Taking Your Self-acceptance to the Next Level

Self-acceptance, self-love, and confidence are all different things. Self-acceptance requires knowing yourself whereas self-love and confidence are about making a value judgment about who you are and your worth. The first step in self-acceptance is radical honesty. This requires us to unpack what we truly believe about everything. This can seem daunting at first but over time becomes automatic. Embracing our biases and deciding which ones we want to keep allows us to develop a deeper understanding of where our opinions and judgment differ from what we have been taught. Giving yourself the freedom to embrace your desires is not the same as going after everything you desire. Once we understand our own value system, we can examine which of our values serve us best and invest time and effort into going after what will create the life of our dreams.

When we accept our desires without negative assumptions, we are on the path to deepening our self-acceptance and freeing ourselves from negative self-talk. Our brains are hardwired to protect us, so most negative self-talk is designed to protect. I know this can seem confounding because of the pain negative self-talk creates. The brain understands it as a preventative pain. That the pain of negative self-talk protects us from greater pain. When we accept our processes, we can look at what our negative self-talk is protecting us from, and with radical honesty on board, we can root out the foundational issues the are impeding our ability to have more good days than bad.

Investigating and embracing our foundational truths is something most people struggle with. Figuring out what our brain is protecting us from becomes easy when we create a space of self-acceptance. When we reflect on our processes for the purpose of acceptance, the brain naturally digs deeper. When we enter self-reflection with judgment on board, our thoughts become judgmental and distorted. When a judgmental thought intrudes reflection, interact with it to say “I’m going to put the judgment aside until I have the full picture of my motivation and desire”. When we do this, we often find that our motivation and desire are not the issue but rather our execution or failure to execute. Understanding of self makes it easier to see what lies beneath and drives behavior. To improve, we need safety and self-acceptance to provide that safety. Acceptance provides the permission structure to be your most actualized self.