The Power of Self Acceptance

One phrase you hear a lot but many people have a tendency to misuse or misinterpret, is self acceptance. It can be an incredibly powerful tool if it’s properly used.

What many people get wrong about self acceptance is that they assume it's either weakness or giving up, when, in actuality, it takes an incredibly strong person to understand their own faults and fix those faults. Some people say don't worry about the small things but I believe that understanding the small things can actually lead to big things. When ignore something, then you're not actually making a proactive effort to fix it.

Self acceptance isn't quitting: The thing that self acceptance is not is giving up on yourself. Many people automatically assume that accepting certain realities means that you are giving up trying to overcome those obstacles.

In actuality, it's about recognizing the things that you struggle with in order to effectively take a more realistic approach to overcoming and understanding those obstacles in your own life.

Using failure as a tool: We've all heard the saying that's used in relation to relapse "falling off the wagon" right?

We need to accept that everyone fails because none of us are anywhere close to being perfect. Relapse or failure isn't just about falling off the wagon, it's also about learning to stay on more effectively so you don't fall off the next time. Accepting your own faults and failures teaches you to approach those things in a more effective manner the next time.

Accepting certain things in your life is not enough: By all means accepting certain realities is important, but what's also important is taking the proper steps to make the changes that you need to make. Without taking the proper steps, you're not actually making any progress and without those steps you're not actually making any progress.

These three little things whether it's helping you to eliminate a bad habit or in relation to a medical or psychological health condition can be very helpful.

How can we implement these things into our lives? By remembering the following things listed below.

• Understanding that you are only responsible for how you preconceive and react to things and what you let into your life. In other words, instead of playing the blame game, look at what’s within your power to change and take ownership of those things.
• Listening to criticism as well as compliments because if you don’t have an understanding of what you do wrong, how are you going to improve on those things?
• Instead of being defensive, try to see where other people’s opinions come from.
• Accept that none of us are perfect; admitting you have flaws is the first step to understanding them so that you can improve on them.
• Learning healthy coping strategies for those things that we all struggle with instead of avoiding those things.
• Having the humility to say that you are wrong and need some help from a qualified professional, instead of being stubborn and refusing to accept that you need help.
• Not comparing your progress to others we all learn and improve at our own speed; progress is progress.
• Accepting that sometimes certain relationships belong in your past because you can’t change everyone. The only person who you have the power to actually change is yourself.
• Accepting that sometimes we’re our own worst enemy. Then understanding how we sabotage ourselves so that we can improve our own unhealthy behavioural patterns.

In conclusion, everyone is different we all deal with everyday life based on our own beliefs, life experiences, and biases. Sometimes we need to take a step outside of these things to see something for what it is, so that we can evolve.