Accepting Yourself As You Are

Last week the question we talked about was How do you see yourself? The wording on that question is important. We were not writing down who we ARE but rather how we perceive ourselves. Oftentimes our perspectives can be very far from the truth.

This week we’re going to talk about accepting ourselves as we are. Ask yourself and others who and what you really are. Choose close friends who will be honest with you and not sugarcoat their answer. If they see you as a vivacious, loving person and not as a depressed mope, you need to hear that. If you are depressed and that’s what they see as well, that’s what you need to hear. You need to hear the truth.

Compare other’s answers with your own perspective of yourself. Do they differ? Which do you feel is more accurate? Your view or their view? A combination of both?

Here’s an example to illustrate this step: I was very depressed for a long time, then I met my boyfriend Jorge (pronounced George). He could see I had many problems, and yet he saw a side of me that I did not. He saw me smiling and joking. He saw I had a sharp mind. When he described me to myself, it was hard to accept anything good about myself. The truth is I had good qualities and bad qualities.

Yay for the good qualities, but what would I do with the bad qualities that seemed to outweigh anything good in me? I decided to accept that I was a depressed, complaining person who had wasted many years of her life. Then I told myself “That is who you used to be. You’re not that person anymore. You may still feel like a scared loser who doesn’t get anything done, but that’s not who you are now. That is all in the past.”

This process took much longer than the thirty seconds it took to put into words and type up, but the important thing is not how long the process takes for each person. The important thing is that you come to those realizations, you don’t give up until it sinks in for you, and you reach that place where you can accept who you are, good and bad. Then you proclaim that you are no longer those bad parts of yourself. The feelings and perspective you have of yourself is ALL based off of past events and decisions you’ve made.

If your entire life was erased from this second backward, you would not have anything negative to say about yourself because you’d have no memory of it. The only moment that would matter would be this one and what you would decide to do with it. You can make it anything you want it to be. You can create a new you by focusing on just this present moment. Even though the memories of your past failures will not be literally erased, it is still true that the moment that matters most is the one you’re living in right this second. After you have found a way to accept that truth, you can move on to the next part, the decisions you choose to make in this present moment.

Next week we’ll talk about looking into our futures and accepting who we WANT to be.

Next week: “Accepting Who You Want to Be”

Also, stay tuned for updates on the release of my current fictional work in progress, Mint Julep Adventures!

How Do I See Myself?

First, my apologies for not posting on Thursday as I stated in my last blog, but happy Friday to you! I have a great post for you today to finish out the week.

This month we are talking about The Imaginary You: Finding and Becoming the Real You. I’m not an expert on the subject, I’m just sharing some things that worked for me. You can try some of these things out to see how they work for you, or come up with your own ideas.

The Question

One of the first things that helped me get started on finding myself was to ask myself this question: How do I see myself?

What is your self image? Mine was of a person who was very afraid, never got things done, made proclamations to the world about writing a book then never followed through, someone who didn’t want to face life, who was more comfortable hiding than being an adult, an awkward person steeped in depression and rejected by everyone she dated or wanted to date.

Being truthful in answering this question about myself was vital to the next steps I would take, which we will talk about in the following weeks. For now, take some time this week to ask yourself how you see yourself. Write it down, do a voice recording, make a video. Then play it back or read over it and be as honest as you can with yourself. Write down how you feel about yourself. Do you like yourself? Hate yourself? Why?

There's lots of things we imagine about ourselves, thus creating an imaginary version of ourselves. This "imaginary you" can work for you and against you, a concept we'll cover later in the month.

Next week we’ll talk about how your self image plays into finding the real you.

The Announcement

I promised an exciting announcement this week, and here it is: The current fictional series I’m working on, Mint Julep Adventures, is in its editing phase right now and will be ready for publication very soon! I will be self publishing it as an ebook. I have plans to create a paperback, but not for a while yet. As soon as we pass edits, I will be choosing a release date. I’m so excited to have such a fun project almost ready to put out into the world.

Thanks again for reading. I’ll see you next week for more about finding and becoming the real you.

Next week: "Accepting Yourself As You Are"