Radical Self-Acceptance

"The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely."

-- C.G. Jung

Look at you! You're a damn mess! OK, depending on your age, you still may look pretty good, but you know what you're really like. You know all your own weaknesses, secrets, warts, and peccadillos. You know, as Paul Harvey is so fond of saying, "the rest of the story." And it ain't pretty.

Still, you're here. You've made it this far, so you must be doing something right. You must have some stellar qualities, some hidden strengths that offset all the pimples and wrinkles that you see in the fun house mirror of your mind.

But those, too, don't matter. It's not important whether you see yourself as a saint or a sinner -- in reality you're neither, and both. To get to the point of complete self-acceptance, the one crucial requirement is that you give up judging yourself altogether. You must become willing to see exactly what you do without thus inferring particular qualities upon yourself.

It's Saturday. You slept in until 10. You're not lazy, you just slept in until 10. The Sgt. Joe Friday approach to self-acceptance -- "just the facts, ma'am." You helped a little, old lady with her groceries. You're not the next Mother Teresa, you just helped a little, old lady with her groceries. Once you short circuit, the judging/labeling function of your brain, things become clear as the lips on Angelina Jolie's face.

You see, acceptance is not about coming to some tentative conclusion that you're OK, that you're more good than bad, at least, or that you're the best that you can be. Acceptance is simply coming to the realization "I am." Not I am this or I am that. Simply I am, not followed by any adjectives, descriptors or qualifiers. Once you accept yourself at the level of Being, the other levels of doing and having begin to fall into place. And judging yourself becomes completely irrelevant.

"Oh, Jesus Christ," you say. "Accept myself at the level of Being? What is this gobblygook? That sounds like an insurmountable task." It's not. It's simply an unfolding, a process. You can begin in two ways. One, by simply sitting with yourself. You don't have to call it meditation or contemplation or anything, just sit with yourself.

Second, whenever you find yourself evaluating and naming your own behavior, take your focus back to either the behavior itself, or the "I am" within. In other words, redirect your mind from judging and labeling to either what is actually happening in the external world or the quiet spaciousness of the world of Being within.

Don't worry about changing your behavior. Don't obsess about the release date for You 2.0. Let the terror that Jung mentioned come and go. Your behavior will change. You will grow. All of this will happen in a much quicker and smoother manner through acceptance than through judgement, discipline or trying.

Acceptance is a choice. And, hey, if you choose not to accept yourself, you can accept that, too! It's a start.