You probably hear all the time that you should practise ‘self love’. But what does that really mean? Many times you’ll be lead to believe that it means lighting some nicely scented candles or having a rest from life. Whilst these things are very relaxing, to practise self love and acceptance properly you need to actually check in with yourself the right way. So what exactly is self love and acceptance?
What Is Self Love And Acceptance?
Let’s start with self love;
Self love is essentially being nice to yourself. We live in a time where it’s very easy to be hard on yourself when the economy isn’t doing well and there are other pressures like social media that make you feel like you aren’t good enough in your own skin. Most of us have a factory default setting there we look inwards when things don’t go the way we want. If we’re suffering with anxiety or depression, this is only amplified. We tell ourselves things like ‘it’s your fault the party is ruined‘ or ‘you’re so lazy, why do you always behave this way?’.
The subconscious voice in our head builds up in the background over time, telling us we’re not worthy or that we’ll never get the results we want out of life. This often forces us to seek approval externally from family or friends. However, by always seeking approval from others, we’ll never really truly be able to accept ourselves for who we are. Self love is the ability to look after our own mental health and instead reinforce good to ourselves. Self love is also defining your own values and living by them. If we can live by our own unique values, we’ll never end up ‘crossing ourselves’.
Part of the issue is we often set ourselves unrealistic expectations or values. Because they are not realistic, we don’t meet them, and thus we curse ourselves beginning the cycle over and over again.
What is acceptance?
Being able to practise acceptance is the ability to accept the here and now for what it is. We spend a lot of our lives fighting reality and what we think things ‘should be like’ for us. The truth is, reality is what it is, and cannot easily be changed. For example, we get upset if it starts raining when we had plans to go to the beach so we end up telling ourselves ‘I wish it wasn’t raining, this always happens!‘
If we can learn to accept the present conditions, we can avoid a lot of stress and pain that comes with fighting things that are out of our control. The issue is, many people find it hard to simply ‘accept’ their limitations and always push to get what they want. For example, you may want a brand new ‘smart television’, but do you really need it? If we can accept that we don’t need one, and that we only want one (because our old TV still works just fine) we can learn to understand that this is just a want and is not essential to us at this point in time.
How To Practise Self Love And Acceptance
So how do we really practise self love and acceptance? Instead of lighting scented candles and telling yourself affirmations, you need to make some lifestyle changes that last.
1. Celebrate What You’re Good At
As I said above, we naturally try and look for the bad, in ourselves and in others too. If you’re not practising self love and acceptance, you likely don’t spend enough, or any time celebrating what you’re good at. Everyone has something that they’re good at. You might be good at being loyal, holding friendships and showing compassion to others. It doesn’t have to be about the ‘big stuff’.
The easiest way to hone in on your strengths is to write them down. Write down what you’re good at and keep your list close. When you’ve had a rough day, and everything feels like it’s your fault, reminding yourself of what you are good at is important. You might say, ‘I’m not good at anything‘. Truth is, there will be things you’re good at. A good place to start is asking friends and family what they think you’re good at. You might be surprised by the answers you get.
2. Forgive Yourself And Mean It
We need to take time out to forgive ourselves. Whatever we may have done, or whatever we’re not proud of needs to be forgiven. If we can’t forgive ourselves, we can’t expect others to forgive us. We often feel like we’ve made bad choices in the past, the truth is we act on the information we have at these moments in time and we can’t be expected to be aware of everything at all times.
You need to be able to let go of things, no matter how difficult it might seem. We hold so much weight on ourselves and blame ourselves for all kinds of things. Make sure you forgive yourself to show yourself self love.
3. Ignore Your Inner Critic
We can be our own worst enemies. I know this from suffering with life long anxiety. We criticize ourselves for every mistake we think we make. We tell ourselves that we should be doing better and we should be further ahead by now. Our inner critic is the voice that follows us around. It’s the one thing that’s always communicating with us even when we’re on our own. Being able to suppress or ignore our inner critic is vital. Outside influences can rev our inner critic up, but it’s us ourselves that let it run riot from time to time.
When your inner critic starts to fire up, tell yourself ‘I’m only human and I’m doing the best I can with what I’ve got right now‘.
4. Practise Being Yourself
This is a technique that some therapists use to get clients to be their own ‘best parent’. This involves us coming out of ourselves and visualising our best self. The idea is to manifest a visualization of yourself to help guide yourself of what you really want or what steps you need to take to recover from whatever it is you’re struggling with.
Often times, the answers and strength we need lie within ourselves. No matter how tough things seem right now, there is a version of you that is strong that can be harnessed. Being able to manifest a version of you that is aware and strong teaches us to treat ourselves, show love to ourselves and look for answers closer to home.
5. Just Fake It ‘Til You Make It
We’ve all heard the phrase ‘fake it ’til you make it’. However, there’s some truth to that. Often times, we have to act as we want to feel to learn how it works. Although we may not feel like loving ourselves or accepting things as they are, we need to still try to act as though we are practising self love and acceptance. By physically acting and showing ourselves love, we can start to feel it become natural. All of the steps take a bit of grit to start doing. Unless we start to behave like we want to feel, we’ll never know how it feels to show ourselves self love.
If it feels odd or a bit forced to show yourself self love and acceptance, stick at it and fake it until it starts to feel natural. Once you feel the benefits of acting this way, you’ll want to do it more and more until it becomes habit.
How To Practise Self Acceptance Like A Pro
Above all else, I have learned that practising self love and acceptance is about consistency. Being someone who has always been hard on himself, it has been hard to show myself love and acceptance. It can feel awkward because it really forces you to look inwards which can be scary. The truth is though, you really just owe it to yourself to forgive yourself from time to time. If you can do that, you can become your own best friend and rely less and less on other people for approval.
Over time, this builds your own self-confidence up and your self-esteem.
Here’s to your success,
Sean
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Previously published on Projectenergise.com.
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