Self-acceptance: 5 psychological tips for self-acceptance

Haven't quite found yourself? We explain how to accept your defects and your virtues.

Self-acceptance means treating ourselves with affection and recognizing that we are valuable and worthy of being loved and respected even though we are not 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 it prevents us from facing life with energy and makes us succumb to the difficult experiences and difficulties we may encounter. Life has good moments, but it also has difficult moments and we have to accept them. If we do not accept ourselves, we are our own worst enemy.

Self-acceptance is the path to inner peace

Self-acceptance is to find inner peace, to find peace with ourselves.. It also allows you not to run away from problems and to 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 one's inner peace and self-acceptance one is at the mercy of the situation, which will most likely engulf him or her. 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, revolve around this concept.

Albert Ellis, one of the most influential psychologists in cognitive therapy and creator of rational emotive behavioral therapy (REBT), defined self-acceptance in this way: "Self-acceptance refers to a person's accepting himself fully and unconditionally, whether or not he behaves intelligently, correctly or incorrectly, and whether or not others grant him their approval, respect and love."

Tips for achieving self-acceptance.

It is common to 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 the one to forgive is ourselves.

Forgiving and accepting oneself requires willpower. Therefore, below you can find some tips that can help you to achieve it.

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

The first step to get rid of negative thoughts about yourself is to become aware of them. Therefore, it is necessary to detect what it is that you are having negative thoughts about yourself, 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 down 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 suffering and guilt in relation to ....... (fill in the blank). I am willing to forgive myself for what happened. I did the best I could. I forgive myself and everyone else involved. I will no longer torture myself over 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 so. After all, certain prejudices and beliefs about our identity can cause us to fallaciously reject some feelings, making us doubt and feel bad about what we experience. A nonjudgmental view of ourselves is necessary.

Emotional self-validation consists of accepting and validating what we are feeling whether we agree or disagree with it or not.. Therefore, we do not need anyone's permission to accept our emotions, because we give ourselves permission. To validate our emotions, first of all we must 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 be afraid of uncertainty or being vulnerable. Get out of your comfort zone. Many people get caught in a spiral where failure feeds 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 can fail. Get out of your comfort zone, take risks and take life as a continuous learning process..

4. Don't compare yourself with others

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

• You can achieve this by following the tips 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 you are free! You are free to feel the anxiety of being the way you are and no longer need to waste that mental energy on these thoughts that ultimately cause you great emotional fatigue.

6. Practice Mindfulness

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

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

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