The Self-Acceptance Formula

Self-Acceptance was a huge struggle for me for a very long time. It wasn’t very clear to me why, but it was clear to me that self-acceptance was definitely not my strong suit. The word itself says it… to accept yourself, good or bad. I just couldn’t do it and I had no idea why. It was almost like an automatic habitual attribute, or way of thinking. At some point I arrived at the point where I wanted to start thinking differently of myself. Self-acceptance is a huge step in growth and I was ready to take it.

Self-acceptance plays a major role when it comes to being truly happy in life. It is the attitude of fully seeing and accepting yourself just as you are, with the good, the bad and the ugly. That can be a challenging task. Especially if you’ve been told by the surrounding people all throughout your life that you aren’t good enough. Or that you will never accomplish anything. Or never been called beautiful or good looking. So how are you supposed to see something positive in yourself?

Self-Acceptance of Everything You Come With

It’s interesting to me how we have a tendency to often accept others just as they are, but truly struggle when it comes to ourselves. It sounds a lot simpler than it is. To accept yourself completely as you are, with all the personality traits you come with… because it is not easy to do when you’ve constantly had people around you that had the ‘fixer syndrome’ wanting to ‘fix’ you. The people that were supposed to love and accept you, have been the ones trying to push you into changing for them. So you started to accept that as the truth and that’s what’s been making it hard for you to accept yourself.

I get it… why should you accept yourself when you constantly have people pointing out the things that are wrong in you and should be changed, right? But that’s when the huge growth comes in… You separate yourself from what you’ve been told and truly start to love yourself just as you are. I’m telling you, it changes so many things for the good. It feels absolutely amazing. You get to start seeing yourself from a completely different point of view. It changes so many other things around you for the good.

The Change from Rejection to Self-Acceptance

Of course this isn’t something that changes from one moment to the other, so you’ll have to be patient with yourself. There will also be people around you that either hold you back from the great change, some that will lack to support you (maybe because they can’t, due to the fact of lack of knowledge or ability because of their inability to accept themselves…). When there are people, going forward, that try to keep pointing out the negative in you, brush it off and remind yourself that there will always be people pointing out negative things in others, no matter what. Remember when we talked about the narcissists? That’s one of their strong suits… don’t let it hold you back from your growth in your journey.

Accept yourself with all your attributes, good or bad. Self-acceptance just as love needs to be unconditional in order to be the true, or real kind. As you start doing that, you will start feeling a satisfaction, joy, a gratitude you haven’t been able to feel before.

Humans Make Mistakes

You are a human being… Humans come with weaknesses, perhaps bad past choices and flaws we might not be the happiest with. But as much as you come with those, so does every other human on this earth. In some humans we might see them quicker, while others can hide them much better with the imposter syndrome, but we all have them. And that’s okay. It is completely okay! Accept them, accept you. It is okay. The best thing you can do is learn and do better. But you can’t change what has already happened, so there is no reason to still beat yourself up about it.

Someone told me that self-acceptance is related to happiness. When I first started the process of self-acceptance in the journey, I had to know how. He said that ‘the more accepting you are of yourself, the more happiness you accept and enjoy…’! I was blown away. He made a strong point. Because I couldn’t accept myself, I wasn’t able to accept happiness. Instead, I kept running after pointing out the negative things in my life and the things that were not going good, instead of switching my focus to the good, the things to be grateful and thankful for. Maybe I am a mess, but I am a beautiful mess 😊.

The Results of Self-Acceptance Overall

Believe it or not, self-acceptance has a huge impact on depression. When you get to the point of self-acceptance, it helps you to overcome the fear of failure. Self-acceptance helps you break free from co-dependency and the desire to be approved by others… it gives you power back that you’ve given others without even realizing it. With self-accepting yourself, you’ll get to feel that feeling of freedom you’ve been longing so long for.

When you start accepting yourself, just as you are, you start seeing your value and your worth. With that, you won’t let other people over-run you any longer. You won’t allow others to use you anymore. As you go, taking one step at a time, your self-esteem starts increasing and you’ll start seeing amazing changes.

I’m not going to lie, there might be some painful moments in the process too… There could be people that will start separating from you, but I will say, that’s a good thing. Because those are not really the people you want to keep in your life, at least not as friends. Some people might separate, or distance to an acquaintance level, because you are no longer ‘benefitting’ them. That shows you that they only used you for their own good. They are not willing to accept the great changes you are making in your life.

Other Improvements for Accepting Yourself

Neurologists have shown with proof that self-acceptance has a huge influence on mental health. It was shown in several researches that self-acceptance helps to get anxiety and your stress level in better control. When you accept yourself, it will help you to reach the goals you set for yourself. Once you start accepting yourself, you’ll start taking the first steps to loving yourself (which we will talk about later on as well 😉).

Alrighty, let’s get to the steps that help the process of self-acceptance. One of my biggest weaknesses was to compare myself to others. That’s a big no no when it comes to self-acceptance. You are not them and they are not you… so there is no purpose of comparison. Surround yourself with people that accept you, support you and believe in you. Accept and understand that you (as every other human being) will make mistakes.

Be Patient, One Step at a Time

Take small steps at a time… every time you recognize a strength of yours, celebrate it. Start to develop self-compassion, that will also help you get through hard times life throws at you. As cheesy as it may sound, I went and purchased white board markers to write notes of affirmation on my bathroom mirror. Every morning when I first got out of bed, it would be the first thing I would see. That would remind me every day to affirm myself and accept myself just as I am.

Look up inspiring quotes, or scriptures. Something that uplifts you when you feel like you’re about to fall back into old ways. Start writing things down you are grateful for (even small, general things… trust me, it will shift your whole way of thinking as you go). At first, I wasn’t sure what to be grateful for when it wasn’t an obvious, big thing. But once I started to be grateful even for smaller ‘obvious’ things, I started seeing so many things around me on a daily basis, that I’ve taken for granted and never should have.

Try to catch yourself when you are criticizing yourself in the moment and tell yourself that you are doing and giving your best right where you are.

Celebrate, Celebrate, Celebrate

Remember how we talked about that list of goals and accomplishments recently? When you feel down, pull that list out and remind yourself of all the great things that have been checked off already. Another list that also helps is a list of the things and hurdles that have been overcome already. It is always encouraging and uplifting.

One of the big things that has to be started and done going forward: FORGIVE YOURSELF! Recognize and acknowledge your mistakes. Then look into it and what the lesson in it is that you can learn from. After that, let it go!

I will finish with saying this: Embrace your uniqueness. Think of things that make you, YOU! Embrace those things. As you start recognizing them, start thinking about how those things benefit you as you go. Also, make sure you identify and recognize your strengths. Write down what you love to do (that’s why it’s so important to find out what it is that you like, are good at and are passionate about…).

Write out things you can’t change and let them go. I wrote myself a letter with things I’ve held on so long for and threw it away to let it all go. It helped more than you can imagine. Set goals, keep them realistic, and make sure you celebrate the moments when you reach them. Be proud of yourself as you go! There is so much more I could tell you, but I don’t want to keep you on this blog for too long. For now, I will wish you a phenomenal coming week. I hope it will be a really good week for you and can’t wait to hear how everything is going for you. Always keep in mind, you are not alone in this at all and you are doing all this hard work for yourself, anybody else’s opinion does not matter in this. Keep going!