These
two concepts go hand in hand with each other. You cannot truly and
fully love yourself if you do not accept yourself fully, and you
cannot accept yourself fully if you do not love yourself. It is a
little bit like with the chicken and the egg, no one can really
answer what comes first and it does not even matter which one comes
first. What actually matters is that you cannot have one without the
other and what is even more important is that in order to be a
healthy, thriving, fulfilled, loving and loveable individual you have
to both accept and love yourself as you are.
In
our modern societies, however, where the emphasis is often put on
perfection and where self-love is often misunderstood for selfishness
it is not easy to accept and love ourselves just as we are. It is
even more counter culture to nurture ourselves with love and
acceptance rather than to reproach ourselves with shame and guilt,
especially when we and our actions are less than perfect. It is not
easy, but it is essential. Marshall
Rosenberg, the founder of the Nonviolent Communication approach
used to say often ''anything worth doing is worth doing poorly.'' At
first we might be puzzled by his statement. However, if we just stop
for a moment and ask ourselves what message Marshall might wish to
convey to us with such a statement we might discover that perhaps he
is saying: give yourself a permission to do what you believe in,
what you are passionate about, allow yourself to give what you have
to give in this moment however much or little it may be, and give to
others the gift of yourself, just as you are. Do not wait with doing
things until you can do them perfectly, or even more importantly do
not wait until you are ''perfect'' (if such thing even exist),
because if you wait for that perfection you might end up never doing
what actually is worth doing. Even more sadly you may miss sharing
with others that what is so unique and precious about you, your
humanity – yourself as you really are.
In
order to share myself as I really am I need to be at that point where
I love myself as I am, so I need to see and accept that I, as I am,
have worth and intrinsic value of just being a human with all my
qualities, even those that are often seen as ''shortcomings'' rather
than ''qualities.'' This also includes acceptance of and loving
myself in the moments when I feel angry, grumpy, disappointed,
annoyed or frustrated. It seems easy to accept and love yourself when
you feel positive, when you feel as if you are effortlessly flying,
everything seems to flow smoothly and you feel like you are on top
of the world. What about the moments or even days when you feel
stuck, when you cannot quite concentrate on anything, the more you
try to do something the more it feels like pushing stones up the
steep hill. In those moments it takes mindful presence to stay in
touch with yourself just as you are, to accept that you are just a
bit out of sync with yourself and even more so with the rest of the
world. It is in those moments that we need to love ourselves the
most. These are certainly kind of moments when we need to allow that
love to be practised through gentle and kind acceptance of ourselves
just as we are. Through staying present with our own feelings of
anger, unease, sadness, and groundlessness of not knowing, but just
bearing a witness to what is, without attaching to it as good or bad,
without trying to fix it or make it better.
Since
getting the inspiration to write this post two days ago I had
a personal experience with and realisation related to the very subjects
I am writing about so I wish to share that personal part as well.
Two
days ago I woke up with this kind of feeling of unease, bordering on
tears and not quite knowing why. I went for a walk in the beautiful
sierra behind the set of
houses where I live. Once I started walking among the pine trees with
the sunshine on my face I just relaxed into those feeling of unease
and sadness I realised that they were connected to my need for
meaning and purpose as well as my need for inspiration and
creativity.
I realised that I had been wanting
inspiration for several days, however instead of tuning in with
myself, I had been playing a ''good soldier.'' For a couple of days
prior to that morning I had been diligently sitting in front of the
computer trying (read ''ordering'' myself) to write a blog. I decided that writing a blog would
be meaningful, as well as a useful activity to do. You see, my mind
took over and decided that apart from being meaningful and useful, it
will give me something to do, and anyway it was the high time I
posted another blog, and on and on my mind went...
Yes, I probably was already trying
to fulfil my needs for meaning, purpose, even creativity (after all
writing is a creative activity). However the problem was that I was not
even connected to those needs from my heart I just went head on (the
pun is unintentional but I like it 
) with a strategy – blog
writing - that I decided would give me a chance to creatively express
myself and would give me a chance to use my free time meaningfully!
From this perspective now, I can see I was showing no respect for
where I was at emotionally or mentally. I was not paying attention to
what my feelings and needs were. That really means I was acting very
unloving towards myself, not accepting where I was and how I was
feeling which was rather uninspired and unproductive. I
was following a recipe for complete misalignment with myself.
It
comes, therefore, as no surprise that I started writing a blog on
one subject without much flow, so another idea popped up so I tried
that one. I managed to write approximately half a page on each
subject in space of two days switching between writing and checking
my e-mail accounts, distracting myself with Facebook, making coffee,
looking for something sweet to eat... Clearly this diligent sitting
and making myself write was contributing neither to my need for
inspiration nor creativity and it was moving me even further from
bringing any meaning to my life whatsoever.
Two days went by and I had two blogs
started but not finished and not even knowing where I was going with
them. Despite several other little jobs done in those two days, I
woke up two days ago feeling empty and sad. I did not try to cheer
myself up or to push those feelings away I paid attention to them and just
accepted them as they were. As I already mentioned above I recognised
that these uncomfortable feelings were just messages trying to call
my attention. I had enough awareness and enough self-love to say
''wait a second I need some time and solitude here to just be with
myself and to allow space for any feelings, and especially needs that are being unacknowledged to come up.''
My
acknowledging my feelings and needs and accepting them just as they
were and my loving act of just taking time for me have already open
up the flow. In addition, I got inspired as well. While I was walking through the forest I got
an idea to write about acceptance and then the word love sneaked in
as if to say ''hey how can you talk about acceptance especially
self-acceptance without mentioning me!” So that afternoon I started
this very blog about self-love and self-acceptance. This time I
enjoyed putting words down and experiencing the flow. Even though I started
writing this post from true inspiration and I had some passion about
it I noticed that I was staying on the subject in general
terms, I did not seem to be touching it up close and personal.
However, in the evening when I was sharing with my partner some of
the feelings and needs that I experienced earlier in the day, a
little light went on and it became clear to me; the inspiration to
write about these two subjects: self-acceptance and self-love, came
to me because that is exactly what I was needing to give to myself,
exactly what I missed in previous days.
Once I started accepting me as I was
I allowed the flow of love (which is always inside of us) to emerge,
which in turn was enabling the beauty of needs for meaning, purpose
and inspiration to be fully alive, acknowledged and consequently
fulfilled in the process.
I could not help but smile at yet
another realisation of how perfect the life always is and how all
that we ever need is right there inside of us waiting to be
discovered and ''allowed'' to flow.
Thank
you for reading and please forward it to those who you think can
benefit from it.
Please leave a comment,
if this article has touched you in any way.
