Updated: 25/01/2024 por Jennifer Delgado | Published: 11/04/2016
We are all born supplied with a dose of unconditional love, but over time, as we grow and crash with others, this love becomes more and more conditioned. We need to develop unconditional acceptance.
Whenever someone criticizes us, or makes us feel inadequate, we lose a small dose of love that we had for ourselves. We learn that if we want to be accepted by others, we must meet certain standards and if we don’t, the others will let us know we’re out of their circle.
At this point we cease to love ourselves unconditionally and begin conditioning the relationship with our “ego” to our successes and failures. The moment we begin to judge ourselves applying the rules of the others, we stop loving ourselves for who we are.
It is a painful process in which we all have passed. As a result, it is not surprising that many people, even successful adults, continue to feel uneasy and are constantly blaming themselves. These people have lost the touch with their “ego” more profound because they built a “social self” that buried it.
The signs that you don’t accept yourself unconditionally
– When you often feel inadequate in different situations and contexts
– When you think you don’t deserve the love of others
– When you constantly compare yourself with others and end up feeling inferior
– When you think you’re not enough smart/skinny/interesting/sociable
– When you don’t start new projects for the fear of failure
– When you constantly repress yourself, you don’t dare to be yourself
– When you feel uncomfortable with yourself and don’t like to be alone with your thoughts
Accepting ourselves unconditionally: A continuous learning
Unconditional acceptance is the first step for loving ourselves unconditionally. We cannot feel comfortable if we constantly criticize ourselves, if we think we’re broken or not enough intelligent and attractive.
An interesting thing is the fact that accepting our flaws or imperfections does not mean we won’t strive to improve. Acceptance implies, first of all, full awareness. This means we are aware of the mistakes we made but do not continue to punish ourselves, but rather try to correct them. It means we are aware of our limitations and try to take another step forward.
Unconditional acceptance implies experiencing reality as it is, without any denial or rejection. Over time, this attitude, if sincere, delete the negative, unpleasant feelings we felt ourselves to give way to love.
Unconditional acceptance is a long and painful process. But at the end of the road you’ll discover that it’s also liberating. In fact, we find so difficult to practice unconditional acceptance because we have been taught to criticize ourselves and become our harshest critic. We have been taught to adapt to society but not to live with ourselves.
1. Rediscover who you are. To accept yourself you have to know yourself. Take every day a few minutes to look within yourself. Ask yourself what you like and what you hate, what makes you happy, what you dislike about yourself, who you really are… those may seem trivial questions, but perhaps you will be surprised to find out that you don’t have the answers to many of these because since a long time you’ve lost the connection with your “inner self”. Don’t give up, give yourself time.
2. Accept yourself without criticizing. Whenever you make a mistake or discover a part of yourself that you don’t like, instead of judge and criticize simply accept it. Accept the reality as if you were an impartial observer. Ask yourself what you can learn and how this error or “defect” can turn you into a better person. Accept that you’re not perfect and don’t need to be so to be a valuable person.
Remember that we are all perfect as we are.
