Self Acceptance at No Cost
If you only give yourself kindness when you’ve done everything right, are you really giving yourself kindness? Sometimes it’s easier to look in the mirror and ignore the parts you don’t like, or ask those parts to get better. Maybe you think, oh I’m not good at this now but one day I will be and when I do that will be the day.
But you can’t afford to wait for self acceptance — you need it now.
While you beat yourself up for this or that flaw, the root of it starts to rot. If you ignore your pain, you still have pain. And more often than not, you have even more pain. The layers of what actually hurts added to the layers of denying yourself love and attention continue to build until eventually all you have is darkness you don’t know or understand.
You need to feel the warmth of your own love.
Sometimes when we take that self inventory, we put distance between us and the parts of us that we don’t identify with. Maybe you’re uncomfortable with conflict, or you get jealous in this way that feels incongruent with your thoughts on your relationships. And sometimes you might look at that discomfort as a thing you need to fix, or a thing you don’t like about yourself. But the problem comes when you punish those parts of you by withdrawing your self acceptance.
The parts of your identities that are most difficult for you are the parts that need your love most.
If you can give light to the darkest corners of your identity, then you have the opportunity to understand and work with them. And, if it’s a thing you still want to change, you can do that with acceptance and compassion. It might sound like “I understand that it’s hard for me to feel secure for reasons that predate who I am today, and I can work towards a perspective or behavior that brings me more peace.”
Self acceptance isn’t the end goal. It’s a way of being.
There is no perfectionism is self love. It’s a skill you use every day — a way you move about your world more softly. As you build the skill of self acceptance, you’ll come to forgive yourself for having such unrealistic expectations. You’ll come to be gentle with how you understand yourself and you’ll build this internal ecosystem of shameless processing, allowing you the freedom of knowing yourself. Self acceptance is the skill that keeps our fears from outgrowing us and instead helps us outgrow our fears.
You can start with the thing you’ve been avoiding.
Whatever it is, bring it center to your mind. Give it the space to be as full as it needs to be and resist the urge to contain any darkness. Now, ask why it might be here. How did this come to you? Where does it come from? What might it be trying to do? Take time to peel back any misunderstanding you’ve had of this darkness and extend compassion to its existence. Find gratitude for it. Even when it’s hard, love yourself enough to live in the light.
