Three Tips To Increase Self-Acceptance
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For a big part of my adult life, I have struggled with self-acceptance. I grew up in a place where I felt I did not belong. I received well-intended messages that, with time, resulted in me internalizing that there was something wrong with the way I was.
It was a constant internal battle between my attributes and what others (parents, friends, family members, media) told me I needed to be in order to fit in. When I moved to the US, I thought ‘finally, freedom from societal expectations!’
This was true for a while, until I started to go up in the organization as one of the few female Latina leaders. I was fortunate to be in a function where there were other senior women, and people with accents that showed English as a second language. Still, I received other more subtle messages but equally powerful in reinforcing that I needed to change myself to fit in.
We all receive well-intended messages that we interpret as ‘there is something wrong with me’ resulting in lowering the appreciation for the strengths and uniqueness we bring to the world.
One of the most beautiful things of having more years and wisdom under my belt is that I have more tools to shift my interpretation of those messages and appreciate and accept myself completely. I can break the cycle of ‘well-intended’ messages to others and be an example to show people how amazing they are and the potential they have.
What is self-acceptance?
In the book The EQ Edge, Doctors Steven J. Stein and Howard E. Book define self-acceptance as appreciating your perceived positive aspects and possibilities, as well as to accept your negative aspects and limitations and still feel good about yourself. It’s knowing your strengths and weaknesses, and liking yourself, “warts and all.”
If you can answer ‘always’ or ‘almost always’ to these questions, then you have high self-acceptance:
- Looking at both my good and bad points, I feel good about myself.
- I feel sure of myself.
- I think highly of myself.
- I respect myself.
- I’m happy with who I am.
If you can answer ‘never’ or ‘almost never’ to these questions, then you have high self-acceptance:
- I don’t feel good about myself.
- I lack self-confidence.
- It’s hard for me to accept myself just the way I am.
“We don’t have to wait until we are on our deathbed to realize what a waste of our precious lives it is to carry the belief that something is wrong with us.” Tara Brach, American psychologist
Here are three tips that have helped me increase my self-acceptance.
1) Focus on your strengths
We all have strengths, weaknesses, and areas of development. Let me explain what I mean with the last two.
A weakness is something in which we are not good at. We lack some natural talent to begin with. We can work on improving it if we choose to do so, but the progress would be very small. It is not worth the effort. We want to be aware of and manage them, so they do not become an obstacle for us.
An area of development, on the other hand, is something we can learn. If we put in the time and effort, we can gain considerable progress and even become proficient.
My client Sarah wants to obtain funding for her business. Part of what she needs to do is present her business proposal to investors. Sarah has extraordinary talent for putting together amazing visually beautiful presentations. That is her strength.
She struggles with the business case portion of the package. It is extremely hard for her to write an essay. This is her weakness. As a workaround, she enlisted her nephew who writes for his college newspaper to do the write up for her.
Sarah has presented before at work and at her church. She wants to learn how to deliver the bottom line and impress her audience. This is her area of development. Sarah hired a communications coach and practiced several hours per week until she gained the necessary confidence to deliver an impressive account of her business and future plans.
We want to put our time and effort in our strengths to make them superpowers and in areas of development until they become strengths and/or solid knowledge. Some of them may surprise us as superpowers we did not know we had.
2) Meditate
A big component of our low self-acceptance is the fact that the inner critic runs a constant chatter in our heads, like a sports commentator, with all kinds of messages, mostly that we are not enough. I am not smart enough, I am not pretty enough, or thin enough, or curvy enough, or interesting enough. Use the adjective of your choice.
Meditation is an excellent and easily available tool to calm the running commentary in our heads. It is amazing what a few moments of silence can do and the impact it has on us.
Start small and build from there. You can take two minutes. Close your eyes, take deep breaths, and focus on the breath. When you think about something, come back to focus on the breath without commenting on the thought or on the fact that you had a thought.
Another option is to close your eyes and say to yourself: ‘I wonder what my next thought is going to be.’ Then become very alert and wait for the next thought. Be like a cat watching a mouse hole. [Reference: The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle].
3) Give yourself a heart high five
I recently read the book The High Five Habit from Mel Robbins, which focuses on self-acceptance and how to change what we pay attention to. In the book, the author talks about how high fiving ourselves increases self-acceptance and changes our perspective of life.
My favorite, which I started to do every morning and several times during the day as needed, is the heart high five. It is amazingly simple and yet profound.
The first step is to put your hand on your heart. If you are in a private place, I suggest putting the hand directly on your chest touching the skin. Tell yourself these three things: I am okay, I am safe, I am loved. You can use your name, too, and that will tell your RAS that this is important to you.
“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” Eleanor Roosevelt, This Is My Story, 1937
Lack of self-acceptance takes more energy and mental space than learning to embrace your true self and bring it to the rest of the world. Not everyone will resonate with you and that is fine. You will not resonate with everyone either and that is also fine.
I invite you to experiment with self-acceptance. I bet you will feel like a huge weight has been lifted off your shoulders. That is how I felt. I think I may have lost five pounds by letting go of the heaviness and internal struggle to fit in.
We are fortunate that younger generations are coming to the world in a more open and authentic manner. Let us leverage that space and use our experience and wisdom to support others coming behind us.
Let us show them that we accept and love our true self with its ups and downs. That we can high five ourselves even when our movie of that week has been a complete disaster. That we also high five ourselves when our movie of the week was a blockbuster.
What tips do you have to increase self-acceptance? Please, let us know in the comments.
As a leadership coach, I enable talent to achieve bold goals with high standards. My mission is to help underrepresented women in the financial industry transition from mid to senior level leadership positions by creating awareness, increasing emotional intelligence, and unveiling the tools and choices available to them.