Accepting Who We Are

Self-acceptance

To kick-off our exploration on how to become the most impactful person we can be, we will begin by expounding the importance of the first required mindset trait - the ability to love and accept who we are.

Many people are not aware of it but self-acceptance, as a process, actually starts very early on as a child. At a time when we are not yet autonomous in our actions nor are we mature enough to generate feelings of self-love, we learn to recognize ourselves as worthy and valuable by embracing the care and appreciation of other people.

Family interactions play quite an important role in that. If the environment in which we grow up in is one where our parents are very caring and supportive of what we do, we usually learn to accept ourselves and become more confident of our own abilities. But if such support is missing, particularly in cases where we face a lot of criticism and neglect, we will often have a very hard time generating inner feelings of love and affection and thus struggle to accept ourselves fully.

This, of course, brings with it certain repercussions. When we grow up unable to generate positive feelings towards ourselves, we will be a lot more inclined to resent the way we look as well as the things we say and do, and will inevitably develop into a much more negative and insecure person. This, combined with the fact that we also tend to blame ourselves for almost everything that happens in our life, often leads to an almost permanent unhappy and depressed mental state where the urge to find release from the pain and suffering completely overshadows any desire to become a better person.

If that wasn’t enough, we also become a lot more prone to build a fake identity. Given that, as humans, we have a natural evolutionary drive to feel accepted and acknowledged by the group and that, as children, our safety is still very much connected to the approval of our parents, whenever the environment we grow up in is one where simply being ourselves does not seem to be enough to deserve the love and acceptance of others, we instinctively start trying to find the behavior that does. Whether that is, for example, acting very confidently in a setting where everyone is trying to impress each other or self-pitying when our caregivers are overprotective and tend to our every need, we usually begin slowly (and for the most part unconsciously) adapting to what is being rewarded by our environment and gradually create and behave in line with a personality that, although fake, works to make us feel more accepted. And since this feeling of acceptance greatly contributes to our sense of safety and also produces strong feelings of reward, we usually don’t really care if we are behaving in ways that might not be totally truthful to us, we simply stick to our new identity and carry on doing what we know it works.

Ultimately, this is why accepting and loving ourselves is so important to become the most impactful person we can be. When we don’t, not only do we automatically become someone more negative and depressed that has very little energy and motivation to do the things we know would be good for us and for the world, we also begin structuring our life around doing what needs to be done to gather the acceptance of other people and slowly but surely let go of our ability to be true and honest to ourselves.

Now that we know this, we can focus on what is most important. If we feel like we are not totally comfortable with who we are and often behave in ways that reflect our fear of what other people might think about us, the best thing we can do is learn how to establish feelings of self-acceptance. We will expound later on what is the most effective way to achieve that but for now, what is even more important is making sure that our mindset is conducive to the generation of those feelings. When we grow up feeling that simply being ourselves is not enough to be accepted, we tend to ingenuously assume that it must be because something is inherently wrong with us and that belief makes it very hard (if not almost impossible) to appreciate the human being that we are. This is why, on this chapter, we will first focus on disproving that misconception and describe the two initial steps that we need to go through in order to see ourselves at a better, more accurate and self-compassionate light.

It's not your fault

Now before we explain the first step to get into a mindset that can allow us to start appreciating who we are, there is an observation that is important to make. For those who are reading that already have a positive relationship with themselves and may be now wondering if the information on the next pages is going to be relevant, it is important to keep in mind that just because there is knowledge that might not be applicable to us, it does not automatically mean that it is therefore redundant. If we consider the fact that a lot of people have never been able to fully accept themselves and that these often include those whom we care the most, it becomes clear that a lot of benefits can still come from understanding what exactly those in our family and friendship circles might be struggling with and how we can potentially help them.

That being said, for those who, on the other hand, can relate to what has been described in the previous topic and, on a fundamental level, feel like they have never truly managed to accept who they are, in the next lines we are going to reveal the most fundamental understanding we should internalize in order to kickstart this process.

Now we’ve seen in our previous topic that the process of self-acceptance has its onset in our childhood and the problem is that, as a child, since we are still quite naive and inexperienced and naturally place a lot of trust and authority on adults (particularly on our parents), we rarely (if ever) suspect that they might be in the wrong. Even when our environment growing up is one where we are being met with constant negative criticism, our usual tendency is not to assume that the blaming is inappropriate but to conclude that everything that is happening must be our own fault.

Over time this can, of course, lead to unfortunate consequences. The more we believe that the fault is on our side and that the judgment, blaming and neglect is happening because something is inherently wrong with us, the more we start resenting the person that we are, and since these negative feelings only tend to get worse over time, we eventually become trapped in a situation where we are completely unable to develop a position opinion of who we are.

But the thing is, this was all the result of a series of misinterpretations. If we go back to the past and, with a clear head, analyze some of the bad things that happened in our life, we will realize that in all those occasions in which we might have thought that the fault was ours, in reality, it wasn’t. We might have been, of course, led to believe that but that was only because, as a kid, we couldn’t yet tell that adults have a lot of issues of their own and that their blaming and negativity had a lot more to do with their inability to solve those issues than it had to do with something that we had done wrong.

So if you are reading this now and for all this time thought you were the one to blame, you should know you’re not. There is nothing wrong with who you are. If you had grown up in a setting where those same episodes that made you feel bad about yourself had been dealt with proper diligence and care, you would have today no issues accepting the person that you are which ultimately proves that the problem has never been that there is something wrong with you but that you were raised in an environment where other’s mistreatment made you believe that.

Another factor that might explain why we tend to blame ourselves at an early age is the fact that, as infants, we lack the ability to see things from other people’s perspective (psychologists call it a lack of theory of mind). As a result, since we essentially cannot yet grasp that other people have beliefs and emotions that are completely separate from our own, anytime they are upset or angry, we will innocently assume that we are the cause of the problem even if it has nothing to do with us.

Forgiveness

Now hopefully for those who could relate to what was described in the previous topic, the information in it already brought you a little bit of relief but be aware that as comforting as it may be to learn that it was never our fault, it is only once we have internalized this understanding that the journey to self-acceptance can truly begin.

That being said, it is important to keep in mind that this is not always an instantaneous process. Accepting that everything is (and has always been) fine with who we are after what might have been years and years of blaming ourselves will inevitably feel (at least in the initial phases) somewhat ’wrong’ and so, even if we’ve already come to this acceptance on a more rational level, we might still need to give ourselves some time to accept it on the more emotional one.

With that in mind, what is also extremely important to be aware of is how we tend to react after eventually breaking through this emotional blockage. Given that, as explained, this process is one that deals with a lot of sensitive events of the past and it often forces us to recall memories and work through emotions that we have sometimes been suppressing for decades, once we finally manage to internalize that we were not the ones to blame, we are often so emotionally overwhelmed that our most common intuitive reflex is to direct our anger towards those who have caused us suffering.

And the thing is, while deep down we might strongly believe that we have every right to censure what others have done to us, when we consider that truly accepting who we are on a fundamental level can only occur once we have reached a state of inner peace and compassion and that condemning others not only automatically turns us into a more negative person but it also keeps opening old wounds and perpetuating the feeling that something is still wrong with us, it becomes relatively clear that the next most productive and effective step in our journey to self-acceptance is not to blame other people but is instead to forgive them.

Now as most people might know or have experienced, forgiving is not exactly the easiest thing. Especially in cases where we have been subjected to abominable acts, a remarkable deal of benevolence and courage is often required to go ahead with such a decision. What can help though to make this a much easier process is to realize that even behavior that at first glance might seem incomprehensible has a logical reason. And when it comes to people that tend to act in rude and abusive ways, evidence shows that their conduct is rarely a result of some genetic trait but is far more often a side effect of being raised in a poor environment.

To explain it succinctly, when we grow up in an environment filled with love and acceptance, we usually have a very easy time learning how to be kind to ourselves and others. But when that environment is brimming with violence, abuse and neglect, that becomes a lot more complicated. In such conditions, not only do we often assume that using violence to resolve conflicts is perfectly normal, we also have a much harder time generating positive feelings toward ourselves and thereafter expand those feelings toward others.

Reasons may differ but in the end, this explains why other people mistreated us. Their erratic behavior was not emerging from the fact that they were born inherently evil, it was emerging from the fact that they weren’t taught right. They were victims of a lack of love and education and if we can bring ourselves to acknowledge that reality, we will find it easier to forgive.

Ultimately, as much as internalizing that the fault was never ours is a fundamental first step to start our journey towards self-acceptance, forgiving those who did us wrong is crucial to stay on the right path. It is only when we are able to make peace with all the wrong things that people did to us that we can finally give ourselves permission to move forward and begin nurturing a more serene, positive and kinder relationship with ourselves. Of course, this is often easier said than done but at the end of the day we should not forget that forgiving is understanding, and as long as we make an effort to find the reasons behind people’s unreasonable behavior, we will always be able to accept and forgive.

As a side note (and just to make it clear), forgiveness doesn’t mean that we are okay with what others might have done to us. It is not a way to excuse or condone someone’s actions. It is rather the recognition that people often behave in the wrong for reasons that are outside of their control and we don’t need to blame them for that.

Emotional understanding

In our last two topics, we have described the two required steps to achieve a state of mind compatible with the generation of feelings of self-acceptance and one of the things that we have highlighted throughout our explanation is that this is usually a very sensitive and emotional process. Attempting to come to terms with the fact that we were never the ones to blame will often trigger strong feelings of guilt and shame and the act of forgiving those who did us wrong will also set off its own share of emotions, among them indignation and anger.

As we prepare ourselves to initiate this process, this is an aspect we should be particularly aware of because even though we might already know (in theory) what it takes to go through the steps, given that emotions usually bring a lot of chaos into our mind and make it much harder to think clearly and logically about the obstacles we are trying to tackle, if we don’t know how to deal with them, we are going to find it a lot more difficult to eventually complete them.

(Since regulating our emotional state plays such a significant role, the remainder of this topic will focus on explaining the true nature of our emotions and how we can best manage them in order to make the acquisition of these two first steps as smooth and trouble-free as possible. Naturally, emotions are emotions regardless of the situation so even though we will be here writing in the context of one specific case, the information provided below will also apply to any other emotional event of our life.)

The most important thing we should perhaps start by realizing is that, contrary to what most people think, emotions are not the enemy. We are often told that certain emotions, like sadness or envy, are bad and since they also feel very uncomfortable, we assume that it must be wrong to experience them, but the truth is that emotions are actually ‘trying’ to help us. Their role is to provide information about our environment (and our internal world) so that we are motivated to act upon the things that might require a change in our life. To give two simple examples, an emotion like shame is telling us that we’ve failed to live up to our own standards (which might be too unrealistic to begin with) and loneliness is a signal that we need a connection with people. Both of these emotions are commonly classified as ‘negative’ but, in reality, their purpose is a beneficial one.

This information alone already provides us with a powerful lesson. If all our emotions are trying to do is send us a message, it doesn’t make sense to avoid them or try to stuff them away. What makes sense is to acknowledge and welcome their presence and thereon understand what they are trying to convey. This is also sometimes called “following the emotion”, a self-analysis process wherein we try to explain to ourselves why we feel the way we feel until we uncover what we believe to be the most fundamental reason. And the amazing thing about this process is that once we are able to pinpoint that reason, not only do we get to know a little bit more about ourselves, having achieved its purpose of communicating the message, the emotion naturally fades away.

So listening to our emotions is exactly what gives us control over them but, of course, doing so requires that certain parameters are met, perhaps being the most important of them that we do not identify with our thoughts. See, emotions on their own are not really an issue - if we acknowledge and accept them without judgment, they will naturally lose their intensity within minutes, sometimes even seconds. The problem rather arises when we begin identifying with our thoughts. Since in most cases (particularly if the emotion is a so-called ‘negative’ one) these thoughts are very dysfunctional and unproductive (often blaming and pitying ourselves, and being mad towards other people), the fact that we identify with them is what tends to prolong and exacerbate whatever we are feeling, ultimately making it extremely hard to get distance from the emotion and examining it from a third person perspective.

Being mindful of our thinking should, therefore, be our priority and one of the things that can help a lot to achieve that is to realize that our thoughts do not define who we are. Thoughts (just like emotions) are merely evolutionary tools to better align with reality which (numerous studies say) are happening automatically and without our intervention, so it doesn’t really make sense to identify with them. What makes sense instead is to be consciously aware of their presence, analyze if they are reasonable or valuable, and purposefully mediate whether we should act on their whim or not. In many circles, this is often described as “being in the present” or “being the observer” and it essentially summarises what we have just explained - we are not our thoughts and emotions but rather the silent witness who is able to observe them.

In the end, acknowledging that our emotions are simply trying to tell us a message is an important understanding but perhaps even more important than that is realizing that we are not our thoughts. It is only when we are able to be mindful of what is appearing in our mind that we can ultimately aspire to remain calm and present as we experience the emotion, analyze it from a clear and detached perspective and greatly increase the chances of completing the two-step process we just laid out.

One of the things that has been scientifically shown to help us pay attention to and be present with the myriad of different feelings and sensations that we experience throughout the day (particularly the negative ones that we tend to push away) is the practice of mindfulness. Scientists have found that a daily practice of mindfulness (which, simply put, means bringing our awareness to the present moment and can be often achieved through meditation, yoga or any other rituals that focus on the mind and body) leads to marked changes in our ability to be more vigilant of our emotions and quickly react to negative thoughts, usually as a function of improved attention and increased regulatory control.