SELF ACCEPTANCE

Hi everyone!

I am Kelly Ward - Your host 

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I hope everyone is having a magical week and I am super excited to be hanging out with you today!

Today's topic is about self acceptance and basically self acceptance is when you are aware of your strengths and weaknesses and you also embrace every aspect of who you are. Some great affirmations that will help you develop self acceptance are including these in your everyday dialogue with yourself - 'I am loved and worthy of love' , 'I am fully capable of achieving success in my life' and 'I am a good, caring person who deserves to be treated with respect.'

I wake up some days and I feel ready to take on the day and accomplish anything I set my mind to, and then the next day I feel like the most insecure person in the world.

To be honest, I really feel like those days when you do feel really down, are the days you really HAVE to build yourself up and give yourself more positive affirmations.

You literally have to make the effort to talk yourself out of that funk. You have to make sure that you are surrounding yourself with people who aren't going to bring you down. It can be hard however the only way to develop a good habit like affirmations is to be consistent. 

If you actually have the tools to make those bad days a good day, you use those affirmations to build yourself up until it becomes an actual habit.

It really is about making a conscious effort to have a good day even if you feel like you don't feel that good about yourself, because words are power - they can basically work both ways, they can bring you down or build you up. You need to make that decision for yourself, you need to want it bad enough.

So even when I do feel defeated - I have to push myself to keep going. There’s no other way. I believe in the beauty of life so I don’t want to waste it.

Having a growth mindset is when you believe that you are in control of your own abilities and you are capable of learning and improving and that truly is the key to success. Perception is everything in life.

If you do need to clear your mind and connect with yourself - I recommend doing a guided meditation before you start your day or going for a walk in nature. Make yourself a priority. In order to develop self acceptance, you need to embrace what makes you unique, you need to really take the time to write down everything that makes you unique and that you love about yourself. You need to be prepared to let go of the things in your life that you cannot change and rather focus on what you can control, which is the way you speak to yourself, your behaviors and the habits you choose to develop. 

Focus on identifying what your strengths are so that you can build on them however also figure out your weaker points and try and improve on that. Once you actually become aware of your weak points or the parts of yourself that you don't like - instead of suppressing those parts of yourself and putting yourself down, why not become aware of them so that you can actively change and improve them. It is so important to accept even the bad parts of who you are because it allows you to want to change them. Set goals for yourself, identify your bigger vision in life - create a plan on how you want to achieve it and start working on taking the necessary steps every day to achieve it. When you are aware of what you want to achieve in your life - it provides you with a clear vision so that you begin to make better choices in your every day because you know exactly what you want. Think positively because it can be so easy to sway towards the negative in life because it can be so loud and over bearing that we forget to focus on the positive. I constantly say this but it is so true - that perception is everything in life, it is how you choose to look at a situation. Being kind to yourself is also so important and practicing self compassion because when you are on the journey towards developing self acceptance, you need to be patient with yourself, you need to forgive yourself, you should not be too hard on yourself because news flash we all make mistakes, what matters is how you choose to move forward from that - if you are going to learn the lesson, take accountability and improve or if you are going to play the victim and constantly put yourself down for it, because in the end, all you are doing is holding yourself back. 

Why is self acceptance so important?

Well...Self acceptance helps you to understand yourself, be honest with yourself about your strengths and weaknesses and by accepting yourself, it opens the door to practicing more self care and developing a more positive attitude towards who you really are. This basically helps you to create the opportunity to build yourself up and also improve yourself and your life. You need to really make the effort to become more aware of your thought patterns, so that when you become negative or judgmental towards yourself - you are able to change those thoughts from negative to positive and you develop a new perspective on negative situations. Self acceptance can be very hard because it can be difficult to give up the fantasy we create in our lives to hide from our true feelings. The only way to fully accept ourselves and improve ourselves in life is through giving up on the fantasy we create for ourselves and just be honest with ourselves. 

I want to discuss simple ways to practice self validation. 

- Be more encouraging to yourself. 

- Acknowledge your strengths, weakness, progress and all of your effort. 

- Identify your thought patterns, be more aware of your emotions and accept your feelings for what they are. 

- Practice self care and take the time to be kinder to yourself. 

- Accept your limitations, flaws and your mistakes. They don't define you. 

Why is self love generally so difficult?

Loving ourselves truly comes when we actually face what we hate most about ourselves. It could be certain parts of your physical body, your character traits, the way you have treated someone or the guilt and shame from a past situation. The thing you need to understand is that if you never shed light on your insecurities and accept them - you will never truly accept yourself. You need to stop seeking validation from anyone else but yourself. The way you can do that is by becoming aware of why you are seeking approval from others and rather focus on develop a greater sense of self worth, because self love and self acceptance are critical aspects of health and happiness in your life. Your happiness is dependent on how you actually take care of yourself and the every day habits that you develop.  

You need to really focus on accepting yourself for who you are, embracing what does make you unique, taking the time to really take care of your emotional health, journaling your thoughts so that you don't hold onto negative thought patterns and also trusting yourself. These are all simple ways for you establish healthier habits for yourself where you slowly begin to see the value of simply accepting who you are and learning to work with what you have. The incredible benefits of practicing self acceptance is an improved mood, you will also have a decrease in depressive symptoms as well as the desire to be approved by others, having the fear of failing and also limits you wanting to constantly self critique everything about yourself. There is also an increase in positive emotions which include an improve sense of self worth, a sense of freedom and high self esteem. When you begin to build on your self esteem, your self confidence also improves and that basically benefits you tremendously because our self esteem is how we feel about ourselves and our self confidence is how confident we are in our abilities and when we have both of those attributes - we no longer have limiting beliefs holding us back because we believe we can achieve what we set out to do and we believe in ourselves. When our self confidence sways - we tend to find ourselves very unhappy and not feeling good enough or appreciated, and it is basic human nature to want to feel loved and accepted by others however we need to first accept and love ourselves. When our self confidence is feeling low - it can be hard to achieve our goals because we lack the internal motivation to propel us towards achieving that goal. 

Therefore take the time to really understand yourself with no judgement, identify what you don't like about yourself and also focus on the parts that make you unique because on the road to self acceptance, self love and self compassion - you need to really want to embrace who you are so that you can live a happy and fulfilling life and be able to contribute something positive to the world. It first starts with you. 

Thank you so much for hanging out with me and listening every week, I really appreciate it! I hope this has helped to expand your mind to what is possible and I hope you were also inspired.

I wish everyone an amazing week!

Love you all.

Good bye :)