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.