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Accept Yourself

Self-acceptance is the art of accepting yourself, warts and all, with your strengths and weaknesses, rather than constantly striving towards change and improvement. It lies at the heart of happiness, because until you accept yourself as the person you are, you cannot be truly content. Most people put themselves down as a person when they fail to live up to the unreasonable standards they set themselves. Self-acceptance is about realising that how you perform in any situation is a reflection of the skills you bring with you, and that these skills can be improved. Once you accept yourself you are then ready to work on your skills and improve your self confidence and self esteem.

Stop Putting Yourself Down

Do you ever put yourself down for failure to do something the way you want? Do any of the following phrases ever pass through your mind -

If I don't do well in my job. It proves that I'm a failure.
I must be more attractive than I am. I am worthless for being unattractive.
I am defective if I reveal a weakness in public.

Such self-depreciation is common, and is the result of your feelings about a situation being applied to yourself as a person. Imagine that you said something silly while giving a presentation to a group at work. You feel that you are a failure because of this. The problem is that these feelings add up to determine our beliefs about ourselves. Have you ever compared yourself with a person on TV and decided that because you aren't that attractive you must be a worthless person?

You need to stop putting yourself down unfairly before you can accept yourself for the person that you really are, and then develop your skills in doing the things that are important to you, so that your self confidence increases.

The Person And The Skills

Accepting yourself needs to start with the realisation that as a human being each of us is unique, with a unique set of interests and skills, and when this is combined with the fact that human beings are all prone to making mistakes gives each of us our own way of thinking and acting.

The more you like yourself, the less you are like anyone else, which makes you unique. - Walt Disney

So nobody is better or worse than you as a person, we are all just human, however, we all vary in the skills we bring to any situation. Some people are good at writing web sites, others are good at playing the violin. Each of us develops our own level for each skill based on our interests, education and experience. Ask everyone to show how good they are at playing the violin, and the person who writes web sites will perform badly. The important thing to remember is that this bad performance is not a reflection on the person, only on how that skill is shown in that situation.

Every skill can be improved by work and practice. We all begin each new skill slowly and gradually improve, gaining confidence in our ability to use that skill with time. This happens with all skills, whether you think of playing the violin, being a parent, public speaking or being good at work.

Realising and accepting your own skill level in every area is a key step in accepting yourself. Measuring any skill against perfection isn't a good thing to do. That way you only start putting yourself down as a person, and not accepting yourself as an individual. So if you say something silly while giving a presentation to a group at work, just realise that you are human, and all humans can make mistakes, and don't put yourself down as a person for doing this, just add it to the things to work on to get better for next time.

Liking & Loving Yourself

Liking yourself is an essential first step to a successful relationship with someone else. If you don't hold yourself in high enough regard, then you may cling too much to others, looking for their high regard. This can lead you to become dependant on other people for you feelings of worth, and living your life to gain such approval. While it is always nice to be liked, it isn't a good basis for planning your life around.

Loving yourself is essential for being able to love someone else, without becoming solely dependant on them for your happiness, with all the relationship problems that this can bring. In fact, one of the best ways to attract love in the first place is to become a person worthy of being loved. Something that is easily forgotten

Self Confidence And Personal Development

Properly accepting yourself and not putting yourself down will bring you out of the negative zone of self image. This will be a considerable achievement for most people.

Moving your self-image into the positive is achieved by personal development and working on your skills to increase your self confidence and self esteem. Setting the right goals in life, both short-term and long-term will help you to achieve this.