One Great Way To Practice Self-Acceptance
In the last post I talked about the 3 Magical Ways Self-Acceptance Will Change Your Life. Practicing self-acceptance makes our relationships better, it makes our work better, and it helps us to achieve our dreams. Treating ourselves in this kind and positive way can be remarkably effective in making us happier, fast.
But it’s not always as easy as it seems
One reason it can be hard to be more accepting of ourselves is because we have the wrong idea about what self-acceptance really means — we have the mistaken idea that it means being lazy or unfulfilled. Many of us have grown up with messages that we must get ahead and do well — and of course there’s nothing wrong with wanting to achieve success.
It’s just that we tend to go through life bullying and struggling to prove ourselves all we really do is sabotage that success. Once we get clear that self-acceptance can actually be a tool, a method to help us create success it makes it easier to consider treating ourselves in this kinder way.
Our subconscious mind dictates our thinking and behaving
It’s easy to decide I’ll just accept myself more, be kinder to myself, stop criticising myself — but that’s not always something we can maintain. This is because our non-accepting ways are caused by limiting beliefs, often formed long ago and lodged firmly in our subconscious mind, and much of the time our subconscious mind dictates our thinking and behaving without our even recognising it.
The way we speak to ourselves for example; very often using words like ‘I should’ or ‘I must,’ is a sign that we’re putting too much pressure on ourselves. It’s as though we believe we’re not enough and so we ‘should’ strive to be more.
It makes good sense then that training our thinking to be more positive and accepting is going to be a big help. I’ve used the The Tweaking Thoughts Exercise to help hundreds of people let go of their need to prove and start to be more self-accepting. You can get a copy of that here. The Tweaking Thoughts Exercise.
It’s one of the exercises from my book, Out Of Fear Into Love: Life doesn’t have to be a struggle.
An important aspect of the The Tweaking Thoughts Exercise is that its not about trying to think in the complete opposite way of your usual self talk. Rather it’s about learning to tweak your thoughts to something less harsh, something kinder and more rational. This will rewire your neural pathways so that your thoughts naturally become more self-accepting and less judgmental.
It’s helpful to remember that living life from a place of fear never helps us to be happy. Living life from a place of love on the other hand always helps us to be happier.
So give yourself a break, speak to yourself in kinder ways, allow yourself to have ‘off’ days, step back and breathe, and its ok to ask others to help you.
There’s nothing to prove. There’s only you, and you are eternally good enough — plus.
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In Kindness
Marlene Rose Shaw
