00:00 

Hey there, this is Intentional Living with Tanya Hale and this is episode number 113, "Self-Acceptance." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:23 

Alright, hello there, my friends. Happy day to you. I hope everything's going great. If you are new to the podcast, welcome. So glad to have you here. For those of you who are sharing this podcast, thank you as well. I am growing. I'm getting some traction and that's exciting for me and I owe it all to word of mouth because that's how this gets out. And when you like my podcast on your podcast app, it goes up in getting suggestions for other people. So thank you for all of that. I love doing this and I'm glad that there are those of you out here who are enjoying it and loving it as well. 

01:10 

So that being said, today we are talking about self-acceptance, and I love this concept. I truly believe that the benefits of accepting ourselves are so great. So let's dig right in, shall we? Okay, acceptance is defined as "being willing to receive something willingly or to give approval of." So to me, this means that we embrace something as it is without a need for it to change. And we do so willingly, right, with an open heart ready to do that. So self-acceptance is different than self-love. 

01:51 

So here's how. A parent can love their child but not accept their child. Let's look at how that is manifest out. So, I think the vast majority of parents really love their children. You get some outliers out there who don't, but most parents do. They have these thoughts of being willing to sacrifice their own lives for their children. They can't imagine living their lives without their children. And when a child dies, it is one of the most difficult experiences for a parent. But sometimes, these same parents who love their children so much don't really accept them. And I think we could argue here that maybe their love isn't unconditional, or they haven't learned how to love unconditional yet, or they may not have yet what we call clean love, because I also believe that you can love someone and not accept them. I have experienced that in my life. 

02:47 

So, I have people that I know, clients and friends, who grew up with parents who did not accept them. They were always hearing about how they weren't doing things correctly, about how they weren't applying themselves enough, or how they were making all the wrong decisions. And what a tough place for these children to grow up in. And these children who grow up constantly being told that they're not enough, that what they do is not enough, that their chosen path is not enough, they generally struggle as adults with feeling as though they are enough. Because they didn't receive acceptance from their parents or others while growing up, it becomes very difficult for them to accept themselves. And then very often this inability to accept themselves as children sticks with them long into adulthood. 

03:42 

I have to say that for all of my parents' humanity, which means that they were flawed, right, they were really great at acceptance. They were so good, in fact, that there was a time in my life that I was actually a little bit critical of them, feeling as though they may not have given me enough guidance regarding socially acceptable behavior. So, isn't that crazy? I mean, our parents never do it right, do they? But here's how it went down for me. So, my sweet parents did not nitpick anything. They were both pretty easygoing, and though they had rules and expectations, they did not have so many that they felt they had to be constantly on our case about living up to them. And they were reasonable, so I never felt like I was being asked to do things that weren't reasonable. 

04:36 

So, for example, my bedroom was pretty much two feet deep until about my junior year in high school. When I decided I was done with it being messy, that I didn't like it being messy anymore, and my school work, my school responsibilities, they were up to me always. My parents never knew what was going on in my schedule. They didn't know if I had tests. They didn't know if I had homework. They never asked about homework. These just became my responsibilities. And when it was my night for dishes and I didn't get them done, it was okay. I just had to do them the next night, and then the next night, and then the next night until they were finished. But there wasn't much discussion about it. They didn't get on my case. They  didn't harp at me. They just kind of were like, "well, okay. So I guess you get to do dishes tomorrow," right? But there really wasn't much discussion about it. And I definitely wasn't made to feel guilty, or if I wasn't measuring up, or that I was doing something wrong. 

05:41 

Both of my parents, I believe, were so full of their own self-acceptance that they found it very easy to accept us. Now were we perfect kids? Absolutely not, right? But I really cannot recall a time when I felt as though I wasn't accepted by them or that what I was doing made me less-than or that they were disappointed in me. Even when they talked to me about things that that needed to be corrected, it was never in a demeaning vertical relationship sort of way. It was always very respectful and with a lot of love, right? They always accepted me, okay? But their ability to accept themselves meant that they weren't threatened by our actions. What I did had no bearing on whether they were good parents or good people or not. And because of this they didn't feel the need to control our behavior in order to make themselves feel better. They accepted who they were in life and our good or bad behavior was not a reflection on their lives. 

06:54 

So as a result what was modeled for me was self-acceptance and because I saw that in them and received that from them. I also grew up feeling a great deal of self-acceptance. Now did I do things wrong? Obviously. Did I make a lot of mistakes? No doubt. Do I still? Uh-huh. But even with my flaws and missteps, I rarely beat myself up because my parents didn't beat me up about it. I could accept that I was trying hard and still made mistakes. It did not make me a bad person. It's only been in the last few years as I've learned and studied more about our mental and emotional health that I've come to recognize what an amazing gift my parents gave me. I have friends and clients who really struggle with this self-acceptance piece because all they ever received from their parents was criticism and negativity about how they weren't doing it right or being right. So how they learned to speak to themselves in their heads was modeled after how their parents spoke to them. 

08:03 

So let's discuss for a minute about what self-acceptance really is and what it looks like. A huge part of accepting ourselves is acknowledging and embracing the fact that we are humans. And humans are not perfect, they never have been perfect, and they never will be perfect. When we have perfectionist tendencies, it makes it really difficult for us to accept ourselves because, guess what? We will never be perfect. We are holding ourselves to an impossible standard. Self-acceptance is accepting our incapable self, acknowledging and embracing our 50-50. So do you remember that concept? That we as humans are 50% good and 50% bad. We are going to make mistakes about half the time. We're going to feel great half the time and not so great the other half. Half of our thoughts will be positive and the other half will be negative. When we stop fighting with ourselves about our humanity and when we start accepting our humanity, everything changes. We will be human. There is no way around it. And humans make a lot of stupid and ridiculous mistakes. If we beat ourselves up for them, get angry with ourselves for them, speak unkindly to ourselves for them, we do not create a space for growth. We create a space where we shut down, where we put on our protective armor and we don't do anything productive. 

09:39 

Think about the teenager whose parents don't accept her. The more they get on her case for not doing things right, the more they criticize her decisions, the more she shuts down emotionally. And when we shut down emotionally, there is no relationship. There is no connection with anyone to include ourselves. And there is no space for growth when we are shut down because that space is filled instead with self-doubt and self-consciousness and self-loathing. When I constantly criticize myself, I start to shut down emotionally, thereby cutting off all ability to connect with others, with myself, or with anyone else. So whether that criticism comes from outside of me or from inside of me, it still causes me to shut down and so that nothing positive happens. 

10:33 

So accepting our humanity, our 50-50, our guaranteed mistakes and shortcoming, is the greatest way to create a space for growth, to open our minds and our hearts to the possibility of something better. The more we can understand this truth about our humanity, the closer we can get to self-acceptance. And the more we accept what we can and cannot change about ourselves, the greater our self-acceptance. 

11:01 

So this is a very interesting piece of middle age. A lot of things start happening to us that we really can't change. Our body, even if we've taken very good care of it, starts to change. Our metabolism slows down and many of us start gaining weight  because we haven't learned how to adjust our food intake yet, right? We become slower in both body and mind oftentimes and we don't have the same stamina to work all day long like we used to. Our joints and our muscles start hurting for no reason, or things we used to do now make us hurt that never used to. And our life situations change as well because our children grow up, they move out, our parents get old, they need help and eventually they pass on. We get wrinkles, we get age spots, and our hair turns gray. 

11:50 

Now, can we cosmetically fix some of these things? Temporarily, yes. So for example, I get highlights in my hair, but it doesn't stop the fact that it keeps growing out of my head gray, right? I can cover it up once it comes out, but it still comes out gray, right? But even though there are a lot of things that I cannot change about myself, a lot of those things we just talked about, there are still things that I can change about myself. A huge piece of self-acceptance is not just accepting what we can and cannot change, but it is also the courage to change what we can. And I can learn to pay closer attention to my thoughts and my feelings so that I can experience life in a deeper and emotional way. I can learn to let go of thinking that I can control others and learn to pay attention to what I can control, which really is just myself. 

12:51 

So let's take a quick look at the other side of self-acceptance and let's look at self-nonacceptance. So what does this look like? The first word that comes to mind is feeling self-conscious, constantly concerned about what other people are seeing in us and what judgments they are making about us. So here's a really fascinating piece to this puzzle. When I think that other people are judging me, it's generally because I think other people are doing the same thing that I am used to doing, and that is that I am judging them. So when I don't accept myself, judging others is a huge key indicator for me. And when I judge others, it's because I've been judging myself, right? It's this cycle of non-self-acceptance which causes me to judge myself, which creates judgment of other people. We also have elements of people pleasing because we're seeking the approval and acceptance of others to shore up our own insecurities in that area. It also causes us to believe that we are not okay as we are and to hold back our true selves. It makes us very insecure. 

14:06 

So this all fits perfectly well into the thought model. A circumstance will happen and our thought could be, "I'm not okay as I am" or "there's definitely something wrong with me," something along those lines. These kinds of thoughts will create a feeling of insecurity or maybe fear which will create actions of holding back from giving a full contribution, or maybe second guessing ourselves. And when we feel and act these ways, our results will follow suit. We create our lives through our actions, which come from our feelings, which are a direct result of our thoughts. Always starts in our thoughts. Do other people do or say things to us? For sure, but that only goes into our circumstance line. We get to choose the thought, the feeling, the action, that follow what people do or say. My whole experience is my responsibility. And when we start learning to accept ourselves for who we are, we also stop comparing ourselves to other people and judging ourselves based on that comparison. 

15:21 

When I say we stop judging ourselves, I'm not saying that we stop seeing things that we can improve on. It doesn't mean that we stop wanting to progress and move forward. What it does mean is that we recognize and accept that we are human and that we will make a lot of mistakes. We embrace the idea that we're 50-50 and then we also have the courage to move forward into growing into a better version of ourselves. And we stop using other people around us as a measuring stick to see how we're doing. Many of us will fall into the trap of thinking that we are only worthy or that we can only accept ourselves if we are doing enough things. But here are a few things I'd like you to think about. Our worth is completely independent of anything we do or don't do. And that being said, it is so important to get to the space where whatever we do is accepted by us. And we don't depend on what we do being accepted by others. We have no control over anything another person thinks or feels or does. 

16:31 

So this belief that we can find acceptance from other people is just not sustainable. When people are in a good mood, they will accept us. When they're in a bad mood, they won't accept us. We cannot consistently depend on anyone's acceptance of us, except for God and our own self-acceptance. So learning how to accept ourselves, however, that is 100% sustainable. When we have our own backs, we are always in a good place. And a bonus, when we attain self-acceptance, we stop judging others and we start seeing them as having equal worth. When we attain self-acceptance, we stop comparing ourselves with other people. We don't need to measure ourselves against them. And this improves our relationship with everyone around. 

17:26 

So one last amazing piece of self-acceptance: it increases our self-confidence. Our ability to move into the unknown and try things we haven't tried before and allow our true selves to emerge increases when we accept ourselves. And this happens because we know that failure won't make us less-than. We know that someone else thinking we're weird and not accepting us doesn't have any bearing on us at all. And because of that we're able to move into a place of true self-confidence. Now, not just confidence in a task that we're good at. Right? That I know I can do it well because I've done it so many times. But rather confidence in our self, in us, in our ability to have our back regardless of the outcome. And when we accept ourselves, we know that we are good enough as a person even if we fail at a task. When we accept ourselves, we know that our worth is great even if the things we do aren't so great. Self-acceptance is knowing we are far from perfect, but also knowing that we are on the path we want to be on, heading in the right direction. Self-acceptance is having compassion for ourselves when we fall short of what we wanted. Self-acceptance is having the courage to see our faults and not beat ourselves up for them. And again and again if necessary, and being grateful that we can keep trying. 

19:12 

So, here's some questions. What is something you can do today to accept yourself at a higher and a deeper level? Where have you been a little tough on yourself where you could ease up and embrace your humanity? How can you speak to yourself in a way that accepts you for you and doesn't get caught in harmful criticism and comparison? When you've answered those questions, work is your butt off today to implement your answers into your life. 

19:49 

You truly are a child of God. Your worth is great even as a human who makes mistakes, maybe even because you are a human who makes mistakes. Because isn't that what God's plan is all about? Us learning from our mistakes and continually moving forward. I love growing up. I love this middle-aged gig and I hope you do too. And if you don't, I know that you can learn to love it as you come to start embracing yourself and accepting yourself more. 

20:28 

Alright my friends, coaching is the bomb. If you would like a free coaching session with me, if you just have questions, I offer a free coaching session. Consult, coaching, question and answer kind of session for you. You can go to my website tanyahale.com and there's a button that says "contact me" and you can click right into my calendar and find a time that works for you. I think this is it. I think if we can learn to accept ourselves and move through that and continue to garner the courage, I think we just are in one of the best places ever. Alright, if this is helpful for you, please share this with someone that you know would benefit from this as well. That's going to do it for me today, my friends. I hope that you have an amazing week and I hope that you step into this place of self-acceptance a little bit deeper than you have before. Have a great one and I will talk to you next week. Bye. 

21:36 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya.