Embracing the Power of Self-Acceptance: From Awareness to Transformation

 Something just motivated me to write about acceptance today and how powerful it really is. I believe acceptance gives you a lot of freedom that's important in life. I am talking about self-acceptance. A lot of times we think about whether he or she or the world will accept me or not. But the truth is you need to accept yourself, the way you are first and then try and improve parts of you, you wish to change. If you don't have self acceptance, you don't have the right to complain if the world accepts you or not. There are countless quotes on self acceptance and I can go on and on about what self acceptance is. But in a brief way, I want to go through some of my favourite quotes. 

I love this, they say the first step towards change is awareness and the second step is acceptance. So so beautiful. Now, why is the first step towards change is awareness, a lot of times in life, we think we are on the right path because we are not aware about the path we are on. We are just sleep walking through life, without knowing where exactly we are heading. Are we heading in the right direction? Are we on the right road? Or do we even know what road we around in? When you go from one source to a destination, you tell google maps to give you direction and then you figure out whether you are on the right path or not. Now if you keep sleep walking through life, you wouldn't have any direction, you wouldn't know what you are doing wrong, and you even wouldn't know what you are doing right. You wouldn't have any awareness to certain things you feel that you are doing wrong. Maybe you are watching too much social media, maybe you are not eating healthy, maybe you are sleeping late, or whatever it is that you are doing. Maybe you have anxiety and you are avoiding situations that are making you anxious by which your anxiety increases, so the first step is awareness about what you are doing wrong and only then you can change yourself. 

The second step is acceptance. Let's say you are an alcoholic, you have ruined maybe 3 or 4 years of your life in alcohol and somehow you got the awareness that what you are doing is wrong. Now you can crib about how you lost your 3 or 4 years or you can accept that yes, you lost 3 or 4 years but now what? Now it's time for you to change and move forward. So in order for you to move forward you should accept that you have lost 3 or 4 years in alcohol and there's nothing that you can do about it to gain those years back, but you can always shape the future and the present, join support groups, find people who can help you leave alcohol, seek medical help, whatever it is that you need to do, you need to start that process rather than worrying about those 3 or 4 years. So first step is awareness and the second step is acceptance of what you can't change. 

I would tell you a bit of my story over here. In the past 2 years, I have been in and off a trauma bond with someone and during the 2 years, I didn't even understand or even had the awareness that I was in a trauma bond until my doctor explained to me. Many a times, I feel like I should text her, but the truth is whenever I text that individual, I feel fear and guilt that makes me confirm that this is actually a trauma bond. The story involved triangulation as well. But nevertheless, when these things happened, I was extremely vulnerable, I wouldn't talk properly to people, wouldn't listen because my mind was so so sexualised during the time. Now I have the awareness, I accept that those 2 years can never come back, but the future and the present is still in my hands, and I can't tell you how powerful that feels. So just know the 2 a's: Awareness and acceptance. 

Now there's another quote I found. They say total self acceptance, that means everything about you, you should really really accept deep down inside. You should accept, the acnes, the scars, or that burnt mark you had during cooking, everything. Now if people see you and let's say they feel like this is wrong or that is wrong, just knowing that if you have totally accepted yourself, no one in the world can really offend you and that is powerful, knowing that people can see you as they choose and you are not going to get offended just because that one or the second person said something about you. You have to totally accept yourself and that's the way forward for you and for your family. 

The bravest thing to do in our lives is to own your story. The good, the bad or even the ugly, owning the story means that you are a human being who's lived a life. And that life also contains happiness, it contains joy but it also contains pain and sorrow. That's the beauty of life, there's balance of happiness and sorrow. Because without sorrow one would never be able to experience happiness and happiness wouldn't feel as amazing if not for the sorrow. So just be honest, own your story and make sure your grand children have a story an amazing grand dad or a grand mom can tell. So go ahead, forgive yourself for the mistakes you made, love yourself for the person it made you and live larger than life itself. May you get all God needs to give you.