Yes, Your Warts & All!

Queen

We just wrapped up Help Yourself and now we’re moving on to Accept Yourself. 

Self Acceptance is a precious thing, but it seems so impossible to achieve. Our capacity to harshly judge and criticise ourselves for our flaws seems infinite. 

What do I mean by Accept Yourself? Simply put, I want you to be able to accept those flaws you see in yourself, and react to those with kindness and compassion.

Do you know someone whose speech impediment makes them even more endearing to you? Or a person who has this one strange habit that you think is cute beyond words? How about someone with a physical flaw that just somehow highlights instead of detracts from their beauty? If what I’ve just said rings a bell with you, then you have felt acceptance. You have seen beauty in what someone my see as a flaw. That can be turned inwards. 

I want you to be able to recognise that you are not perfectly imperfect, and that perfection isn’t required at all for you to be happy with who you are. In fact, and you will have heard this often enough, perfection is impossible. It’s time to recognise that this applies to you, too.

I also want you to recognise that we are not our failures. If I trip and fall, well… I just tripped and probably should look at where I’m going next time. If I was refused a job, then there was another candidate that suited the business’ needs. If people don’t buy my product, then I should rethink that product. In none of those examples am I the failure. I might have made a mistake, or circumstances were simply not right for me. Either way, I can use the failure as a learning opportunity, instead of as a reason to be unkind to myself. 

This does not mean that you become complacent or go through life just “settling” for anything. Striving to become the best, most authentic version of yourself is at the core of what you and I are doing together. But we can all better ourselves without feeling the need to punish ourselves. It’s very easy to be proud of and congratulate ourselves for our attributes, but we don’t tend to Accept Ourselves as a “full package”. However, the reality is that we are the sum of our good as well as our not-so-good. 

Accepting Yourself is a journey, and like most of the sustainable changes we are making, it requires patience and practice. I’m going to set you on your way with a few simple steps. Are you ready, Queen? Let’s go.

1. Acknowledge your weaknesses, those things you consider to be the “bad things” about you. Make a list of what you consider to be your negative qualities, those things you don’t like about yourself, and those things you think others don’t like about you. This part can be a bit tough on the morale as inspecting every little flaw can feel heavy, but it’s pretty necessary. This list will inform what you need to accept. Include everything you can think of on here. For instance, if you think that you tend to whine and this is something you think of yourself negatively for, put it down on the list. If you think you stress too much, put it down. Be as honest with yourself as possible, get it all out. 

2. Acknowledge your strengths. Only after you’ve made your first list, go ahead and list all the qualities you think you have. You can do this using the Drop the mic list (just click on the materials tab), or you can grab a FREE copy of this workbook even if you’re not in The Academy, my gift to help you recognise your brilliance. All I ask in return is that you use it to list the things you are proud of. List EVERYTHING you can think of. You’re good at stitching? Built you’re own bookshelf? Yep, put that down too. Speak multiple languages, add it to the list. Do you make a mean apple pie? Good on you, put that down as well. I love this step, because it gets you to really think about all the good stuff. 

3. Set a mantra for yourself, which will be your intentional response when you feel judgment or negativity towards yourself. It can be something like this: 

“I understand that my self-worth is not determined by my accomplishments” 

or, “I am worthy of self-compassion and I deserve good things.” 

Tailor your mantra to who you are. Include qualities that you know to be true, and that you genuinely love about yourself and also include the qualities of the ‘you’, that you are becoming.  

4. When you feel the sting of internal rejection, or a circumstance arises where you are reminded of your imperfections, I want you to repeat your mantra to yourself.  Repeat it as you focus your mind on the type of woman you want to be, and aim to embody the emotions that the future you possesses. Attach emotion to your mantra and repeat it daily, and regularly, as many times as necessary for the positive feelings to rise up inside you. The more you do this, focusing on changing your vocabulary to words that exude power and not pain, the quicker those negative feelings will dispel. 

One of the routes to Accepting Yourself is to treat yourself with the compassion you deserve. Be kind and caring towards yourself. Queen, you know that nobody is perfect, we all have imperfections, there’ll be an entire list of yours when you’re done with Step 1. But they don’t mean that you’re less deserving. They simply mean you’re human. 

Get practicing kindness to yourself, like you would to your friend, and you’ll be well on your way to Accepting Yourself. 

If you haven’t already, I highly recommend that you take my 14 Day Self-Care & Self-Love Challenge, which is here. It’s completely free, and you only need to invest 10 minutes a day to make those concrete, durable changes to how you treat yourself. If you’re not a member of The Academy, you can access it here.

Queen, I would love to hear from you. How would Accepting Yourself change how you treat yourself? Do you have an example where your inability to accept something about yourself has resulted in negative consequences? If you’re comfortable doing so, leave a comment in the box below. Otherwise, feel free to email or DM me.

Fix your crown.