The Power of Self-Love: Change Your Flaws Through Acceptance

What do self-love and acceptance mean, exactly? What if you are not pleased with your current situation, but you are told by the new positive psychology trends to “just accept yourself”?

According to the dictionary definition, self-acceptance is “the act or state of understanding and recognizing one’s own abilities and limitations”.

It’s very confusing because, on one hand, your goal is to accept who you are and at the same time, also change some aspects of yourself. You know, those parts of yourself you’re not really proud of like your tendency to splurge on unnecessary things or your addiction to chocolate peanut butter bars and binging on them at 11 pm.

So how can you accept yourself right now, despite your current flaws, and simultaneously “fix” these things about yourself? Isn’t that the opposite of self-love?

The way I see it is that there is no difference between loving who you are and at the same time choosing you to create personal changes. How come?

If you think about it for a moment, self-love is basically a… change

See, love pushes you to change nonstop, to grow, to evolve, to develop yourself as a human. It propels you to discover new experiences and ideas. Love is the biggest force – it is the propulsion of the Universe, and as is, change is an essential outcome.

Love takes us beyond what seems possible inside the mind and drives us to break down our own walls.

In simple words, self-love doesn’t mean that we must stay as we are for the rest of our lives.

Self-acceptance doesn’t mean we need to maintain our destructive patterns and emotional pain we have carried within us all these years.

Self-love is about accepting the good parts in our selves, AS WELL AS the bad parts, and only from that state of acceptance, we can grow and prosper.

Go Easy On Yourself

Love encourages us to self-develop and to become our best version of ourselves, through determination, compassion, and patience.

On the other hand, criticism, anger, and perfectionism do not belong to the category of love. Unlike what you believe might be true, being hard on yourself will not lead you to improve your results.

But showing yourself some self-love, compassion, and self-acceptance to all your weaknesses is the best starting point to healing all these wounds and negative programming.

Self-love encourages you to change the sabotaging behavior of yous because you know you deserve better.

It’s very common to think that you need to scold yourself or beat yourself up in order to transform your life. This assumption is misguided and unhelpful.  Criticism closes, decreases, and represses us.

In order to truly evolve and thrive, you need to put aside the munitions and communicate with yourself with self-kindness.

Self-Observation and Reflection

How do you even get to know your shortcomings? By reflecting on them. Mindfulness and self-exploration go hand in hand with self-love.

Acknowledging your downsides and negative feelings can drive you to work on the areas that prevent you from living life to the fullest.

As long as you keep learning to know who you are and what motivates you to act and think in certain ways, then you gradually heal the wounded inner child. The result of this process is increasing self-love.

Carl Rogers said, “The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change”.

Here’s another quote I like, by Esther Hicks (from the movie “The Secret”)- “you have to connect to the source. It’s not just loving yourself, it’s loving.  You can’t love yourself but hate someone else; that doesn’t work. You’re either in the vibration of love or you are not.”

If you want to walk on the path of loving and accepting yourself, then make sure to get access to this empowering tool.

It has helped thousands of people just like you to clear the negative self-talk of the inner critic. Listen repetitively to build new neural connections, and embrace a healthy and divine view of self-love.