#5 : On Accepting Ourselves
Hi Dear Reader,
It's Friday, time to sit down and do some writing. Hope everyone had a good week. Before I begin I just want to send my thoughts and prayers to the families affected by the FIU bridge collapse. It's a nightmare for everyone involved, but I know our strong community will push forward #FIUstrong (Figure 1). This week's post comes in a week late, mostly because of a few small projects I'm working on (more on that on another post). As always, I hope you find comfort in this space. We will be building canals today!
Today I want to talk about accepting ourselves. I know it sounds like another cliche mantra, but it gets interesting when you put some real thought to it. What does it mean to accept yourself, are you in control of it? What are the preconditions, if any exist? These questions have been around as long as we've been homo sapiens, but I've found it critical to at least begin to consider it because accepting who we are (whatever that means) is, as far as I currently see it, the foundation for growth and living meaningful lives.
What is Acceptance anyways? For me, I see it as a "flow" like a stream or river (Figure 2). It's not a decision or a static aspect of our life, as I see some quotes suggest. We change, our environment changes, our relationships change, the flow of acceptance changes.
Accepting yourself isn't as simple as it sounds, at least that's not my experience. At first we might think that the self is all there is and we become proud of that self to display acceptance, but in reality we are complex beings with a range of emotions, personality traits, body image, sexual orientations and core beliefs/values. To add to that we have the environment pushing us in a certain directions, for better or worse. We must come into conflict with ourselves at some point and welcome our complexity with generosity, or else there is no growth - we begin to lie to ourselves, and instead we accept our constructed ego and not our true self. After putting some thought, I came to three core aspects of self acceptance:
1 - Internal vs External Acceptance (Where is the flow coming from)
Where is the flow coming from? Acceptance, from experience, flows in two directions (Figure 3). It either flows inward from the outside, or it flows outward from the inside. This first is External Acceptance which is characterized from our place in society, personal wealth, popularity, achievements, etc. The second is Internal Acceptance which is characterized by compassion, confidence, mindfulness, self-satisfaction.
When we say we accept ourselves, which flow are we accepting? You could find acceptance in both cases, and they might seem indistinguishable. I think we need both internal and external flows, but I would argue that our dependence needs to be place on the internal.
Suppose you're managing a city (Yourself) (Figure 4) and you need a source of water for your thirsty citizens. You have two options, a lake in your territory that is inaccessible without building a canal and a river coming into your territory, also inaccessible without building a canal. The lake has water and a few fish which fulfills your need, but then you find out the river brings lots of fish and opportunities to trade with the adjacent territory. You spend your resources to build a canal to the river first, and at first things are going great. A few months in however, a major drought hits the adjacent territory and the river dries up. Your city is now left without water.
Building the canal to the river wasn't wrong, but we end up depending on the river. If we build a canal to the lake, we at least receive what we need. Having the flow acceptance coming from inside will help us build the foundation to build flows going inside. Most importantly, we will learn to not depend from flows coming in.
2 - Change in the Flow
Real infrastructural canals wear out, they need maintenance. The same goes towards the canals we build, whether they be Internal or External.
Change happens in our lives all the time, and these changes shape the flow going through our canals. Some change might increase External Acceptance flow. What happens then? We learn to depend on the External Acceptance. We forget to maintain our Internal canal, and is eventually destroyed. This might be why Humility (Figure 5) is so important.
Similarly, change might decrease External Acceptance flow. What happens then? We grow resentful and don't trust the external canals. We become reserved, and forget our neighbors and refuse to ask for help. We forget to maintain the External Canals, and are eventually destroyed. This might be why strong relationships are so important.
I've been guilty of both, I'm not perfect. Check your canals and see how they're doing, let's keep them strong.
3 - The Dark Side
Like many water sources, our lake and the incoming rivers have polluted water. We have a choice to make, do we ignore the pollutants in our water or clean it by using a filter? Surprisingly, both in real life (Pollution and Global Warming) and in our hypothetical scenario, we choose to ignore it. Ignoring it brings disease and suffering to our city, was it worth it?
It's quite a dramatic example, but I think it's proper to the following point. The pollutants represent the negative emotions and experience we have, thus we ignore "the dark side" (Figure 6) in both ourselves and others. By dark side I mean all the emotions we tend to group negatively, such as anger, resentment, fear, among others. I know this too well personally, as I always try to see the best intentions in myself and others. I aimed to bring peace at all times, and avoided the negative emotions that came with conflict and circumstance. As hard as I tried to avoid it, they came to the surface one way or another and polluted my water.
Then I thought: As a citizen of our hypothetical city, I'd be reluctant to drink the water. Isn't that rejection? Isn't that the opposite of Acceptance? Once I understand that everyone, myself included, is capable to experience these negative emotions I gained a deeper understanding of self-acceptance. Accepting the "Dark Side", ironically, taught me to deal with these emotions and filter them productively.
These are some of my current thought on Accepting Ourselves. Notice how I didn't talk about happiness. Accepting ourselves has nothing to do with happiness, is has to do with living meaningful lives. If I find something new I'll add it here.
See you next Friday!
~ NoChillNerd.
It's Friday, time to sit down and do some writing. Hope everyone had a good week. Before I begin I just want to send my thoughts and prayers to the families affected by the FIU bridge collapse. It's a nightmare for everyone involved, but I know our strong community will push forward #FIUstrong (Figure 1). This week's post comes in a week late, mostly because of a few small projects I'm working on (more on that on another post). As always, I hope you find comfort in this space. We will be building canals today!
Figure 1 : #FIUStrong
Today I want to talk about accepting ourselves. I know it sounds like another cliche mantra, but it gets interesting when you put some real thought to it. What does it mean to accept yourself, are you in control of it? What are the preconditions, if any exist? These questions have been around as long as we've been homo sapiens, but I've found it critical to at least begin to consider it because accepting who we are (whatever that means) is, as far as I currently see it, the foundation for growth and living meaningful lives.
What is Acceptance anyways? For me, I see it as a "flow" like a stream or river (Figure 2). It's not a decision or a static aspect of our life, as I see some quotes suggest. We change, our environment changes, our relationships change, the flow of acceptance changes.
Figure 2 : Reminds me of Electromagnetism
Accepting yourself isn't as simple as it sounds, at least that's not my experience. At first we might think that the self is all there is and we become proud of that self to display acceptance, but in reality we are complex beings with a range of emotions, personality traits, body image, sexual orientations and core beliefs/values. To add to that we have the environment pushing us in a certain directions, for better or worse. We must come into conflict with ourselves at some point and welcome our complexity with generosity, or else there is no growth - we begin to lie to ourselves, and instead we accept our constructed ego and not our true self. After putting some thought, I came to three core aspects of self acceptance:
1 - Internal vs External Acceptance (Where is the flow coming from)
Where is the flow coming from? Acceptance, from experience, flows in two directions (Figure 3). It either flows inward from the outside, or it flows outward from the inside. This first is External Acceptance which is characterized from our place in society, personal wealth, popularity, achievements, etc. The second is Internal Acceptance which is characterized by compassion, confidence, mindfulness, self-satisfaction.
Figure 3 : Opposite Flows
When we say we accept ourselves, which flow are we accepting? You could find acceptance in both cases, and they might seem indistinguishable. I think we need both internal and external flows, but I would argue that our dependence needs to be place on the internal.
Suppose you're managing a city (Yourself) (Figure 4) and you need a source of water for your thirsty citizens. You have two options, a lake in your territory that is inaccessible without building a canal and a river coming into your territory, also inaccessible without building a canal. The lake has water and a few fish which fulfills your need, but then you find out the river brings lots of fish and opportunities to trade with the adjacent territory. You spend your resources to build a canal to the river first, and at first things are going great. A few months in however, a major drought hits the adjacent territory and the river dries up. Your city is now left without water.
Figure 4 : A poorly drawn map
Building the canal to the river wasn't wrong, but we end up depending on the river. If we build a canal to the lake, we at least receive what we need. Having the flow acceptance coming from inside will help us build the foundation to build flows going inside. Most importantly, we will learn to not depend from flows coming in.
2 - Change in the Flow
Real infrastructural canals wear out, they need maintenance. The same goes towards the canals we build, whether they be Internal or External.
Change happens in our lives all the time, and these changes shape the flow going through our canals. Some change might increase External Acceptance flow. What happens then? We learn to depend on the External Acceptance. We forget to maintain our Internal canal, and is eventually destroyed. This might be why Humility (Figure 5) is so important.
Figure 5 : Be Humble
Similarly, change might decrease External Acceptance flow. What happens then? We grow resentful and don't trust the external canals. We become reserved, and forget our neighbors and refuse to ask for help. We forget to maintain the External Canals, and are eventually destroyed. This might be why strong relationships are so important.
I've been guilty of both, I'm not perfect. Check your canals and see how they're doing, let's keep them strong.
3 - The Dark Side
Like many water sources, our lake and the incoming rivers have polluted water. We have a choice to make, do we ignore the pollutants in our water or clean it by using a filter? Surprisingly, both in real life (Pollution and Global Warming) and in our hypothetical scenario, we choose to ignore it. Ignoring it brings disease and suffering to our city, was it worth it?
It's quite a dramatic example, but I think it's proper to the following point. The pollutants represent the negative emotions and experience we have, thus we ignore "the dark side" (Figure 6) in both ourselves and others. By dark side I mean all the emotions we tend to group negatively, such as anger, resentment, fear, among others. I know this too well personally, as I always try to see the best intentions in myself and others. I aimed to bring peace at all times, and avoided the negative emotions that came with conflict and circumstance. As hard as I tried to avoid it, they came to the surface one way or another and polluted my water.
Figure 6 : Yes Please!
Then I thought: As a citizen of our hypothetical city, I'd be reluctant to drink the water. Isn't that rejection? Isn't that the opposite of Acceptance? Once I understand that everyone, myself included, is capable to experience these negative emotions I gained a deeper understanding of self-acceptance. Accepting the "Dark Side", ironically, taught me to deal with these emotions and filter them productively.
These are some of my current thought on Accepting Ourselves. Notice how I didn't talk about happiness. Accepting ourselves has nothing to do with happiness, is has to do with living meaningful lives. If I find something new I'll add it here.
See you next Friday!
~ NoChillNerd.
