Getting Comfortable in Your Own Skin
Andrea Piacquadio/Pexels
When the last person you want to be is you, feeling positively about yourself can seem impossible. You might find some relief by distracting with silly videos or sports or cleaning or whatever. And they can feel good for the moment, but then you are ultimately left with you. Ugh. Still, if it is your only answer, you are likely to keep distracting… and keep getting the same disappointing results. There is a better solution, but only if you are ready to do something contrary to your instincts.
Acceptance: The Only Path Forward
If you think about it, there is only one real solution – to develop self-acceptance. Any other plan is bound to fail. Even as your read this, you might be thinking, Yeah, right. This won’t work either, at least not for me. Fortunately, you’re wrong. I know this, not because I know you, but because I know some things about being human.
We humans are all imperfect. We have weaknesses and make mistakes. No matter how hard we might try, our imperfection will be with us until the moment we die. It’s inevitable. That’s not to say we can never change. To the contrary, we are forever changing, at least in small ways. It’s just that we can never reach a state of perfection. Still, you can choose to continue trying to change in the direction of learning and growth.
So, given that reality, the issue is not whether we are a failure or worthless or irredeemable, but whether we are willing to try to stay on – or return to – a path of growth and healing. But this requires compassionate self-awareness of our difficulties and a willingness to work on them. The payoff is having a better relationship with you, boosting your self-esteem, and learning to be more resilient to rejection and failures.
Stop Distracting and Look Within
When you feel like you are something that should be scraped off the bottom of a shoe, it can be tempting to look away, attending to anyone or anything else. But hard as it might be to do, a more beneficial response is to look more closely at yourself, at all of you. This kind of introspection takes courage, which I discuss briefly in the video, When Being Busy Gets in the Way.
For those aspects of yourself or your life that you are unhappy with, it is important to acknowledge your feelings and struggles. Ignoring them, or trying to distract yourself, will leave you needing to forever look anywhere but at yourself. So even when you are entertained or engaged in the distraction, those thorny issues are there poking at you – though you will feel them more sometimes than others.
When you acknowledge your emotional struggles, you give voice to them, either aloud or silently to yourself. As with monsters that can appear and grow in the dark, shining a light on our struggles can shrink them to a more manageable size – or even make them disappear completely.
Upon honest reflection, you will also find positive qualities, strengths, or accomplishments that can help you to feel better about you. For example, you might think you are a good friend or very persistent when faced with challenges. But if your self-perceptions tend toward the negative, you may think that focusing only on the positives will make you self-centered, believing that you are all that and more! That thinking has more to do with the discomfort of taking a different perspective than any reality.
You don’t need to choose between noticing your negatives or positives. In fact, it’s best when you can acknowledge your difficulties within a broader perspective of feeling good about yourself.
The Courage to Be You
When you stop trying to escape yourself with distractions, you have the opportunity to discover the multi-dimensional you. Choosing to develop a deep self-awareness means connecting consciously with the most uplifting and the most difficult parts of you. When you learn to become grounded in a positive self-experience, then you can have empathy and self-compassion for all of you. You can fully accept yourself as you are now while also remaining on the path of personal growth and healing. This journey of developing compassionate self-awareness takes courage and persistence, but it can also deliver a tremendous sense of personal acceptance and well-being.