FAB BLOG POST

How To Accept You As You Are

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One of the greatest acts of self love is to fully accept yourself as you are, right now.

Not when you lose a few more pounds, have the “perfect” job or when you “look better” in that dress.
There’s a reason why “you are enough” has become one of the most overused phrases in the selfhelp community — because IT IS TRUE.
Growing up, we look outward towards the other women in our life to shape our beliefs around how we feel about ourselves.
Not to mention, there are TONS of outside influences telling us who we should be or how we should look in order to be truly accepted.
So it can be incredibly challenging to simply love yourself as you are, without feeling like you have to change something about yourself first.
On the journey of self love and self acceptance, the key is to create a strong foundation by choosing new thoughts to nourish your mind, creating new beliefs to live by, and showing yourself love through small acts of care.
When I was growing up, I remember seeing my mom as not having positive body image and that was something that passed down to me (as it did for my mom from hers and as it does for so many women).
So it became one of my biggest challenges, to love myself, and something that I had to continuously choose to overcome.
I am so grateful for my amazing mom, because the importance of being empowered in self acceptance, self love and self worth has become one of my greatest life lessons and my mission to pass onto my daughter and to all women.
That is why we’re dedicating the entire month of February to exploring a question that is close to my heart: Why is it so flippin’ hard for us women to fully LOVE ourselves?
But I don’t just want to dissect the answers to that question over the next month, I also want to share some tools and techniques with you that have helped me on my own self love journey.
One of the simplest ways to shift out of self criticism and into more loving thoughts is to get really intentional about situations that can bring up a self acceptance challenge.
A recent experience for me was clothes shopping for the first time after having a baby – talk about a challenge (that dreadful dressing room lighting ain’t helping anyone)!
Before I went, I set the intention to have fun with it and try on the clothes in a loving way with no judgement or self criticism.
After a few things didn’t fit right, the negative self talk started to creep in and I had to remind myself, with love and compassion, of the mindset that I wanted to be in and how I wanted to feel —
A loving mindset, one where I release the expectation to look exactly how I did before I had my daughter.
A feeling of enjoyment and pleasure in trying on beautiful clothes (at BCBG, one of my faves).
After a few deep breaths, I reminded myself of my intention and the feeling state that I wanted to embody… and then I closed my eyes and breathed in the expansive feeling of joy, really feeling that energy flow throughout my body.
When I opened my eyes, I looked in the mirror and smiled at myself, saying, “You are beautiful, as you are right now.”
With joy in my heart, I felt ready to continue shopping and to find some pieces that brought me that same feeling of joy when I put them on.

So next time you go clothes shopping (which is enough to throw a lot of us into a negative tailspin) or when you find yourself going into a situation that might bring up self judgement or criticism, try this little experiment:

0-01Set your intention beforehand. (In my case, I set the intention that I was going to have fun and try things on without worrying if something didn’t fit. I decided that I was not going to judge myself and that it wouldn’t mean anything negative if the clothes didn’t fit.)

Decide how you want to FEEL, and anchor into that feeling state. You can even listen to music on the way that gets you into the vibration of that feeling.   

Observe any negative self talk that might come up; and if it does, thank those thoughts for being there for you as a reminder to show yourself the love and care you deserve.

Make a pact with yourself that if the negative self talk doesn’t stop, you will simply remove yourself from the situation.

When the self criticism or self judgement flare up, invite yourself to lean into the perspective that it’s an opportunity for you to notice patterns that keep popping up and give yourself the gift of working through them.
It also gives you the opportunity to look at your self acceptance again with new eyes and see how you can respond to yourself differently.
The most important thing to remember is that the journey to loving yourself is not a destination, it is a journey it ebbs and flows.
And no matter where you are in your journey, you deserve love and care RIGHT NOW, simply by being the wonderful you that you are!
I would love to hear your biggest takeaway, and how you will use this simple process for keeping self judgement at bay…

Let me know in the comments below!

Thank you so much for reading and participating — AND if you know someone who would absolutely love to read to hear this message – send it with love!