Learning To Accept Yourself (Warts And All)

A consistent trend I have noticed doing psychic readings and metaphysical counseling for many years. This trend relates to rejection, and our reaction to being rejected by our human family. It is not natural to abandon or reject loved ones, but in my experience as a pastoral counselor and psychic healer, I have noticed that it is a challenge that many have faced in this life.

Recently, as I was doing a channeling session with one of my clients, this came up and we both had a revelation about our own experiences of rejection. The discussion we had was not only about rejection and how we as humans experience it, but also about how we perceive acceptance. Our experience of rejection comes from only one source, namely our expectation, and also how we resonate with the acceptance we receive from others.

When we are children it is natural for us to allow our parents to be our source. They were the picture of God in our lives, and in ideal situations they were our source of acceptance, providing nurture and stability. Many times, when you see a religious group adopting a vengeful and cruel depiction of the Divine, it stems from a refusal to remove the archetypal depiction from God they experienced with their parents.

Many times, the search for source extends itself outward, and the responsibility of our fulfillment is put on other people or organizations. In some cases, fulfillment is found in substances and can also lead to addictive behaviors. We look to these external ‘sources’ to provide us comfort and satisfaction.

It is natural for us to live in community and relationships, so our endeavors toward fulfillment are often projected outward in our relationships. Unfortunately, since we all have an intrinsic need to identify with and live from Source, we find ourselves continually reaching for fulfillment that we rarely find. This leads to heartache, loss, and broken relationships within the human family.

I now see how owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing that we will ever do ~ Brene Brown

So, what is the answer to this fulfillment? It comes in understanding that others will never be the source of our comfort and fulfillment. Although it is important for us to reciprocate love in relationships, this is not our ultimate source of acceptance. When we project our need for acceptance outward, we find that it is rarely fulfilled. It is important to realize that the acceptance we are looking for already exists inside of us! In fact, it only exists inside of us, since it is an intrinsic need that exists in everyone.

The message that has been brought forth from several sources in the metaphysical and spiritual communities over the past hundred years is that the answer to the question of our humanity exists inside of the individual. This is not just a new spiritual trend, but rather an evolutionary movement in modern spirituality and new age thinking.

Now, I want to point out that even though the answers to the quandaries of life exist inside each of is, the consistent trend is that many times the full manifestation of the answer is found in community. When we surround ourselves with like-minded people, we have a much deeper awareness of our Source.

So, how do we make this practical in our everyday lives? The first encouragement is keeping a short leash on your internal critic. You know those messages rolling around in your head that tell you that you’re not “good enough, pretty enough, smart enough,” and so forth. I have found that fighting against ‘the critic’ can sometimes create a more difficult scenario.

When I loved myself enough, I began leaving whatever wasn’t healthy. This meant people, jobs, my own beliefs and habits – anything that kept me small.  My judgement called it disloyal. Now I see it as self-loving ~ Kim McMilllen

My suggestion is to acknowledge the messages being brought forward and then reframe them. Find out where the message is coming from. Let’s briefly take a look at the three messages I used as an example:

Good Enough

Charles has an overwhelming message that he is not good enough to accomplish what he wants in life. This has been a trend since he was nine years old. One day he realized that he has lived over 10-years of his life in misery as a customer service agent for a cell phone company, simply because he never felt he was good enough to step out and live his dreams. He looks back and sees that he dropped out of college, not because his grades were suffering, but because he didn’t feel like he was good enough to complete his degree.

Looking back even further Charles finds that when he was in grade school, a teacher once told him that the art project that he spend a lot of time, energy, and emotion to complete, did not meet the standards of his teacher. He internalized this message, and carried it with him into his adult experience.

Beautiful Enough

Jenny is a beautiful woman, although she has been single for most of her life. She has had several men who pursued her in the past, but she seemed to become self-destructive every time someone took interest. She would torment herself when she went to purchase new clothing and felt like everyone stared at her and judged her when she shopped in the plus size section of the department store.

Today Jenny recognizes that she was limiting the acceptance of herself based on a popular culture definition of beauty that was promoted by the media, which only represents a small section of the actual population.

Smart Enough

Susan is extremely intelligent and attended graduate school. She fought her way to the top and was constantly recognized by her mentors at the university. She was an exceptional student, but constantly felt like her whole life was a lie. She found it hard to be transparent, since so much of her personality was controlled by this fear of not being smart enough – even though all of the evidence was to the contrary.

Even though she had some wonderful professional relationship her inability to be transparent affected her personal relationships. Looking back, she recognized that this stemmed from her inability to get into her first choice of university, and even though her master’s degree studies were at this school, she still carried this message of inadequacy with her in her everyday life.

Ultimately, the message is to accept yourself exactly like you are, where you are, and understand that acceptance from the outside is ultimately not what will satisfy the yearning inside of you. The key to all of this is self-talk, and also not allowing the messages from the outside to affect what is going on inside of you. Even if these messages are good in nature, if they do not align with what is already there, they will not satiate that need for acceptance. As you build your internal acceptance, I promise that the pain experienced from external rejection will also dissipate.

If this sounds like something you are looking for, I would like to encourage you to engage with others in the conversation about this evolutionary change. When we love ourselves, it is that much easier to love those around us. “Warts and all,” as one of my mentors once said.