self-acceptance-how-to-accept-myself

 

Self-Acceptance – How To Accept Myself 12 Exercises & Tips

 

Accept the things you cannot change, have the courage to change the things you can, and cultivate the wisdom to know the difference.

Self-acceptance is the ability to accept yourself as you are. This includes both the positive and the negative aspects of our personality. Only when we accept and love ourselves with all our flaws and weaknesses, we are able to respect and love others with all their weaknesses.

 

Self-acceptance is therefore a very elementary component on the way to more self-love, self-care, success, inner freedom, and satisfaction in life. It is important to mention that healthy self-acceptance and self-love have nothing to do with egoism or selfishness.

Almost everyone is familiar with the inner voice that tells us we are not good enough. We curse ourselves for not being able to do certain things and criticize how we look.

 

These self-defeating thoughts often come with the desire to become a better or different person. It’s because we constantly compare ourselves with others in almost every area of our lives. We always find someone who is better, more beautiful, or smarter in certain areas. In doing so, we disregard the fact that these people also have flaws and weaknesses like every human being.

 

How To Accept Myself? – The Comparison Trap

 

The self-defeating inner dialogue often starts with, “If only I could…”.

We imagine what our lives would be like if we only had this talent, the perfect body, or this mesmerizing charisma.

Without a doubt, we should have high ambitions, and goals and always strive to become a better version of ourselves. However, constant self-doubt or self-defeating thoughts harm us and are the safest way to become unhappy and depressed. This is especially true for things we simply cannot change. So the first step on the path to true self-acceptance is to recognize what we can change and what we simply have no control over.

 

Ultimately, it’s a matter of making peace with the things we can’t change. Nobody is perfect and if we learn to accept ourselves as we are, we have taken a huge step on our path to more self-love and genuine happiness in life.

Self-acceptance cannot be achieved with a magic pill or learned in just one exercise. It is a process. Here are some tips and exercises to help along the way:

 


 

12 Tips and Exercises for More Self-Acceptance

 

1. Focus on your positive qualities (Make a list of them and reread it when you’re in a bad mood).

2. Write down all the challenges you have overcome in your life that you are proud of.

3. Keep a positive and gratitude journal. Write down all the things you have done well throughout the day.

4. Create a regular Self-Care Routine. Here are over 30 exercises to learn self-care and make it an active part of your everyday life.

5. Keep reminding yourself that no one is perfect and everyone makes mistakes. Train your imperfection tolerance.

6. Strengthen your Resilience to always stay positive in difficult situations and during challenging times. (Here’s more info about the 7 Factors of Resilience)

7. Create your personal positive affirmation that you can recall throughout the day.

8. Stop comparing yourself to others. Here are tips to help you get out of the comparison trap.

9. Surround yourself with people who are good for you. Think about who gives you energy and who only costs you energy.

10. Overcome your perfectionism. Perfectionists are true masters of self-criticism. Here’s how to find out if you are a perfectionist and how to let go of it.

11. Talk to close people about your feelings.

12. Control your inner critic and consciously bring your inner dialogue in a positive direction.

 

The better you learn and manage to accept yourself, the stronger will be your self-confidence. You will make decisions with conviction, appear more confident and you will be more open to new things in life. The Self-Love Toolkit includes an impactful self-acceptance worksheet for you to start right now.

 

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