No tags yet.
It's Christmas day, you're sitting around a huge dining room table filled with food, family, a sister in law, brother in law, and your younger brother’s girlfriend. You're dreading what you know is about to come out of your grandmother’s mouth. Where’s your date? Why don’t you find a nice guy of your own to settle down with?
The holidays are here. The most wonderful time of the year, also the time of year that most single people tend to dread. Attending holiday functions at work without a plus one.
Family dinners consisting of family members continuously asking you “when are you going to find a nice man?” They say it’s hard to be single during the holidays, however I am convinced that it's only hard because the people who aren’t single make us feel that being single is so wrong and so lonely and that we must be sad because we don’t have someone else in our life’s to ensure us that we are okay. Yes, it would be nice to be with someone, exchange gifts, and introduce to your family. But why does it have to hard if you don’t have someone? Why do we need someone else to make us feel good about ourselves?
I am 27 years old, a young professional, and I happen to be single during this holiday season. My family, as usual, makes me feel that I should be searching for “the one”, but I am coming to realizing that I really don’t need a man in my life to be okay.
Being single is a time to get to know yourself for who you really are. It’s very easy to lose who you are when you are in a relationship. You turn into a “we” instead of an “I”. I’ve always been a relationship person, always having a man in my life. I didn’t know this at the time, but I am beginning to learn the true nature of why I always felt the need to be with someone. I needed that validation, that acceptance from another person to ensure myself that I was worthy of being loved. However, today I realized that self-acceptance and self-love are the best things you could ever do for yourself and if you truly have both, you will be able to be your best self in any and all future relationships in your life.
Self-acceptance is one’s satisfaction and/or happiness with themselves and is thought to be vital for good mental health. Self-acceptance consists of self-understanding and true awareness of one's strengths and weaknesses.
Self-love is the belief one holds that they are a valuable and worthy person. An example of self-love is when you have a positive view of yourself and are confident in yourself and your place in the world (yourdictionary.com).
It’s pretty clear that self-acceptance and self-love go hand in hand and once you have achieved one, the other will come naturally.
Self-acceptance may not come easily to everyone. When I started my journey to self-acceptance, I had very low self-esteem, I was miserable being single and “alone”, and I most definitely did not love myself. I knew change would not happen overnight and it would take work on my part. I will admit, change, as I’m sure most people can relate, is extremely scary. Fear of the unknown, fear of failure, fear of making things worse. The first step to achieving self-acceptance is to embrace the change that is about to come into your life. You must truly believe and have faith that this change will only better your life and make you a happier, healthier person.
I truly believe that every person in this world deserves to be loved, not only by other people, but they should also love themselves. As I said earlier, I did not love myself in the beginning of my process to self-acceptance. A great way to learn self-love and self-appreciation is to give yourself daily affirmations. Remind yourself on a daily basis that you are a beautiful person inside and out.
True happiness is achieved through self-acceptance and happiness and self-acceptance truly affects everything in our lives.
I know that learning new habits may be hard for some people. How does one actually learn self-acceptance? Consistency is key. There are techniques you can perform on a daily basis to help enhance your self-acceptance.
First, practice “relaxed awareness”. Relaxed awareness is a soft consciousness of our own thoughts. This thought can consist if our feelings, any pain we may have, our own self-rating and even our own judgment. This is an awareness of our own existence, everything that is occurring in the current moment, inside and outside of us.
To practice relaxed awareness, sit or lay in a comfortable place, somewhere you won’t be disturbed. Close your eyes and simply notice and become aware of your own thoughts, your feelings, and your body. Don’t push any thoughts away, try not to focus on your breathing, just simply welcome the thoughts that pass through your mind. You may have some negative thoughts or feelings come, and that is okay. Bad feelings are a part of life and embracing your unpleasant feelings allows you to learn to cope with them. Pushing away bad feelings, or “running” from them only creates more pain. Simply try to see the good within the bad and give yourself the opportunity to the okay with them. Focus on your thoughts, peacefully. You may practice this for 5 min or even up to 30 min a day.
Another great technique is practicing gratitude. There are a few ways you can do this. On way is to have gratitude sessions. Every morning, as soon as you awake, think about what you are grateful for and be sure to include the things about yourself that you are grateful for. Another way to practice gratitude is to make a gratitude list. You can make a new list every day or continuously add to the same list. I personally have one gratitude list that I add to every day. I write the date before I add to it so I can see the progression in my gratitude as I move forward in my process. You can practice your gratitude daily or once a week even. Whichever works best for you.
Another technique that will help you with self-acceptance and self-love is having compassion and forgiveness for yourself. Two major defects that stand in the way of self-acceptance is judgments and self-ratings. Try to turn these defects into forgiveness and compassion. If you are judging yourself for not being as good at something as someone else, try forgiving yourself, just as you would forgive someone else. If you find you are giving yourself terrible self-rating, be compassionate to yourself, just as you would be compassionate to someone who was being hard on themselves.
Also, try to let go of any fear you may have. Fear of failure or fear of change, and try to turn that fear into faith. The opposite of fear of faith. Have faith that everything will always work out the way it is supposed to and have faith that everything will be alright.
Positive thinking is another technique that can lead to self- love and acceptance. When you have negative feelings, remove their power over your thoughts by making them a positive thought instead. If you start feeling that you are not good enough, remind yourself that you are worthy. This is where positive affirmation will help you. It will teach you how to think positive about yourself and help drown out the negative.
Lastly, but certainly not least, always remember to speak to someone about your feelings. Sometimes we can get lost in our own thoughts and by saying these thoughts out loud we allow ourselves to get the clutter out of our minds. It helps us to see more clearly. It also allows someone else to help us through our emotions and to help remind us of the positive things in our lives. It also helps you learn how to trust. Trust in someone who loves you. They can help you understand yourself better by helping you see through the bad and bring only the good to the light.
Before getting overwhelmed and thinking to yourself that doing every single one of these techniques every day will take up too much time, remember that these are simply options. If you do 1 or 2 of these a day it will help build self -acceptance and love. You don’t need to do all of these techniques all the time. Find what works for you.
As you learn self-acceptance and self-love, you start becoming a better person. The more you learn about yourself and the more you love yourself, the better you become.
This all comes full circle. Being single gives you the time to learn how to accept and love yourself. Once you do, you are your “best self”. And once you become your best self, you can give your best self to someone in a relationship. Whether it be an intimate relationship, a relationship with friends or family, or a relationship with yourself, once you achieve true self-acceptance and truly love yourself, the best you will be present in any and all of the relationships in your life.