How to Accept Yourself, Your Life, and Your Reality

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What do you do when you feel like the world has fallen? What do you do when you feel like all you ever worked for, aimed for, thought about, doesn’t really matter? When you feel like there’s no real reason to wake up to see tomorrow? What if this article told you that you could lose your self-doubt? That you could finally stop questioning your life? Read on and follow the steps!

Steps

1. Learn to accept who you are. It’s one of the hardest things to follow through on, but it’s definitely most rewarding. It’s so easy to look in the mirror and point out most of your insecurities. But, instead of counting all the things you wish you could be, try counting all the things that you are thankful for that bring out your natural beauty. Understand everyone has beauty, whether it be their eyes, their plumped lips, or their rosy cheeks. Make a list of all of these things, and hang it up somewhere by a mirror, and before you leave, look in the mirror and tell yourself you look good. Remember that it’s your own opinion that really counts.
2. Realize your imperfections and then let go. Are you too bossy? Are you too critical of yourself? You’re lazy, right? You don’t have a lot of friends because your shy? This could go on and on, but the point is is that you need to find out what you aren’t so good at, maybe what you don’t have, and then let go of it. This is one of the most key steps to accept who you are.
3. Be honest with yourself. This is one of the hardest things for many of us to do. In many of todays societies that focus on the individual, we are encouraged to strive for success, and often we look for praise as the acknowledgment of that success. We take any criticism as a negative thing, so we shy away from seeing anything about ourselves that elicits that reaction.
4. Remember that you can’t fix it until you can admit there is a problem.
5. Recognize ineffective coping mechanisms. If you are experiencing any of the feelings described in the introduction, odds are that what you are doing to cope with the problems in life are not working. These things may have worked in the past, and are so ingrained that you don’t even realize you do them.
6. Replace the old methods you used to deal with situations and problems with ones that will deliver or elicit positive responses and solutions. Changing old behaviors can be just as difficult as recognizing them because it takes time and determination to replace old habits and behaviors, but the payoff is worth it.
7. Make a short list. Once you have accepted yourself, with all your imperfections, you can change some things about yourself. Write out a list about what you want to achieve, what you can achieve, and how you will achieve it. Although, understand that no one is perfect, and sometimes you just can’t change who you are.
8. Don’t try to alter several things at once, this is a recipe for failure. Once you have your list, prioritize it. Decide what you need to work on in order of importance. Often changing one thing will cause other things to fall in line, like knocking over dominoes.
9. Avoid the common “Do-overs” It’s your life and your reality. What happened in the past, happened in the past. You just can’t change history. So avoid doing it over again because you feel like it’s “in your comfort zone” and “you’ve been through it once, why not one more time?” type of excuse.
10. Learn that life is the way it is. You can only make it hard if your attitudes about life are pointed that way. You can’t change who you really are either. Just be the best you can be, and live life with pride.

Tips

• Try self-helping things that will help you focus on other things, such as hobbies, art, yoga/exercise, music, whatever you feel like doing, the littlest difference will help you vent. Venting is so important when you are feeling low.
• Confide in a friend. Talking to friends will definitely help, and is just another healthy way of venting.
• Change your overall attitude. Instead of saying “I hate my mother because she’s critical and she is too overprotective, even now that I’m a certain age.”, say, “I love my mother because she cares what I do and doesn’t want me to make bad choices even now that I’m a certain age.”, if you live your life with a more positive attitude, you will see your whole attitude will look that way more often, so you’ll be less depressed.
• Find a picture of yourself from back when you were little. Think about how far you’ve come since then. Look at how much you have grown since then and think about all the goals you’ve accomplished. You’re a great person, so don’t think of yourself like you’re nothing because everyone has a purpose in life. Find yours!

Warnings

• If you ever find your life to be too overwhelming, seek professional help.

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