“When you realise there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you” – Lao Tzu
This article is inspired by this video that the lovely Mimi Ikonn posted on self-acceptance and loving and accepting those parts of yourself that may be negative or undesirable. Once we accept that we ourselves are not perfect and that is totally acceptable and alright we are more able to accept the negative aspects of others and be more open and accepting of their thoughts and feelings. The way that we treat ourselves often reflects out into how we treat others. If we are constantly critical and judgmental towards ourselves then this is what gets reflected out into the world and we will find ourselves being overly critical and judgmental of others also. Once we accept that we ourselves are not perfect but we love ourselves all the same then it will be much easier to also do the same with others!
6 TIPS to try for TOTAL SELF ACCEPTANCE:
1. REMOVE ALL MENTAL CLUTTER:
In the brilliant book ‘Your Spacious Self’ by Stephanie Bennett Vogt the author discusses how we should be constantly striving to bring awareness into our currents thoughts and actions. It is easy to keep ourselves constantly busy and not deal with any of these underlying emotions. Not making space can lead to us always being in negative emotional states without even realising it! Mental clutter could also be defined as having self-limiting thoughts or beliefs, negative self-talk, being overly critical or judging ourselves negatively, and constant guilt for not living up to our unrealistic expectations.
“Bringing the light of awareness to any thought – without doing anything to fix, change, manage or medicate it – reduces internal noise and chatter, calms the mind, and expands the quiet space around the thoughts.
One minute at a time”.” – Stephanie Bennett Vogt
Giving ourselves the space to feel any emotional states and then recognising and letting go of anything that does not serve us can be transformational. Removing mental clutter takes a lot of hard work. Some of these limiting beliefs and toxic thoughts that we can feel about ourselves can be years in the making! So it may take years to fully clear them away. However, once we have cleared space then the real work can begin with bringing mindfulness and conscious intention into every moment.
2. THINK POSITIVELY!
Learn to recognise when you are engaging in any patterns of negative or self-destructive thinking. When we start bring conscious thought to all of our emotions then we can quickly recognise when we are engaging in negative thought patterns and can work to start changing it around!
Kate Hudson in her bestselling book ‘Pretty Happy’ describes several different ways that we can engage in negative thinking:
All-or-nothing thinking: “If I don’t complete everything perfectly then I have failed” – this type of extreme thinking automatically sets you up for failure because life is bound to be full of failures – it’s how we learn and grow! All or nothing thinking can stop you from trying anything new and makes us feel more anxious and self-critical when things don’t go to plan.
Disqualifying the positives: This an even more extreme form of all or nothing thinking because we don’t even feel good about ourselves or see anything positive in our performance we only see the bad. Seeing the bad in every life situation starts to mean that we accept the bad for ourselves and we only see bad things in our future.
Negative self-labelling: Sometimes these negative labels in our head are not even labels that we have created ourselves it may be things that were said to us that have stuck with us! Constantly thinking bad thoughts about ourselves can keep us stuck, not growing and not moving forward.
Catastrophising: When we catastrophise we create drama and stress in our lives and make things out to be far worse than they actually are. Much like disqualifying the positives we only see everything going wrong in our future. Our thoughts are strongly correlated with our reality so if we think everything will go wrong we will actually create that. We also attract what we think about so we need to be very careful about what thoughts we are letting into our current reality!
Personalising: Refers to taking everything personally or assuming that if anything goes wrong or not to plan it is because it is your fault! Let go of the self-blame. Everything is not about you. The only people that we can truly control is ourselves blaming ourselves for others people’s behaviour is self-destructive. Let go of the need to personalise anything that is out of your control.
These are just a few of the many ways that we can think negatively about ourselves! When you are aware of these negative and self-limiting beliefs you can then start to change them around into thinking more positive thoughts or completely let go of the need to always be thinking and just live more in the moment!
3. PRACTICE GRATITUDE:
Cultivate a sense of gratitude for everything that you have achieved and created right now. When we get rid of all of the negative self-talk we can really start to appreciate and be grateful for everything that we DO have in this moment. There are so many ways to introduce a practice of gratitude into your day! You can start by writing down one thing that you are grateful for each evening. Bring gratefulness into your everyday practices. When you are exercising appreciate and be grateful that you are able to exercise and move your body. When you are eating be grateful that you have the time and energy to make yourself beautiful food to nourish your body in the best possible way! Bring gratitude into your yoga or meditation practice!
“Having a deep sense of gratitude not only allows you to live in the moment but can actually intensify and enhance the moment”. – Benjamin Hardy
4. ACCEPT WHERE YOU ARE ‘RIGHT NOW’:
Work to accept and love yourself right now in this present moment. You are not broken or flawed in any way you are perfect and whole. Trust that you are exactly where you need to be in this moment. Women are brought up in environments that bestow on them such unrealistic expectations that they are often doomed to feeling like failures. Learn to constantly forgive yourself and be kind to yourself for any shortcomings. Every decision you made was the best one in the moment and was a reflection of your inner state. Accepting ourselves for where we are in our current journey does not mean that we no longer strive to improve ourselves, workout, eat well, or make any career goals, it simply means that we accept ourselves ‘right now’ in this moment condition free – not when we achieve this or that – because as we all know as soon as we achieve one goal there will always be another one! We accept ourselves just as we are in this current moment – no conditions, no expectations. Perfectly imperfect yet whole and complete.
“Happiness and self-acceptance go hand in hand. In fact, your level of self-acceptance determines your level of happiness. The more self-acceptance you have, the more happiness you’ll allow yourself to accept, receive and enjoy. In other words, you enjoy as much happiness AS YOU BELIEVE YOU ARE WORTHY OF”. – Robert Holden (Happiness Now!)
5. CREATE A PERSONAL AFFIRMATION/MANTRA:
Science is catching up to the power of affirmations. Saying an affirmation is actually a form of ‘auto-suggestion’ and when deliberately practised and repeated over time affirmations can work to strengthen neural passages (1). Interestingly enough the overall neuroplasticity of our brain can change throughout our life (1). This adds proof to the knowledge that our thoughts and beliefs are actually able to change our overall brain structure and function!
Louise Hay revolutionised positive affirmations in her bestselling book ‘You Can Heal Your Life’. One of her most popular affirmations is “I love and approve of myself”. This one from Prolific Living is also a great one; “I accept myself. I love myself. I forgive myself for what I didn’t know until I learned it”.
If you had time to check out Mimi’s video you will have heard that her personal affirmation is ‘I love and accept myself’. We recommend that you create your own beautiful personal affirmation and put it somewhere where you will see it often – like the mirror or the fridge door until you remember to say it regularly to yourself and it becomes part of your day.
Self-acceptance ultimately starts with self-compassion – being kind to ourselves, forgiving ourselves of any past mistakes and loving ourselves just as we are in this moment. Personal affirmations can help us to develop that loving compassionate relationship with ourselves. Mantras are similar to positive affirmations and can be used during meditation to bring space and light to that positive intention ♥
“When practitioners of eastern philosophy and meditation brought mindfulness to our western culture they found that many of us were reluctant to practice the simple loving-kindness meditation that develops compassion for self – the basis for compassion to others. What they found was that it was easier to start with meditations for compassion for others and build into awareness of compassion for the self”. – Margaret Wehrenberg
Links:
1 – 101 Positive Affirmation Ideas from Live Bold & Bloom
10 Mantras for Mindfulness from Shape