It’s rare that people are completely satisfied with their appearance or intellectual ability. Much more often they try hard to pretend to be someone else just to impress people. The bigger the gap between your real self and the person you seek to seem, the less attractive you are. It means you are far from self-acceptance and barely like yourself.
There are many guides and blogs on how to become strong, clever, smooth, and charming to attract people. The authors of these articles preach the basics of body language, teach how to choose the right place on a first date, how to read facial expressions and gestures and make eye contact. All these tips work but only if you like yourself to begin with. Neither understanding body language nor eye gazing works if you don’t feel attractive. The point is you will be interesting to other people only if you are interesting to yourself. To achieve this, you need to learn how to take care of yourself. First of all, it means practicing self-acceptance.
What does it mean to accept yourself?
Celebrating Your Strengths
Each of us has strengths, but people often devalue them because they consider themselves not good enough. However, it would help if you did exactly the opposite. Recognize your merits. Try to note even those of your strengths that seem trifling. Believe me, there are no trifles here. Don’t reduce your strengths list to just the skills. Find some words to compliment your personality traits such as kindness, sympathy, intelligence, artistic taste and so on.
Appreciating Your Accomplishments
Recognize your achievements, even those you consider not worth a straw. Raising the bar of success, you don’t see what you’ve already achieved and it makes you hate yourself. If you think of yourself as a loser, it is only because you have made up an ideal image of yourself. However, the truth is that there is no ideal. Chasing the illusions, you devalue your accomplishments. It won’t help you to like yourself and get self-acceptance.
Forgiving Your Own Mistakes
First of all, recognize that people stumble all the time. As they said in The Simpsons, “Everybody makes mistakes, that’s why there’s an eraser on the pencil.” However, our inner critic can be ruthless and we need to learn how to quiet him. Stop self-condemnation. When a harsh voice comes in, acknowledge your mistake out loud and add that you forgive yourself. It also helps to recognize the consequences of a mistake and think about them as a learning experience. Ask yourself, what have I learned from it? It’s a good way torward self-acceptance. Treat yourself as you already like yourself!
Self-acceptance is unconditional—you recognize your positive and negative parts but still like yourself.
Developing Self-Compassion, Especially in Difficult Times
This point follows directly from the previous one. Stop being your worst critic, especially when going through tough times. Understand that you don’t have anyone closer than yourself. You are the person who spends the whole life with you – each day, from the first to the last breath. So, is it really worth scourging your closest and beloved friend?
There is a remarkable book “Enlightening Gestalt: Waking Up from the Nightmare” by Gestalt therapist John Enright you can buy. This thought-provoking practical guide might help you to become a better version of yourself and achieve self-acceptance.
Expressing Your Thoughts and Feelings by Writing Notes
If you are not used to revealing your feelings and thoughts to someone, try to write them down on paper. Firstly, it helps to understand what is happening to you right now, which can help avoid hasty decisions. Secondly, it makes the feelings less intense, which means they are easier to digest in a healthy way. With the help of such notes, you will better understand yourself and your desires, and become calmer and more confident in yourself.
Focusing on What You are Grateful For
You do a lot for yourself and the people around you. You work, study, raise children, take care of parents, support friends, etc. Every day you spend a lot of energy. Learn to appreciate your work and you will get closer to self-acceptance. Make a list of things you are grateful for. Read it out loud. Even if your inner voice tries to interrupt you, whispering that you could be better and do more, focus on gratitude for what you have already done. It’s the path to self-acceptance. It will inevitably help you like yourself.
Stop Comparing Yourself to Others
A very important point for practicing self-acceptance: never compare yourself to others. Remember your uniqueness. You are the only one in the world and you have your own path. Accept reality for what it is. For example, when you see someone succeed in something, you see only the shiny side, not the path that the person had to go through to achieve that success. You don’t know how it feels to be in a prosperous person’s shoes.
Self-acceptance allows you to understand your personality which leads you to a happy life.
Avoid People Who Criticize You, Your Beliefs and Ideas
There is constructive criticism. It’s a good way of giving feedback that provides actionable suggestions. For example, your boss kindly tells you what you can improve in your work, or someone you trust assesses your new hairstyle if you ask them to do it. It is an altogether different thing when you don’t ask for an opinion, but people energetically dump it on you, criticizing your appearance, traits, ideas, and so on. Try to avoid talking to such people or firmly stop them if they say unpleasant things to you. Also, remember you don’t need to be perfect to escape criticism. The more you do for yourself, the more judgmental people around tend to be. As they say, the only way to avoid criticism is to do nothing.
Talk to Others About How You Are Feeling
Sharing feelings, especially hard ones, might be difficult, even if you express them in front of your close friend. However, emotion suppression may lead to anxiety, insomnia, and other devastating outcomes. Talking about your fears, likes, doubts, opinions, etc., reduces internal tension. It also helps you sort out your thoughts and find a solution to the problem. Besides, sharing your feelings with others allows them to understand you better and makes your relationships stronger because an open person is attractive. Talking about your feelings isn’t a sign of weakness. On the contrary, it shows that you care about yourself, like yourself and accept yourself with all your feelings.
Let Go of the Past
You can’t affect or change your past. You can only accept it. The most harmful thing you can do is torment yourself with thoughts that something could have been different. If it could, it would. Allow yourself to grieve the loss of a loved one, or your unrealized dreams. If you don’t do that, you run away from reality, therefore reducing the chances of changing something for the better. Concentrate on what you have now and take action to manage your issues based on that. Accepting the past is also a step to self-acceptance. You have become who you are because of experience gained in the past.
However, remember that your physical well-being is just as important as your mental one. Take care of yourself, and you will learn to accept and love yourself for just who you are.
Also, read my article about mistakes that you should avoid on your first date.