“The moment a person accepts themselves exactly as they are,
without judging or comparing themselves to others,
both the feeling of superiority and the feeling of humiliation disappear.
Tension vanishes, the futile attempts to become someone else cease,
and the stress and depression that arose from self-rejection fade away.”
Osho
We are so eager to change ourselves to get closer to generally accepted standards of beauty and success that we pay no attention to our true selves.
Even if we manage to lose or gain weight, or buy yet another thing to fit a certain social status, we discover that it doesn’t make us any happier or luckier. On the contrary, a void grows inside us.
And all because we stubbornly refuse to see ourselves as we truly are, without any embellishment.
The main secret to positive change is complete self-acceptance. But how do you accept something you don’t like?
In this article, I’ll tell you why it’s so hard to accept yourself. You’ll learn the difference between acceptance and rejection, and how to learn to accept yourself.
When We Stop Accepting Ourselves
Every child encounters situations where their parents don’t understand them. For a little one, their actions are logical, done with a purpose in mind.
For example, to explore themselves and their environment, or to get attention.
Even loving parents occasionally lose their temper with their child and scold them. The child reads this reaction as rejection, a lack of love. And in some cases, they begin to reject certain traits or behaviors in themselves.
And that’s not even mentioning people who grew up without parental love and care…
We live in a society that operates on polarity — “black and white.” A world where everything is measured by “good-bad” labels, where expressions of individuality and having your own opinion are often overlooked. And anything that falls outside the accepted norm is rejected.
Even if your family didn’t adhere to these common dogmas, society — school, peers — could still have influenced your perception of yourself.
Learn what acceptance is from the article “How to Learn to Accept and Why It Matters.”
How Self-Rejection Manifests
Self-rejection shows up as rejecting yourself as a whole, or rejecting specific body parts, character traits, or personality qualities.
Sometimes we are overly critical of ourselves, nitpicking every little thing, thinking that others are better. But we don’t see what’s really going on in another person’s soul, and we don’t notice all of their flaws. That’s why we think they are better.
But many of our own less-than-perfect qualities are also invisible to those around us.
First, we criticize ourselves for our imperfect appearance, character, mistakes, and errors. When these mistakes pile up, we push them out of our conscious mind. And we project our dissatisfaction onto other people.
Self-criticism grows into judging those around us. We become busy looking for the slightest flaws in others. We feel anger, irritation, envy, discontent, and dissatisfaction with life.
Our rejected traits retreat into the shadow. Sign up for the basic course “Dance with the Shadow” to welcome them back.
Why accepting yourself is so hard
Accepting yourself is much harder than accepting others, because we are with ourselves every minute. We are familiar to ourselves. We are more critical of ourselves than of others, because we know ourselves better.
People who don’t value themselves also don’t value their own opinion, constantly living with an eye on those around them.
- Ask yourself, why is others’ opinions so important to you?
- Why don’t you trust yourself?
- What have you done in life that made you fall in your own eyes?
Accept your worth, go through Alena Starovoitova’s meditation “My Worth.”
Where self-acceptance begins
With accepting your body. Most people, even those who have embarked on the path of spiritual development, often identify themselves with the body.
This is understandable. The body is a physical object, you can touch it, see it. It’s easier to identify with the body. Especially since we grew up with this understanding.
Therefore, the first thing you need to accept in yourself is the body.
How often do you consciously care for your body, with love? Constantly? If yes, then you can be congratulated. You don’t need to master this stage.
But what about those who still can’t accept their body?
You can eat healthy food, exercise, get regular check-ups as much as you like, but if it’s done not out of love, care, and for the process itself, but to meet some internally set standards, then it’s not love for the body.
Learn to listen to your body, recognize its signals. The most effective path to accepting your physical shell is gratitude.
Thank it for being there, for helping you fulfill your needs and desires.
When your body signals with pain, don’t judge it, but accept this sign, this signal.
Find out how to learn to feel your inner body from the article “9 Eckhart Tolle Practices Worth Trying.”
I hope I’ve helped you understand why you can’t accept yourself.
Below I offer practices that will help you get to know yourself better and learn to accept.
6 ways to learn to accept yourself
1. Track moments of non-acceptance
Non-acceptance arises from the need to be good, the need to please others. To track states of non-acceptance, be in full awareness almost all the time.
Constantly ask yourself questions: “Is this really what I want to do right now?” “Will this be good for me?”
2. Conduct a review of your beliefs
One of the signs of self-non-acceptance is self-criticism. By criticizing yourself, you are essentially communicating that you are not as you should be, that you don’t meet someone’s expectations.
To start, figure out whose expectations and demands these are. Where did they come from, and why should you have to meet them?
To your amazement, you’ll suddenly discover that some demands are just random comments from acquaintances or even complete strangers.
Your brain once pulled them out of the context of a conversation. And maybe it didn’t even concern you at all. But for some reason, it stuck with you back then. And you started living by that standard.
When you want to be good for your loved ones, that’s understandable, but the need to please absolutely everyone leads to losing yourself.
Do a thorough review of your (are they really yours?) beliefs and standards of what makes a good person, wife/husband, mother/father, daughter/son, employee, friend, and so on.
Some of them will fall away as soon as you become aware of them. Others will take some work.
It’s also important to learn to accept yourself in any state, even in a moment of failure. Read about this in the article Emotional Failure: 7 Ways to Accept Yourself During This Time.
3. Keep an Acceptance Journal
If it’s hard for you to accept yourself as a whole, accept yourself in parts. Start with individual character traits, habits, or aspects of your appearance.
Start an acceptance journal where you describe moments when you didn’t accept yourself and times when you did. Track the changes and reward yourself.
Don’t expect that if you’ve never accepted yourself at all, you’ll be able to accept yourself entirely right away after starting to work on it. Everything starts with the little things.
Collect these small grains, notice the tiniest shifts in yourself, write them down, and re-read them in moments of low mood or self-judgment.
4. The “Who Am I?” Practice
To learn to accept yourself, try this practice.
Answer these questions for yourself:
Who am I? Am I my body? No. Am I my last name, my first name? No.
Do this in a meditative state.
By answering these questions one by one, you’ll get down to your very essence. And you’ll understand that you are not this body, you are not Ivan Petrov, and you are not a manager at some company.
You are not just a personality, but something greater.
You are nothing and everything at the same time. You are spirit, a part of the whole, a part of the Universe, a particle of the creator. You are the Universe and you are the creator.
If you learn to track states of non-acceptance, then in those moments you’ll remember who you truly are. And then it will immediately become clear that it’s the ego that’s not accepting itself, not you.
You’ll understand that the body is just a tool, and your name, profession, belonging to a certain family or country are elements of your personality. It’s a role you chose to play.
This practice will help you accept yourself. Or rather, not yourself, but this role. Because you cannot fail to accept your true essence.
Also read about the causes of perfectionism and how to take control of it.
5. Take a Cue from Little Children
Take a close look at how little kids love themselves and rejoice in their small achievements.
When a child is just learning to walk, they don’t judge themselves for falling. They accept themselves in that moment. This is self-love and total acceptance in its purest form.
Yes, children need a mother’s love. They need it for growth and development. If it’s lacking, it’s like depriving a person of sunlight for a long time. You can sort of live, but it stunts development.
The younger the child, the more they accept and love themselves. Little children haven’t yet lost the feeling of unconditionally loving themselves and everything around them.
And that’s all because they live in the “here and now” moment. They don’t live in the past and they don’t live in the future. They are absorbed in the present moment.
Use 3 opportunities to heal your inner child.
6. Practice “Rebirth of Unconditional Self-Love”
Working with your inner child will help you accept yourself. The only difference is that usually we find our wounded aspects and heal them as adults.
But here, on the contrary, the little child heals all subsequent traumas all the way up to our current version.
Enter a meditative state. Remember yourself as a little child. Rewind the tape of your life back to childhood, until you remember yourself as you were when you fully accepted yourself.
If you don’t remember that anymore, it doesn’t mean it never happened.
Imagine what you would feel towards yourself, how you would love yourself, if you were a little child who doesn’t yet know what it means to be rejected.
Track these sensations and remember them. Transfer them to your present-day self. Nourish yourself with these sensations. Send rays of love and acceptance to those aspects of yourself that need it.
If you want, remember those moments of self-judgment.
Or better yet, simply send the intention that you are healing all your aspects with that innocent, childlike, pure, unconditional love. And anchor this state in the crystal of the Earth.
Fill yourself with unconditional love on the free course “Unconditional Love by Chakra”.
Acceptance is the first step on the path to opening the source of love within yourself.
It is the beginning of positive change, self-healing, self-knowledge, and gaining wholeness.
By accepting, you learn tolerance towards your loved ones, you gain wisdom.
Share in the comments what you have already managed to accept in yourself, and what you haven’t been able to yet!