Self acceptance

Hi everyone,

I have decided to begin a journey towards self acceptance. To accept my whole self. Both the positive and negative but realise that these do not define who I am.

I was wondering if anyone has experience with the journey or can recommend any reading that would be beneficial.

Thanks

I'll need to think about reading material, but here's a helpful exercise that I undertook. Regular walks around my neighborhood or a park. During that time, I mentally split my mind into two roles: my child self and my adult self. From there, I recounted some of my most difficult memories of childhood through my child lens. I relived the mistakes I made or the experiences that I didn't handle well, and I raised the shame I felt.

Rather than leave it there, I addressed those issues through my adult lens and I counseled the child self with compassion. I pointed out the knowledge that I had not yet developed then and WHY I couldn't have operated better without the coping skills I would later learn. I comforted my child self and allowed her to propose ways that she could have coped differently--but can adopt TODAY.

Over time I ran the same exercise through different stages of my life. Each time, I comforted the younger self to aid healing. This is a self-teaching method of self forgiveness and acceptance. It allows you to see the mistakes you've made through a lens of growth and learning rather than repressing them or berating yourself. This frees you from the trap of using habitual coping skills that didn't work then, and so they won't work today, either.

This method of self teaching not only helps in forgiving yourself for your past mistakes, it generates a level of empathy that aids your ability to forgive others for theirs. While this doesn't mean you'll want to reunite with those who've harmed you in the past, it does allow you to see their human flaws, which minimizes their impacts and frees you from their imagined power.

This can teach you how to adopt pride in your learning abilities, which can build confidence in your judgment going forward. You can cultivate a generosity of spirit toward others in your present life as you recognize that they are still learning through trial and error just as you are.

Self forgiveness is a powerful life skill. Nobody can teach us this stuff, really, but us.

I grew up always wanting to be someone else. I was never part of any school clique, never pretty enough, never had the right clothes, shoes, handbag, never had enough money, always struggled stemming from my childhood family life, never felt good enough and basically felt like a loser. I was never popular either.

I always looked corny and out of fashion. I felt like a real misfit and out of place.

This pathetic state continued well into my late teen years and early 20s. I felt like a nobody with my dreadful night shift job while financially supporting my widowed mother and younger siblings. I worked with a bunch of very immoral, worldly coworkers. They were my whole world. Then the company told me that I was subject to a layoff. I was left scrambling.

Within 24 hours, I found a superior daytime job within another department and outranked them all. I was riding high and pushing through an open door. Socially, I crawled out of my shell, had high self esteem and self confidence for the first time in my life. I garnered attention and eventually I married the love of my life and have two amazing sons.

We joined our community church, people actually love me, I worked out, lost 35 pounds, look and feel great. I became popular and well liked. So what if I was a late bloomer? I had arrived. FINALLY. Better late than never.

I no longer want to be someone else. I recently looked up some former classmates and coworkers on social media and they look like old bags now without any resemblance to their former youth's glory. It's so sad. A lot of people did not age well and they look rough. When I went to my recent high school reunion, former classmates couldn't believe how young and fit I had looked. I felt like Cinderella at the ball. The moral of the story is sometimes life for many people starts out idyllic and then their adulthood transforms into a train wreck. Life is not hopeless if you take it by the bullhorns and do something about it.

My life is the opposite of other people's lives. My beginnings were bad with a violent father who beat my mother, he never had a good job, we didn't have health insurance and then he left us without paying child support. My mother had to work 3 jobs 7 days a week to feed and raise 3 children all by herself. My grandmother neglected us, slept all day, left my baby brother in his crib all day without milk nor a diaper change. She'd leave all afternoon and night while locking me out of the house on a school night. It was 9PM on a school night, it's chilly outside and I'm sitting on the front porch without any dinner.

Fast forward to today. My life is settled, established, I have the white picket fence surrounding a house in the suburbs, it's peaceful and stable nowadays. I've accepted my whole self. I don't want to be anybody else anymore.

And when I enter the room socially or go anywhere publicly, I'm no longer wearing clothes and 'holy' shoes from the Salvation Army. I can afford nice clothes, shoes, an occasional designer handbag (purse), go to the hair salon every month and look put together. I don't walk around feeling ashamed, humiliated and dead broke anymore.

If I had my druthers, I prefer to say my beginnings were miserable and later I lived a happily ever after as opposed to my former coworkers and classmates who had a great childhood and teen years but nowadays, they have a horrible adulthood with a world of troubles.

I feel very fortunate and incredibly blessed. I'm no longer jealous nor envious of anyone else as I was when I was younger because now I know how lucky I am and the envy of others. I never thought I'd become the envy of others. I feel grateful nowadays.

My Christian faith helps me accept my whole self. My church brethren, Bible, weekly Women's Bible Study group and Wednesday small groups Bible study group at my neighbor's house is food for the soul. It's been my spiritual journey.

One thing that helps me is daily cardio - I push myself, challenge myself and it's all for me and all about me for that 31 minutes a day. I accept myself -what my body can do - I become keenly aware of what it can't do, keenly aware of when I feel my motivation drop, feel tired, need to egg myself on - it's down to the basic nitty gritty- you're sweating, pushing, challenging, noticing how you and your body react to that. Also I give myself credit when I react in a healthier/more productive way to feelings - to stress - or at least I notice it.

Authors to read - Cheryl Strayed, Maya Angelou, Alain de Boton.