Self confidence and self acceptance part 1

Self confidence and self acceptance can be practiced and mastered the same way you’ve practiced and mastered how to doubt and reject yourself

So, today I woke up regretting yesterday’s blog post. The one where I was talking about loving yourself in the skin you’re in–whatever it’s condition. So I’m writing this post about learning self confidence and self acceptance because I need to remind myself of what really and truly matters.

Here’s the thing about the self-love journey (at least my own). It is an ongoing every day battle. It’s lifelong. Some days you feel invincibly confident and sure of your knowledge of self and your acceptance of self. Other days you’re riddled with self doubt and feelings of shame and self hate.

Always loving yourself and being kind to yourself can be challenging.

At least this is true speaking for myself. I won’t speak for anyone else. But I suspect many people who are out there promoting self love continue to experience self doubt from time to time. It’s just not good for them to allow you to know it. Because they make their living from you remaining a committed follower of theirs and a believer in the message of supreme confidence that they sell you.

Why I woke up regretting yesterday’s post…

Quite honestly, I woke up regretting yesterday’s post because of the featured picture and the fact that I don’t look my best in it. It’s not my best picture. And I could hear certain people’s voice in my head saying exactly that. “It’s not your best picture”. “You don’t look as young as you look in other pictures. You don’t look as pretty”.

This need to look young and pretty–it’s something I’m working at overcoming. Because it impacts very negatively on any effort to build lasting self confidence and self acceptance. It has a negative impact even when you’re young and pretty. Because everybody has days when they’re not going to look their best.

It never feels good to be compared to versions of yourself that people like better than they like the current version of you because of how you look

Being liked because you look young and pretty is never something that you should allow to be important for your confidence and your ability to accept yourself, because it’s setting up yourself to feel deep pain and shame when people compare you as you are now to some version of yourself before now that in their opinion looked better.

One of the most important things you can do in your quest to learn self confidence and self acceptance is to practice loving and accepting each and every version of yourself. Get to know yourself and learn to love yourself and be a friend to yourself and not judge yourself so that no matter what reflects back at you in the mirror or in a photograph or on a video, you’re never ashamed and afraid of what other people are going to think and say about how you look. Because you don’t feel less loving and accepting of yourself based on how attractive you look or don’t.

This is of course a very hard thing to do. Especially if the only thing people tend to notice about you is how you look. And really, that’s what we notice about people generally is how they look. And for those people who have the experience where the only thing that has allowed them to ever get attention from others has been their looks, it becomes even harder and more complicated. Because, when they don’t look the way that gets them attention, then they have to deal with feeling unworthy of attention because of how they don’t look.

Personally I do not have any issue with accepting a not attractive version of myself behind closed doors. I have a healthy appreciation for all aspects of myself that I see represented in photos and on video, or reflecting back at me through a mirror. But when it comes to other people, when I feel like I’m being scrutinized and judged by other people, and being compared to versions of myself they considered attractive, it can be excruciating to bear the shame of feeling like I’ve failed myself by not being as beautiful as I was at some other point in time, in some other picture or video.

It’s hard to have self confidence and self acceptance when people only see worth and value in you depending on the appearance of youth and beauty.

But if you practice the kind of self love that is about knowing and understanding that your worth and value comes from your heart and your mind and your soul–from the essence of a faceless spirit inside of you, you can bravely battle and sometimes conquer the kind of concern over your appearance that shatters your confidence and makes you feel the kind of pain and shame that tortures your soul. It can be tricky when people impose their expectations and their judgement. But it’s way worse when you turn that stuff on yourself.

I woke up regretting yesterday’s post because of a picture, but the truth is, the picture is as much an accurate reflection of my truth as the *prettier pictures.