Self-acceptance: The challenges and possibilities

To be comfortable in one’s own self is a much-cherished idea. Unfortunately, it’s not the easiest state to accomplish. And even if you reached that point, to continue in that state is even harder.

But accepting yourself still remains an urgent matter. Perhaps, there is nothing more important that helps you live a fulfilling life.

Keeping this in view, here are the ways to unlock the path to your self, and when you find it, to greet it with a smile of acceptance.

Self-acceptance is accepting all your interests, dreams and vulnerabilities

The challenges in understanding yourself

The first step in accepting yourself is obvious but still poses a challenge for many- understanding yourself.

What makes this problematic is that we have a tendency to compartmentalize ourselves- into the professional self, personal self, social self and so on.

This inclination often leads us to focus on one of these selves to the detriment of the others. By doing this, one may find themselves to be evolved professionals but still lacking in other parts of the self. This in turn makes us feel incomplete, always getting caught in the throes of a restlessness, never feeling completely content.

What is called for then, is a holistic methodology that would help us map the different aspects of our self, thereby enabling us to get a broader picture of who we are. Temenos Vision Lab or TVL is a unique session developed by Temenos+Agility that helps you do that. More precisely, the proteritary tool called Influence Maps which is used in TVL helps you do it.

As the name suggests, Influence Maps helps you assess the different influences- both internal and external- which shaped your behavior and characteristics. This helps you evaluate objectively the influences which empowers you to move ahead with a better self knowledge.

Staying in sync with yourself

When we harbor secrets, the effect could be toxic. This is especially true if we fail to acknowledge something about ourselves- which is a form of keeping a secret.

More often than not, we don’t do this consciously. This ‘self-secretiveness’ is often a result of deep-set insecurities: thoughts like ‘What if I don't like everything about my self?’ might nag at your mind, keeping you from confronting yourself.

Expert guides and a well-designed program could help you solve this problem easily.

Temenos Vision Lab is developed based on 25 years of consultancy experience and psychological insights. Some of the best transformation coaches in the management domain conduct the sessions.

As for bringing transparency to yourself, the Influence Maps which was earlier mentioned plays a key role. It incorporates the following steps which helps you gain clarity of yourself.

Personal mythology: Leveraging the power of storytelling, this step helps you frame a narrative about the journey of yourself.

Clean Slate: This is the step where you annihilate all inner obstacles which stand in your way to progress. The Clean Slate session is discussed in more detail in the subsequent section.

Personal Vision: A powerful step to realize your True Personal Vision.

Compelling Shared Vision: For a team of individuals, this step helps discover the compelling shared vision- a powerful objective born from their collective self.

The self is connected to different aspects like health and family- a holistic acceptance is important in this regard

Continual learning in self acceptance

Understanding your self is one thing, accepting the self is another.

The ability to look at your self with an unflinching inner gaze, and smile at that self, to say, “This is who I am” is something easier said than done. In fact, it wouldn’t be wrong to say accepting your self is a continual process. It’s not like you could come to terms with yourself and thereby “graduate” in this process of self-acceptance once and for all.

Even after accepting yourself, you would go through life experiences- many of them novel, some of them challenging or even harrowing- that would once again put you at a remove from yourself. You would then have to find your way back to yourself in the context of these new experiences.

However, this may not be as easy as it sounds.

For one thing, some of your experiences- personal or professional- may be bad. These experiences in turn have a negative impact on your psyche.

They make you apprehensive of changes, giving you misgivings about a process or persons based on one bad experience. It’s hard to find objectivity in such scenarios. The tragedy is that such a state of mind would hamper your growth as a professional or individual.

The good news is there is no reason to be stuck in that swampland of the mind. You could cleanse the mind of the negativities that block your progress, and move ahead as a more confident person, ready to accept yourself once again, and what more- to positively use the attributes in your own self.

The Clean Slate session included in TVL is designed for just that. By encouraging self-assessment, it enables you to weed out the negativities in your mind and move on with less mental baggage and more self-acceptance.

Self-forgiveness for self-acceptance

Using the sessions and tools like Clean Slate and Influence Maps, TVL helps you access parts of yourself with which you usually remain out of touch.

It’s all too possible this process of discovery may bring to fore things you may not like about yourself. This is especially true with regards to things you might have done in the past, about which you now regret.

Such encounters with displeasing aspects of the self are something you generally avoid. However, for continual emotional growth, you need to forgive yourself for all that you regret, for all the times you may have let yourself or others down. To err, as they say, is human. What’s important is to try and minimize the instances of making mistakes and move on.

This empathetic approach to oneself leads to self-forgiveness. Forgiving yourself in turn makes you more open , helping you move on. This idea of nurturing self-forgiveness is enmeshed in every aspect of TVL- from the guidance provided by the coaches to the design of all tools and sessions used in it to the friendly ambience in which TVL is carried out.

Be an angel of forgiveness unto yourself. Image credits: Amaani Sirajuddin