How to accept yourself?
How to accept yourself and learn to love yourself better?
It is essential to our balance and development to cultivate a good self-esteem.
Your self-esteem determines the quality of your professional life, your love, your friendship and so many other things.
The problem is, we tend to denigrate and belittle ourselves more than appreciating our qualities.
Would you go to a friend and tell bad things about her? Probably not!
Yet, we have so many self-deprecating dialogues we address to ourselves.
I remember when I used to tell myself how stupid I was.
I never really loved myself until I discovered how powerful or destructive our thoughts and words could be to ourselves.
Accept yourself: the very first step
How do you see yourself? Sometimes how we see ourselves doesn’t reflect reality. We have to develop self-awareness and accept that we are not perfect. Reality doesn’t necessarily match the ideal image we gave to ourselves. We see that in social media where we project a false-image of who we really are. But you can fool yourself but never fool your self-esteem. Deep down, if you know that it’s not real, your self-esteem will suffer.
Self-acceptance is sometimes difficult but to be happy, self-acceptance is necessary. This is why accepting oneself is the first step in self-esteem.
As the saying goes: We are here to be ourselves, not to be perfect
How to accept yourself as you are: Shut the negative self-talk in your head
“Sitraka, you’re so miserable, who do you think you are?”. I must admit I sometimes have these negative self-talks. A few years ago, I hated myself so much because of those negative self-talks. Have you already had these types of thoughts? “You suck!”, “you’ll never be able to do it”? Sometimes it’s what our unconscious parents told us back in our childhood that comes back and it hurts!
We can never control those thoughts just as we can’t control have full control of our breathe: it’s unconscious and automatic. The goal then is to use rational thoughts and consciousness to counterbalance those negative thoughts.
It’s better to question those negative thoughts and realize that thought itself is like a cloud in the sky: it comes and goes! Most of these negative thoughts are unfounded.
Cultivate self-assertiveness
The word assertiveness comes from the English verb “to assert”, which means to stand for oneself, to defend one’s rights, to defend one’s opinion.
Assertiveness stems from expressing your wants and defending your own rights. By these, we must also recognize other people’s needs and their own rights. By understanding assertiveness, we are likely to improve the quality of our social life as it leads to better mutual understanding.
The opposite of assertiveness is avoidance and submission. Keeping quiet or not saying NO when you do want to say no is not assertiveness.
To cultivate self-assertiveness, connect with your feelings and listen to your needs. If someone invites you for a coffee and deep down you don’t want to; express your need: from the inside to the outside. “Do you really want to go to this dinner?”; “What are your feelings?”.
The next skill is to say no when needed. It’s not always easy but you can say no while formulating your requests clearly.
Dare to say no
Have you already been to a situation where you had to something although you don’t want to; just because you bitterly said “yes”? Saying no means refusing to do what you don’t want to do.
You have your own reasons. Sometimes it’s useful to express yourself and explain why; but often times, it shouldn’t turn into a justification.
A reluctant “yes” has this power to build frustration and deprecate even more your self-esteem. I see this in kids: they reluctantly do what their parents told them to do! Deep down, they don’t want to do it but they are forced to do so.
If you have difficulty doing this, realize that you say no to the request and not rejecting the person herself. And when you say no to others, you indeed say yes to yourself and in the end, that’s all that matters.
Love yourself and stop comparing yourself with others
Social conditioning wants us to fit in. We reject who we truly are and want to resemble our neighbor or our school mates. It’s not always easy to realize this but yes, you are a human being and you have your own strengths and limitations. Loving yourself means stop comparing yourself with others.
From today, practice gratitude. Be grateful for being here right now, for being who you are and not to be like other people. Do you know that the Universe cannot be whole without you? You matter, you are unique and you are here for a reason. Accept yourself and love yourself!
Much love, Sitraka