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Chapter Eight
Self-Acceptance versus Self-Rejection Many people admit that they can't stand rejection from others. Otherwise capable sales professionals, for example, will be stymied in their careers by the inability to emotionally handle the inherent truth about most selling situations; you get more no's than yes's, more rejection than acceptance. Authors, playwrights, actors, athletes, coaches have all crumbled under the weight of criticism and rejection from the public or the media. But this kind of rejection is almost insignificant in impact compared to the awesome destructive power of SelfRejection. People reject and demean themselves in many ways. Women frequently reject themselves because they do not conform to the current fashion or standard for physical proportions. In the 1920s many women felt ashamed of themselves because they had breasts. The boyish figure was in vogue and large breasts were taboo. Then the fashion trends reverse directions, and now many young women develop anxieties because they do not have 40-inch busts. In the 1920s women used to come to me and in effect say, "Make me somebody by reducing the size of my breasts." In the 1960s, the plea was, "Make me somebody by increasing the size of my breasts." This seeking to be "somebody" is universal, but we make a mistake when we seek it in conformity or in the approval of other people. This mistake can have very serious consequences. The thin ideal, for example, has led women to anorexia, and even to death by anorexia, as in the celebrated case of the talented singer Karen Carpenter. This is just one example. People reject and demean themselves by comparing themselves to any number of artificial standards. They go deeply, irreversibly into debt attempting to hurriedly keep up with a colleague, relative, or neighbor. Many people say in effect to themselves, "Because I am skinny, fat, short, too tall, etc., I am nothing." Or, "Because I am not as thin or rich as she, I am a zero." I think it was the Duchess of York who once said, "You can never be too thin or too rich." But those who suffer anorexia, a physical disease manifested by the self-image, would differ! Instead of Self-Rejection, you must strive for Self-Acceptance. This means acknowledging that you are a unique, one-of-a-kind composite of strengths, weaknesses, knowledge and ignorance, experience and naivete, accomplishment and unrealized potential, and so is every