There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just going to lay it out for you. What I’m about to teach you is a super power. You master this, and suddenly the world becomes a very different place. Every relationship you have changes. The responsibilities you have are altered. You step into every moment of your life a changed person, with greater calm, increased power, and a deeper sense of being alive.
I know – sounds too good to be true right?
The amazing part about is that there’s no catch. In order to access this super power, you just need to do one simple thing… accept who you are without shame, without ego, and without judgment of value. Because once you can do that, everything else falls into a different perspective.
It doesn’t mean everything is suddenly perfect… far from it.
What it does mean is that you can move forward in life without a lot of excess baggage. As humans, we spend so much energy trying to make sure that we “looks the right way, or drive the right car, or live in the right house, or say the right things. We spend so much money buying things that we think will make us “enough” when what we are really trying to do is bury that sense of unworthiness under a mountain of things.
It’s the very active judging ourselves that becomes a problem.
That’s not to say that we act without a sense of judgment, it’s just that that judgment is about the choices that we made, not about the value of the person who made those choices. I can look at things that I have done and see if they were in harmony with the principles that I try to live by, and realize sometimes they are not.
But that shouldn’t change my value.
We all make mistakes, we all have different backgrounds. I’ve known people who grew up in a very safe homes, with everything they could have asked for, and they go through life just expecting that. They seem to have achieved “a lot” and yet they essentially started on 3rd base and just walked their way into home plate.
I’ve also known people who have come from very tough backgrounds, and who look as though they are falling far short of “the world” but who have in actuality run a much longer race under much harder conditions. These are often people who judge themselves harshly, and to struggle with relationships out of a crushing sense of not being enough.
Because they fail to accept themselves.
I’m going through a pretty difficult phase of growth right now. It’s forced me to go really deep, and lose a lot of sleep meditating and writing, trying to communicate with a very lost, angry and somewhat petulant child who still inhabits a small corner of my soul. I’ve carried a lot of shame and self judgment over the fact that that part of me hasn’t “properly matured”.
When in truth, that part of me is a response to some things that happened, and some things that didn’t happen that probably should have, a very long time ago.
It’s something that I find hard to talk about outside of the relationship I have with my wife, just because it’s so difficult for me to accept. For anyone else, I would tell them that the very fact that they are where they are in their life, and they are in a place to be able to focus on this is incredible given the background.
So I’m working on trying to accept that petulant child, and to embrace him and offered him the love and the understanding that he didn’t get when he needed it. It’s a hard thing to do because it involves walking that fine line of accepting what happened and trying not to get caught up in judgment of all that transpired.
Recognizing that everybody involved was doing their best, and that sometimes life just hands you a bad circumstance helps, but in the end I’m left with me, myself, and some responses in reflexes that are buried very deep in my soul.
So every day I try to accept that part of me, and I try to make peace with the circumstances that have arisen as a result of all that I have experienced.
It’s not easy, but I find that the more that I’m able to just be kind towards myself, and accept that part of me without judgment, I find myself feeling lighter, and having increased measure of courage that is necessary to take the next steps to be where I want to be.
Accepting yourself is the ultimate act of self-love, and it allows you to lay down so many burdens.
But it is not easy, and I am trying.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings