self love is extremely important for ourselves. We need to fully accept who we are so we can improve our self-confidence, self compassion and our emotions.
To get an idea of your own self acceptance, look at these signs. If you regularly experience one or more of them, you may be struggling with low self acceptance.
- You have difficult acknowledging the not so good things in your life, like failures, weaknesses and negative traits about ourselves.
- Your outlook on life is negative for no particular reason.
- You find yourself to be hypercritical of yourself and unsure of who you are/your identity.
Here are some things to help build your self acceptance (remember: this does not happen overnight!)
1. Practice gratitude. Write down 5 things you’re grateful for. This may prove to be hard at first, especially if we tend to focus on the negatives of things. Practicing gratitude can help us train our brain to focus on the positives in our lives. Look for things about your ‘flaws’ to be grateful for as well.
2. Practice self compassion! A good way to start is with forgiveness. Forgive yourself for mistakes you’ve made through a letter or even a self-sent email, and forgive yourself for things you’ve continued to punish and resent yourself for.
3. Learn from your mistakes. We have to make mistakes and go through failures to be successful, whether we look forward to it or not. Adopting a mindset of growth when coming across mistakes is important. Remember that others make mistakes as well, so try to practice acceptance of others. This will also help you personally.
4. Set a goal. Setting up realistic goals and celebrating yourself when you have accomplished these is a boost for accepting what you can actually do. Setting small goals first and proceeding to add bigger goals on is a way to development.
5. Choose your support system wisely. Think of the way the people you surround yourself with speak to you; positively or negatively? When you identify the negative people, ask yourself if it would be smart to spend less time with them, or even detaching yourself from them completely. Surround yourself with as many positive people as you can who celebrate you, appreciate you, and catch you when you need some lifting.
Overall, you need to accept yourself to access and acknowledge all of the things you can do. With self acceptance, you dont need anyones validation but your own, and learning this technique can guide you into taking better care of your mental health as well. If you need more guidance in this department, I’m your guy! Book a session with me today and we can get you on the road to self acceptance ASAP.
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