How to Accept Yourself Unconditionally
When you accept who you are, you embrace everything about you, flaws and all. You no longer obsess about your flaws, instead, you’re okay with your good and “bad” traits.
We all have some traits that we don’t like, so you’re not alone.
Many people don’t realize that they take over the job of parenting themselves when they grow up. Now, you are the one who guides you through your journey and the one who takes care of your needs. You’re parenting your current self so you can now have unconditional self-acceptance.
Health problems if you don’t accept who you are
The lack of self-acceptance can eventually take a toll on your health. In fact, repressed negative emotions are the cause of many health problems. For example, you can get high blood pressure, migraines, or ulcers, to name a few.
On the other hand, self-acceptance can actually heal illnesses.
You can be happy when you accept who you are because you know that you’re worthy of happiness.
With self-acceptance, you’ll learn to separate who you are from your behaviors and mistakes. You’ll accept there were times when bad things happened, but those events don’t define you. So, you leave it in the past.
Accepting yourself doesn’t mean you stop trying to improve.
Accepting yourself doesn’t mean you don’t need to improve anything. Accept where you are but love yourself enough to choose to become better because you deserve to live your best life.
You want the best life possible, and this requires making improvements.
Acceptance will give you the motivation to improve because you won’t be thinking thoughts like “I’ll never make it.”
Instead, you’ll encourage yourself. For instance, you could say, “I forgive whoever caused me to believe I wasn’t worthy, whether it was myself or others.”
After you accept who you are, it’s natural that your confidence will begin to rise. Your self-doubt disappears because you accept where you’re at, but you choose to evolve.
What aspects do you struggle to accept about yourself?
You can choose to accept your appearance, your past, or anything you can’t change.
For example:
- If you dreamed of having kids and then later found out you’re barren.
- If you always wanted to be a famous musician, but life had other plans.
- Or maybe you thought you’d only get married once, but you had a divorce.
Don’t beat yourself up over these things; you’ll ruin your life if you refuse to accept your reality. Accept it and realize it’s okay! You’re still an amazing person, and you deserve happiness. So, choose to embrace your circumstances.
Over time most dreams change. Just because something didn’t work out doesn’t mean nothing will. You can always choose a new goal or dream. It would be best if you accepted that your old dream isn’t your reality, and that’s perfectly okay.
How to release all the things you can’t control and learn to accept yourself unconditionally:
1. Shift your paradigm.
“Accept yourself, love yourself, and keep moving forward. If you want to fly, you have to give up what weighs you down.”
— Roy T. Bennett
Turn the tables on how you think about your flaws. Your loved ones already love your imperfections, so you can too! Love the features of yourself that you can’t change. You can’t improve them, so you might as well embrace them!
The subconscious loves repetition, and you’ve had a lot of negative thoughts on repeat. So, now you need to replace them with encouraging words.
If you have a big nose, love it, and don’t worry about what others think. Or maybe you’re really short or tall? You can’t change it, so embrace it. Then, resolve to improve the parts you can change like weight loss or taking better care of yourself.
2. Don’t bully yourself
“Lighten up on yourself. No one is perfect. Gently accept your humanness.”
— Deborah Day
Punishing yourself for not being perfect won’t help. Instead, try to have more self-compassion because you’re worth being treated with respect. Besides, you can’t have self-acceptance and negative self-talk at the same time.
People who accept themselves don’t let doubt or negative self-talk live in their minds. Because with those thoughts floating around, living their best life would be impossible. Be easy on yourself when life doesn’t go as planned.
People love you even more because you have unique flaws. If you were your own parent, you’d consider even your flaws to be adorable!
When you think negative thoughts, they get ingrained in your mind. You’ve got to stop the vicious cycle. You’ll need to be extra watchful over all your thoughts so you can allow the encouraging messages and reject the bad.
A lot of those thoughts may not even be true, like the things other people have told you. You aren’t the same person you were back then, so the comments don’t apply anymore.
Choose to forgive them so that you can move past them.
Say things like:
- “I deserve happiness and love.”
- “I love my quirks and flaws.”
- “I’m going to be myself whether people like it or not.”
- “I love who I am even if I mess up.”
- “I have nothing to prove to others because I accept myself unconditionally.”
3. Forgive yourself and others
“Of course, there is no formula for success except perhaps, an unconditional acceptance of life and what it brings.”
— Arthur Rubinstein
In order to move forward, you have to forgive yourself and others for causing you pain. However, you don’t have to condone what happened; you need to forgive them. Even if that person isn’t sorry, this will allow you to let go of your pain.
Hurt people will hurt others, mentally or physically. Usually, they have traumas in their past and haven’t done the work to overcome them. They harm others so they won’t feel so alone. It isn’t enjoyable, but it happens.
Choose to forgive them because they weren’t mentally healthy. Forgive them, let it go, and stay away from them so they can’t harm you again.
If you refuse to forgive them, you will suffer. So, forgiveness is your ticket to freedom. Holding on to resentments doesn’t hurt the other person; it hurts you.
4. Accept other people
Do yourself a huge favor and accept other people. Don’t allow others’ lives and beliefs to upset you. You’re causing unnecessary pain and anger. We can’t control what others do; no one can do that besides them.
People will be different than you, and that’s totally okay. We are all different, and that’s what makes life awesome.
You might disapprove of what others do, but you don’t have to join in with them. Don’t fight or resist what they do. Unless you love wasting your time and mental space, accept them and let them go.
5. Accept where you are right now in life
“Accept what is, let go of what was, have faith in what will be.”
— Sonia Ricotti
Don’t tell yourself you’ll be happy when something happens in the future because the future is unknown. You don’t want to base your happiness on something that isn’t guaranteed.
Your happiness is important! Feel the joy with what you have now and strive to improve the things you can.
6. Gush over how awesome you are
“Until we accept and approve of ourselves, no amount of approval from others will keep us permanently secure.”
— Joyce Meyer
It can be helpful to write about your favorite qualities your accomplishments and all the talents you have. Doing this will help you balance what you love about yourself and give you the strength to accept the things you don’t.
Also, feel grateful for all the remarkable things that make you unique. But, remember that you aren’t better than others, just as no one else is better than you.
In the end, accepting yourself will boost your happiness in life. Decide to embrace every part of who you are and choose to improve what you can.
The more things you can accept, the happier you will be!
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