I’ve learned with time that the older you get, the more being content with who you are and
what you do matters. Accepting one’s self seems to matter a lot more than what people think
about you. This can be caused due to very many factors. Be it a strong sense of self from
childhood or a supportive environment and or upbringing. All in all we are all on the journey
in our own ways.
Accepting one’s self can mean a lot of things. It can be facing and being aware of your
strengths and weaknesses or even just learning to be positive and kind with your thoughts.
WHY SHOULD BE MORE SELF ACCEPTING?
According to Shepard (1979), self-acceptance is an individual’s satisfaction or happiness with
oneself, and is thought to be necessary for good mental health.
Some psychological benefits of self-acceptance include mood regulation, a decrease in
depressive symptoms, and an increase in positive emotions. Something we all need especially
undergoing the current pandemic, it’s important that we remain mindful and positive.
Other psychological benefits include:
-a heightened sense of freedom,
-a decrease in fear of failure,
-an increase in self-worth,
-an increase in independence
-an increase in self-esteem,
-less desire to win the approval of others,
-less self-critique and more self-kindness when mistakes occur,
-more desire to live life for one’s self (and not others), and,
-the ability to take more risks without worrying about the consequences.
HOW DO WE BECOME SELF ACCEPTING?
To become more self-accepting, we must start by telling ourselves that given all of our
negative thoughts and or feelings for ourselves, we’ve done the best we possibly could.
Therefore, we need to re-examine our past feelings of guilt, as well as our many selfcriticisms
and put-downs. We must ask ourselves specifically what it is we don’t accept about
ourselves and, as we have the power to heal ourselves, bring compassion and understanding
to each aspect of self-rejection or denial. By doing so, we can begin to dissolve exaggerated
feelings of guilt and shame, based on standards that simply didn’t mirror what could
realistically be expected of us at the time.
In other words, we must learn to self pardon. This means that accepting things like how we
look and or a thing that happen or happened beyond our control is not our fault. In turn
surrounding yourself with supportive people who accept you for who you are. That can be
anything from finding people with likeminded goals and or hobbies or even going out of your
comfort zone and learning how to socialise in a public setting.
My personal journey on self acceptance has not been an easy one. And you don’t get there in
a day. It takes years of self convincing and shunning all the negative thoughts and or
standards drilled into you since childhood. And in all honesty you can never fully be there.
But it in turn breeds confidence. And that in itself is simply beautiful.
So I urge each and every one of us to take a look in the mirror and or to sit down with
ourselves and be honest, be pardoning and be accepting of who we truly are.
-Annisa Omar