Liking yourself begins and ends with accepting yourself as you are. It’s really that simple and that complicated. So what makes it difficult?
When a person focuses exclusively on their flaws, weaknesses, deficits, shortcomings, and failures, the logic dictates that one needs to overcome these negative characteristics in order to feel good about yourself. The problem is they are kind of like your “tiger stripes” and never really go away. This leaves you in a position of never being good enough.
Sometimes people will compare their inside self to other peoples’ outside presentation and never quite measure up. It’s not a fair comparison, in fact no comparison is a fair comparison because each of us is unique.
We are all unique but at the same time “cut from the same cloth” with, at least objectively speaking, equal dignity and value. We are all imperfect. We are also “enough”. We are both.
Most of us have some areas of ourselves we don’t feel very good about. We may have some failure at work, failure at relationship, failure at parenting, and other endless ways we fail, or perceive shortcomings. Now, there’s nothing wrong at trying to get better, and its typically a good thing. I can make improvements in the things I do. And there is a satisfaction in this.
I love the story of the man dressed in a tuxedo, with a violin under his arm, running frantically down the streets of New York. He sees a cab driver, and shouts out to him, “How do I get to Carnegie Hall?” And the cab driver shouts back, “practice, practice, practice”. How true!
We can buy into a trap, and this is the danger. The trap is if we just try harder to make improvements then you will be able to give yourself – or someone else will give you – the self acceptance you are seeking. And so the trap is thinking self acceptance comes from performance. Never works!
The best way to learn self acceptance is to have it given to us as children typically from our parents. It is a fundamental feeling of “okay-ness” . Some authors talk about “blessing” your children, communicating to them their essential unearned value. It is a communication beyond words of their beauty and unspeakable joy of being in their presence.
Count yourself fortunate if this is your experience. Others had parents, many well meaning, who were very good at pointing out your deficits and helping you try harder, but not very good at letting you know you were ok.
This is not unusual and is typically past on in this fashion generation to generation. What stops it?
We have to have “eyes to see” and we have to see that “I am worthwhile and I have nothing to prove.” We stop playing the worthiness game.
Until this happens, you are like a baby bird who has not broken through the shell you are in. Once this happens, you emerge into your true self as you claim your heritage as a fellow and equal human being.