Acceptance Is a Matter of Positivity – And It Starts with Ourselves
Acceptance of ourselves begins all else.
For a long time, I was less than fond of myself.
All I seemed to be capable of was finding the fault in myself. I was always looking at how I managed to fail at jobs, screw up relationships, and remain overweight.
For about two decades, I lived indecisively, constantly finding the flaws in myself, and not accepting all of how I was uniquely me.
Sometime in my late 30s, though, that began to change.
I stopped resisting getting to know myself for myself. Instead, I started to really look at who I was, how I had gotten to the place I was at, and what about it worked and didn’t work.
There’s no specific “ah-hah!” moment I can point to, nor some other event or happening when I started to understand the necessity of acceptance of myself. But it happened. Somehow, I stopped the dominance of my self-criticism and negativity and began to accept who I was.
That’s not to say I’ve eliminated all self-doubt or negativity about myself. Also, while I mostly accept myself – there are still points of contention and conflict. But the overall, general acceptance of myself has opened far more doors than I previously realized there were in the first place.
With this has come a deeper understanding of the power of self-acceptance, mindfulness, and positivity in having and building a better life experience.
But like medicine, law, professional athletics, and the like – practice is ongoing and learning never stops.
Self-acceptance is where it all begins
Let me state, right off the bat, that I have not fully let go of finding fault in myself, being my own harshest critic, or self-doubt. Why? Because that’s impossible. Even the most enlightened people in history wrestled with these.
They no longer dominate the scene, however. And that’s the key difference. Where once the negatives held the greatest sway, and I was loath to accept myself – that’s not true now. Overall, I know who I am, who I have been, and who I desire to be.
Yet for months now, I’ve resisted a couple of different things to advance my life and goals. Why? Because I feared that in taking many of the steps that I desire to take I may alienate people. And that, in turn, would lead to less acceptance.
A recent conversation brought this to light in unexpected ways. It showed me that a lot of my acceptance of myself has become soft and flabby of late.
What does that mean? It means it’s not full acceptance. There is still underlying doubt that I won’t be accepted by others – and thus I’m not accepting myself.
Self-acceptance, however, is how change becomes ours to control. The centering and balancing that result from self-acceptance is necessary to work on active ideas to create change.
Self-acceptance is deeper than self-love because it’s an open embracing of ourselves. Acceptance doesn’t carry the not-true, but often held negatives that love does.
Accepting ourselves for who, what, and why we are opens us to see who, what, why, where, and how we are, have been, and could be. But accepting ourselves begins it all – and that starts in the here and now.
Mindfulness within leads to mindfulness without
To accept ourselves, we need to be consciously aware of our thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions. That conscious awareness is mindfulness.
Once we start to actively practice mindfulness, we gain the ability to delve into our subconscious. And it’s in our subconscious that our beliefs, values, and habits live.
Often, there are beliefs, values, and habits inside us that are outdated, incorrect, and even harmful. Being mindful of our conscious self lets us dig into the subconscious. When that brings about greater conscious awareness, we can start choosing how to implement change.
But it begins with acceptance. Accepting where we are now – even if it’s not how we desire it to be – is the first step in choosing anew.
Mindfulness is conscious awareness. When we apply that to ourselves, we gain insight into all that makes us tick – good, bad, or indifferent.
Rejecting who we are and pretending it’s not ourselves does us no good. We need to embrace who we are, accept ourselves – warts and all – and be gentle and forgiving for all the ways we’re not how, who, or why we desire to be.
To begin to make conscious changes, we need to look in the direction of positivity.
Positivity is a builder
Negativity tears down and destroys. Positivity builds up and creates.
Most of us exist on a flexible cylinder between extremes. Those extremes are all across the Universe and are probably very familiar. Positive and negative, black and white, up and down, short and tall, good and evil, etc. While we are aware of these extremes – most people, places, and things fall somewhere between them.
We get to choose – from wherever on the cylinder between various extremes we are – which way to face. Look towards negativity, tearing things down and destroying. Or look towards positivity, building things up and creating.
The true, genuine use of positivity is for building. It can’t and doesn’t exist without negativity because they are yin and yang. We can’t have one without the other.
But you get to choose which gets your focus and attention. Recognizing the destruction inherent in negativity versus the creation inherent in positivity is part of any choice.
Sometimes we destroy. That’s not always unhealthy or wrong. But it is a choice.
Acceptance of ourselves will show us which way we’ve been facing – positivity or negativity. If that discovery is not what we desire – now, after acceptance of who, what, why, how, and where we are – we can choose mindfully to create anew.
Acceptance is never one and done
Why is acceptance an ongoing process? Because change is the only constant in the Universe.
Change can, will, and does occur – like it or not. Often, it’s random, circumstantial, and utterly out of our control.
Change can be glacial slow or instantaneous. Whatever the case might be, change is why acceptance is never one and done.
Just because I accepted myself at 20 doesn’t mean I’ll accept myself at 50. Who I am at 50 is so far removed from who I was at 20 that they don’t really bear comparing.
What’s more – some elements of acceptance come earlier or later than others. The recent epiphany borne of the conversation I had was right on the edge of my conscious awareness. And it only became clear because someone else pointed it out to me.
And that is how outside influences can help us. They can’t do anything for us – but they can show us what we might not see. Then we get to choose what to do with that data. Or not.
What does it all mean? I’m not sure yet. This new acceptance I have found for specific elements of myself hasn’t been expressed in a way that will impact anything. Yet. Until it does, the result is outside my comfort zone and a mystery.
But because I’ve accepted it – this journey outside my comfort zone isn’t scaring me. It’s exciting me. Invigorating me. And I am embracing the potential and possibility this represents via mindfulness and facing toward positivity.
I’m here, consciously aware (mindful) of myself in the present, and ready for whatever comes next.
Acceptance of ourselves isn’t hard
It’s all about working with mindfulness of our thoughts, feelings, and intentions to direct our actions.
When working on accepting ourselves – warts and all – we open the way to choosing who, what, where, how, and why we are for our unique, individual life experiences Knowing that acceptance isn’t capitulation – but rather an embrace of the self – we gain the insight to use mindfulness and facing positivity to build and create our lives how we moist desire to choose.
This empowers us – and in turn, our empowerment can empower others around us. That can expand to change the bigger picture matters, too.
Choosing for ourselves employs positivity for realizing amazing potential and possibilities for our lives.
Taking an approach to positivity and negativity – from the vast cylinder that exists between them – shifts matters in a way to open more dialogue. In that form, we can explore and share where we are between the extremes and how that impacts us here and now.
Lastly, the better aware we are of ourselves in the now, the more we can do to choose and decide how our life experiences will be. When that empowers us, it can also open those around us to their own empowerment. And that is, to me, a worthwhile endeavor to explore and share.
Thank you for coming along on this ride with me.
This is the four hundred and fifty-second entry of my Positivity series. I hope that these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, re-blog, and spread the positivity.
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