Self love?? How about starting with self acceptance.

So I was chatting with a lovely human today (who is going to be one of our storytellers at our Soulful Storytelling night) and we were talking about how we sometimes have to accept ourselves and the situations we are in, even though we don't like it. She was talking about her health and how she has had to adapt her life to allow her body to do the things it can and can't do. It got me thinking about the idea of self love versus self acceptance. We hear a lot about self love now and how we can learn to love our bodies, love our lives etc, which is a positive, empowering thing. But what I've learned is that sometimes when our reality is far from perfect, it can be hard to love ourselves or love our life as it is. Our brains need something a little more believable to work with sometimes, and for me self acceptance and learning to accept my life as it is can be a much easier and achievable step rather than self love.

For example, when my business is going through a quiet period and my income is low, I can fall into the trap of blaming myself, beating myself up about not doing enough etc (if you've read my letters for a while, you know the story). To trick my brain into loving myself and loving my life in that moment can be hard, so to start with acceptance is doable. I start with kindness towards myself, being grateful for all I have achieved and accepting that I am human, and stuff in life goes wrong. It instantly stops me going into beating myself up and blaming everything on myself AND by accepting the reality, it helps me to move forward and take action, rather than staying stuck. So it's a very powerful state to be in - acceptance.

Self acceptance also allows me to be human and flawed. I don't have to be amazing and perfect all the time, I can just be average - what a relief!

So how can you bring a little self acceptance in to your life today? How would it be to just say to yourself - 'I'm human. Sometimes I'm amazing, sometimes I'm an idiot, and sometimes I'm average - and so is everybody else'. Feels good right....

Let me know your thoughts on this.....

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash