Learning Self-Love: 7 Simple Ways to Accept Your Real Self

Learning Self-Love: 7 Simple Ways to Accept (And Celebrate) Your Real Self : Self-love isn’t just a new-age idea or a concept from self-help books. Serious psychology research has identified that people with greater levels of self-compassion experience less depression. People who are kinder to themselves are more resilient and find recovery from trauma easier.

If you’re lacking self-acceptance, fortunately, you can nurture it in yourself. Keep reading for great ways to love, respect, and celebrate yourself.

What Is Self-Acceptance?

Self-acceptance is first knowing yourself and then realistically appraising what this means for your self-worth. You and everybody else, are a mix of strengths and weaknesses, abilities and flaws. Accepting yourself irrespective of past mistakes or decisions is the start of building a better future.

The benefits of self-acceptance are reduced symptoms of depression, less fear of failure, and a reduction in the need for approval from other people. It increases self-esteem, positive engagement with the challenges of life, and greater satisfaction with life.

1. Be Brave

Everybody experiences some hurt or disappointment in life. This can make you to be fearful about the future. Fear of what might happen and even fear of the unknown can hold you back from embracing the opportunities ahead of you.

Make a list of the things that make you fearful. Choose one small thing from your list. Objectively assess its likelihood of harming you and how serious that harm will be.

Decide to face that fear. Prove to yourself that you can overcome it. When you do, select another fear from your list and continue to prove to yourself that you can overcome fears.

2. Be Positive

Find ways of encouraging positivism throughout your day. Send yourself positive messages by leaving notes in your calendar before important events.

A positive affirmation is an encouraging statement. Write positive affirmations in a notebook and read and re-read them. Always state them in the present tense, positively, concisely and build them around belief in yourself.

“I find beauty in ordinary things”. “I am grateful for life’s opportunities”. “I accept myself”.

Positive affirmations can help build the habit of positive thinking. Negative thinking and negative self-talk can stop you from even trying things. They won’t guarantee that you will succeed but not even trying something will guarantee that you will fail.

Your inner critic may try to compare yourself to others. Social media can tend to encourage this too. Remember that people tend to present a very distorted view of themselves on social media so don’t make the mistake of comparing yourself with this image of them.

3. Be Kind

Be kind to both others and yourself. Being kind to others feels good. Do it more.

Being kind to yourself starts with accepting your weaknesses. Your acceptance that you are on a journey of personal development releases you from having to be perfect. You will be less tense, relax more and you may find that as a result, you surprise yourself with what you can do.

4. Be Persistent

When things go wrong, it’s tempting to believe you can never succeed. Pick yourself up and try again. Learn from other people who failed many times before being successful.

Thomas Edison stumbled many times before successfully inventing the light bulb. He claimed that these mistakes were, in fact, his discoveries of more ways the light bulb would not work. His example shows us how persistence can be rewarded.

Remember the times you have tried, failed and then tried again. It will help you to remember that you can be resilient and build your self-acceptance. You are better than you think you are.

5. Be Wise

Wisdom is about seeing things as they really are. A wise person realizes that we can distort, generalize and ignore much of what our senses are telling us. This creates an alternative reality that is not helpful.

If someone says or does something that offends you don’t assume that they intended to upset you. You can’t mind read. It’s possible that they have no intention of hurting you.

If somebody is intent on hurting you, recognize that being hurt is a decision you are making. You are free to choose not to take it personally. Choose not to be hurt.

6. Be Forgiving

Forgive yourself for your mistakes. Forgive yourself if you don’t make the progress in life you hope for. Guilt is a heavy burden to carry along with everything else you have to deal with in life so shed it whenever you can.

Many things you do might seem wrong later but remember that at the time it seemed the right thing to do. Don’t punish yourself for not being able to tell what would happen in the future.

If you have made a mistake recognize this fact. Take responsibility and understand that you can learn from it. Forgive yourself so you can move on and be better.

It’s important to forgive others especially for things they don’t mean to do. Practice forgiveness. You’ll like yourself more for it.

7. Be Self-Aware

Spend some time every day contemplating your thoughts and feelings. Get to know them as an interested but independent observer. Separate yourself from them by examining them closely.

Observing your thoughts and feelings can lead to insights about them. Perhaps you’ll notice that you are judging yourself or being negative. Check your thoughts and feelings, accept them but give yourself the opportunity to change them if you wish to.

If you need some help with self-reflection, click here. There are techniques you can learn to connect with yourself.

Self-awareness can lead to more conscious decisions about the thoughts and feelings that you find most helpful. You’ll discover that you are not at the mercy of your thoughts and feelings but their master. It’s a kindness to yourself to give yourself time to do this.

Accept Yourself

Accepting yourself is a journey of discovery. You may make slow progress for a while but then have a rush of discoveries that are exhilarating. Take the first steps to self-acceptance now.

Best wishes and keep reading our blog for more great health and wellbeing advice.

Learning Self-Love: 7 Simple Ways to Accept (And Celebrate) Your Real Self

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