Self-acceptance: 5 psychological tips to achieve it

Self-acceptance means treating ourselves with affection and acknowledging that we are valuable and worthy of being loved and respected despite not being perfect. In theory it seems easy, however, it is not..

We live in a highly competitive society, and self-acceptance often requires changing our way of thinking and re-educating ourselves.

Not accepting ourselves as we are is a barrier between us and our emotional well-being and growth, because we it prevents us from facing life with energy and makes us succumb to difficult experiences and difficulties that we may face find. Life has good moments, but it also has difficult moments and you have to accept them. If we do not accept ourselves, we are our worst enemy.

Self-acceptance is the path to inner peace

Self-acceptance is finding inner peace, finding peace with ourselves. Likewise, it allows you not to escape from problems and accept them, because understanding that failures are human is healthy for your well-being. Self-acceptance is undoubtedly a victory in the ring of life.

• Recommended text: "70 Buddhist phrases to find inner peace"

When one does not build his inner peace and self-acceptance is at the mercy of the situation, which will most likely engulf him. When a person does not accept himself, he will have problems at work, at school, with others and, ultimately, with life.

Self-acceptance is such a powerful tool that it is even used in psychological therapy. Third generation therapies, for example, acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) or mindfulness, are around this concept.

Albert Ellis, one of the most influential psychologists in cognitive therapy and creator of Rational Emotional Behavioral Therapy (RETT), defined the self-acceptance in this way: “Self-acceptance refers to the fact that the person accepts himself fully and without conditions, whether behaves as if he does not behave intelligently, correctly or incorrectly, and whether or not others grant him approval, respect and their love".

• Related article: "Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy (RBT) by Albert Ellis"

Tips for achieving self-acceptance

It is frequent talk about forgiveness and whether or not we should forgive other people. Forgiving others and living without grudges is good for our emotional health. And in fact, it is one of the most important factors in our interpersonal relationships. But can we forgive ourselves? Forgiving others can be complicated, but it is even worse when it is our turn to forgive ourselves.

Forgiving and accepting yourself requires will. Therefore, below you can find some tips that can help you achieve it.

1. Make a list of negative self-judgments and let them go

The first step to ending the negative thoughts towards yourself is to make them aware. Therefore, it is necessary to detect what it is that takes away the happiness of being yourself. You can do this with a thought journal. To do this, you must detect those thoughts and write them from self-acceptance and self-forgiveness, making a contract with yourself to let these thoughts pass and forgive yourself for what you have done. This is achieved from a non-judgmental attitude.

One idea to achieve this is to write the following:

I release myself and let go of all the suffering and guilt in relation to... (fill in the blank). I am willing to forgive myself for what happened. I did my best. I forgive myself and everyone else involved. I'm not going to torture myself anymore for this.

2. Learn to validate your emotions

When it comes to resolving interpersonal conflicts, acceptance, through emotional validation, is one of the best ways to do it. After all, certain prejudices and beliefs about our identity can make us falsely reject some feelings, causing us to doubt and feel bad about what we we experience. A look free of prejudices towards ourselves is necessary.

Emotional self-validation consists of accepting and accepting as valid what we are feeling whether we agree or not. Therefore, we do not need anyone's permission to accept our emotions, because we give ourselves permission. To validate our emotions, we must first of all know them, label them and then accept them as they are, with a non-judgmental and non-critical attitude.

• If you want to go deeper into emotional validation, you can visit our article: "Emotional validation: 6 basic tips to improve it"

3. Cultivate a good relationship with uncertainty

Cultivate an attitude of courage and be authentic. Take risks and don't fear uncertainty or being vulnerable. Get out of the comfort zone. Many people get caught in a spiral where failure fuels the "I'm not good enough" story.

Disconnect from this sense of failure and negative feeling that affects your self-esteem and connect to the wise experience that we are not all perfect and we can fail. Get out of your comfort zone, take risks and take life as a continuous learning.

• Related article: "How to get out of your comfort zone? 7 keys to achieve it"

4. Do not compare yourself with others

We often compare ourselves to others, because we live in a society that rewards people with money and success. If evaluating ourselves for money, possessions, and job success isn't good, it's worse to compare ourselves to others. When we do that, anxiety takes over and our self-esteem suffers.. We must re-educate ourselves and stop thinking this way.

• You can do it by following the advice in this post: "Tips to stop thinking about what others think of you"

5. Learn to accept your imperfections

Stop being a perfectionist and stop thinking that you are unworthy for having imperfections. Perfectionism negatively affects our emotional balance. Instead, when you accept your imperfections and see them as normal, then they were free! You are free to feel the anxiety to be who you are and you no longer need to waste that mental energy on these thoughts that in the long run cause you great emotional fatigue.

• Related article: "Perfectionist personality: the downsides of perfectionism"

6. Practice Mindfulness

In recent years, a practice that is becoming really popular in psychology is Mindfulness or mindfulness. Mindfulness is a way of life, although psychologists have adapted its principles and methods to therapeutic practice, aware of the great benefit it provides for mental health, to the point that it is used to treat cases of depression mild.

This philosophy is based on living the present experience in its entirety, and proposes that we find the essence of who we are. This is achieved through self-acceptance, compassion for oneself, and a non-judgmental mindset.

Mindfulness allows us to be aware of the reality that surrounds us and helps us to live from freedom, self-knowledge and acceptance. As a therapeutic tool, Mindfulness makes us focus on the here and now, judging beliefs about the past for what they are, uncertain and imperfect ideas that may or may not be useful to us, depending on the case.

• Related article: "Mindfulness: 8 benefits of mindfulness"