ACCEPT YOURSELF

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

I often tell my clients that you need to accept yourself, love yourself. Often I hear something like the following:

"I look good, enjoy success with the opposite sex, so I love myself and accept."

"I drive such a car that it is simply impossible not to accept myself!"

"I have a great figure, I look after myself, I go in for sports, so everything is OK"

And I would nod in agreement, only there is one nuance: self-acceptance is UNCONDITIONAL! All the examples given are about self-esteem. When a person looked around at himself, and what he saw, he liked it. He appreciated it well.

Self-love and self-acceptance have no conditions. This is when "I love myself just like that. I love myself for nothing. Just because I am."

Healthy acceptance is when you no longer divide your qualities and traits into "strengths" and "weaknesses", into "weaknesses" and "strengths". There are simply - qualities, there is simply - features, features. And what is - suits. Nothing needs to be fought, nothing needs to be exterminated. There are only features that you need to take a closer look at, there are features, traits that you want to develop.

A person stops dividing himself into "bad" and "good". After all, when we define something in ourselves as "bad", then we want to do something about it: destroy, remake, change. That is, take and scrape off a piece of yourself. But man is initially integral. For full development, for successful self-realization, ALL of its features and properties are important. Absolutely all qualities and traits create a special, excellent uniqueness of each individual.

Accept yourself and love yourself - this is when I love myself, not only with my makeup and combed, but also when, with saliva slipping down my cheek, disheveled and sleepy, I tear myself off the pillow. Not only in a nice suit, but also in ordinary home clothes. Not only "in this car", but even without all the material attributes.

This is when, looking at yourself in the mirror, there is a feeling of overflowing warmth throughout the body, and a blissful satisfaction is felt in the heart. Such a state is possible with any material wealth, with any appearance, with any social status.

If, thinking of myself as a person, the idea comes to my mind that it costs me a little more to lose weight / pump up / earn extra money / learn / arrange my personal life / give birth to a child / lose my virginity and then I can love myself - then to the real, true self-love is still very far away.

Real self-development is possible from the state of self-acceptance. When I study, go in for sports, monitor my health, I read not in order to stop being stupid, thin, fat, ugly and somehow "not like that", but in order to become even better than I am NOW.

It is based on the statement "Everything is fine with me", but it can be done even better. There is no limit to perfection! Changing oneself from a desire to stop being bad, indecent, unloved turns into a neurotic race with one's own complexes.

Self-acceptance is respect for ANY of your thoughts, feelings, sensations. This is respect for your body, taking care of it out of a state of love and respect, and not trying to "adjust it to the modern norm." This is respect for their interests, values, internal norms. This is a reverent attitude to personal boundaries, to your inner world.

This is the feeling of oneself as the best friend, comrade, ally - to oneself. It is internal consistency, a sense of integrity. This is the world inside, the feeling of harmony with oneself. This is self-satisfaction now. Not there and then (when I was little, when I buy a car, when they get promoted), but right here and now.

Do one simple exercise. Right now, this is how you are sitting (or standing, or lying), feel your body, mentally "run" over it. Are you comfortable? Is it comfortable? Now, try, as if from the outside, to look at your thoughts, at their crazy rhythm. Just watch them for a bit, without trying to speed them up or stop them. Let them be. Listen to your heart, place your palm on your chest and feel the beating inside. Listen to your breathing, how your chest rises and falls. Track all your feelings. Now tell me - do you like what you felt? You listened to your feelings, the sensations of your body, tracked the flight of your thoughts (and maybe even flight!). How do you like that? Do you feel life in your body? Feel like a living, warm, breathing person with a living, beating heart inside?

This is not a difficult exercise, but it brings you back to yourself. To that person, about whom we all sometimes (or constantly) forget, living somewhere there. Either in the past or in the future. Or with her husband. Or with children. Or with your parents. But not with yourself. Not with the real one.

But it is precisely the feeling of being the way I am that I am - this is the first step towards self-acceptance. Because if we do not accept, then we do not accept either what was in the past or what is presented in the future. But it is impossible not to accept what is felt right now. Your breath. Your heartbeat. Living in your body. Warmly. Your feelings and sensations. Myself.