Building Self Acceptance

BUILDING SELF-ACCEPTANCE

Methods and Activities

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SELFACCEPTANCE: WHAT IS IT AND HOW TO BUILD ONE

What is Self-Acceptance:

Self-Acceptance is being able to live with yourself, getting used to yourself and loving yourself in order, no matter what you’ve done in the past and who you are.

How to build Self-Acceptance?

There are various ways of building Self-Acceptance, all of which possess acknowledging and knowing yourself as their basis. Some of those are positive self-talk, teaching drama and promoting emotional

intelligence. Just be ready to accept yourself for who you are and believe you deserve a second chance.

1-)Embrace Your Differences:

All of the things you think are bad about yourself are a part of your personality and makes you different than the others. Accept yourself with your virtues and flaws. Nobody is perfect. Stop complaining about things you can’t change about yourself and welcome them for making you special.

2-)Know Your Own Mind:

In order to build a proper Self-Acceptance, you should recognize and be aware of yourself. Ask yourself, “Seriously, what are the things that I am actually good at or I like doing?” Practice them, that way you can be more confident in your abilities. Spend more time with yourself. Just put your phone in silence and get away from people for a moment and watch the stars all by yourself, listen to your own thoughts. Remember, no one can know and support you better than you do. Don’t depend your whole life and love on people. You don’t need anyone’s praise if you have yourself.

3-)Appreciate Your Successes:

Stop criticising your mistakes and take a moment to appreciate what you’ve accomplished so far and you’re proud of. Set your future for your own good and practice hard. Take good care of yourself. Live a healthy life since you might not have anyone to be there for you but yourself. Eat healthy, have good sleep, socialize and exercise. Never lose hope or give up on yourself. Keep trying hard and you’ll get there, soon or later.

BUILDING SELF-ACCEPTANCE BY POSITIVE SELF-TALK

It’s not uncommon for most of us to keep a running dialogue inside our heads. This dialogue can range from giving ourselves instructions while we carry out a task, random observations about our environment or a situation. This is what’s often referred to as self-talk.

Self talk is the internal narrative you hold about yourself. You may have not even thought about it or given all your attention to. The truth is, our self talk actually has a much bigger influence on the way we see ourselves and the world around us than we realize. Self-talk can be divided into two which are positive and negative self-talk.

Positive self-talk could really help you feel optimistic and motivate you. Like we said, the first person to be there for you, sustain you while going through hard times is no one but yourself. Listen to your feelings. Treat yourself as you do to someone you love. Give yourself a hug and reward yourself for your achievements. No one could know you more than you do, so you need yourself there as an advisor, a listener, a friend. And that way you can get to know yourself even deeper. Be open to changes and learning. Try your best at everything. Whatever your duties are duly perform them.

But, being positive doesn’t mean being constantly and utterly positive. That is called toxic positivity and you need to avoid that as much as possible. Of course see the good in everything but don’t see the world through rose-colored spectacles. That is not healthy, nor is it sustainable. Preserve your realism and rationalism.

HOW TO MAKE A POSITIVE SELF-TALK

When facing challenges, get in front of a mirror and ask yourself “Why do I feel this way and can I change it?” If yes, “What can I do?” and answer. Comfort and encourage yourself. Be honest to yourself, you deserve the truth and candidness. Change your daily phrases. Stop the “I will fail at this like I always do” and go with “I will learn from my mistakes and every time I fail, I will be one step closer to success.”

Don’t start the day by saying “The weather sucks, today is gonna be a

disaster”. Thinking like this gets you nowhere. It doesn't motivate you or make you feel good. Instead it brings you down and makes you feel unworthy. Instead say “What a beautiful day, this is gonna be my day to shine”, even if the weather really sucks. For example, let's say you have an important meeting coming up with investors and you want to make a good first impression but you keep putting yourself down and telling yourself you don't have what they want. Before the meeting has even begun you sell yourself short and therefore show less confidence. To succeed in life you need to stop worrying about the outcome and start believing in yourself. This all starts with your mind.

BUILDING SELF-ACCEPTANCE THROUGH TEACHING DRAMA

Drama itself involves allowing your experiences lead you, trusting, cooperating and empathizing with others which comes with advanced social skills and self-confidence. It improves your creative and critical thinking and helps you take roles in the society. And teaching it is also sharing these with others. You teach people how to express themselves correctly, control their body language, facial expressions and mimics and how to defend their own opinions. It gives people the

opportunity to face difficult situations that can occur in life, and look at things from another perspective. Teaching drama will also make you gain the ability to evaluate peoples ideas, to organize and coordinate them and create a play made of team work. All of these boost your role in public, social skills, thus your self-acceptance. The more you witness your social profile and character developing, the more you love and support yourself.

BUILDING SELF-ACCEPTANCE THROUGH PROMOTING EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Emotional intelligence is being able to comprehend and take action on how people are feeling. It means sensing and controlling a person’s emotions and impulses. Emotionally intelligent people are talented not only in perceiving others feelings but their owns as well. Furthermore, it builds you up into a more rational, more sensitive and forgiving person. Some experts even suggest that emotional intelligence is more important than IQ in life. By understanding your own emotions, you can take a big step in accepting who you are.

How to Promote Emotional Intelligence

In order to realize this massive progress of real self-acceptance and peace, you must be ready to share your feelings with others. Be openminded and open to criticism. Also make people know that you are a

good listener and that they can come for your help about anything at anytime. Try to determine the real reason why he/she might be feeling that way if you wanna be of help. Never judge people because of what they did, chose or think. Same goes for yourself. Improve your listening skills, see what people are trying to tell you. Body language can help big time. Put yourself in others shoes, think what would you have done.

ACTIVITIES YOU CAN PERFORM ACTIVITY 1

Part A

a. Ask students to cut or tear a piece of paper into 2 sections and on the top of one piece, write “NEGATIVE” and on the other “POSITIVE”. Next, ask them to spend a few minutes thinking about all the negative statements they tell themselves, then write these statements on the “NEGATIVE” paper (e.g., I’m hopeless at math, I can’t make friends easily).

b. Explain that things people tell themselves can make them feel bad or good and it’s important for people to examine these things to see if they are true and to work toward telling themselves positive things so they can feel good more often.

c. Ask students to spend another few minutes thinking about all the positive sentences they tell themselves or that they could tell themselves and to write them on the page headed “POSITIVE” (e.g., I’m nice, I’m a good friend).

d. Go around the group and have each student read at least one positive statement he or she wrote about him or herself. If a student has difficulty thinking of a positive statement, have another class member suggest one.

e. Now ask the students to examine the assumptions in the statements they wrote for both the NEGATIVE and POSITIVE papers. Is there a difference in the assumptions? For example, are their more “provable

beliefs” in the positive or negative statements? Does the negative thought seem as real when it is written out as when they heard it in their head?

f. To finish, ask students to crumple up the NEGATIVE paper and place it in the rubbish bin and have them place the POSITIVE statements in the front of a much-used file/diary to remind them of these statements.

Part B

a. Now explain that there are some personal characteristics that a person can change and others that he or she can’t. Ask them to raise their hand if they believe that they can change the following:

i. Height

ii. Weight

iii. Color of skin

iv. How we express our feelings

v. The year we were born

vi. How we handle anxiety

vii. The size of our families

viii. The color of our eyes

b. Create a suitable scene related to school life (e.g., a student hates sport because he believes that he is “no good” at it). Have students discuss the scene and have them break into groups to come up with different assumptions this student can act upon as opposed to the negative assumptions initially suggested.

c. Explain to the students that the assumption that the student was making to start with was, “It is awful and I must not accept myself until I measure up to everyone else in the sport class.” In reality, it is impossible to predict whether or not one will ever measure up to everyone else, also that using words like “must” and “everyone” are

examples of generalizing and that it is stretching the truth to believe that it is awful if you don’t measure up.

d. Finally, a more “provable belief” should be suggested (e.g., “I can accept myself without having to measure up to anyone else”).

ACTIVITY 2

Visual cues for positive self-talk can be a great way to help encourage young people to incorporate them more into their everyday life. A mood board is a great visual representation to remind young people of the positive affirmations and self-talk they should use.

You will need:

Selection of old magazines, newspapers or books that can be cut up

Selection of pens and pencils

Scissors and glue

Pinboards or old cardboard for sticking affirmations to Step One

Ask students to go through the selection of magazines to pick out keywords, phrases or pictures that they feel best to represent positive emotions, experiences, and goals they have. Ask them to focus on the words that create these feelings.

Step Two

Using either the boards or cardboard, students can stick or pin their chosen words and photos in a style that suits them – use different pens too and ask them to get creative with something that speaks to them and makes them feel good.

Step Three

Once complete, students can keep the boards in a visual place in the home as a daily reminder. You could even ask them to pick three positive affirmations they like to repeat daily in front of their boards, to help inspire positive self-talk.

ACTIVITY 3

This activity has a very simple premise. It encourages young people to think more deeply about the negative self-talk they engage in, and whether they would use it when referring to a friend, or if a friend would use it to refer to them.

Step One

You can use the Listen, Learn, Think it Through exercise to help students to begin to identify when they use negative self-talk, and what phrases/words they use to talk about themselves.

Step Two

Once they have their list, ask them to reflect on each negative self-talk phrase and ask the following questions:

Would a friend say or think this about me?

Would I say or think this about a friend?

What would a friend say about me instead?

What would I say to a friend who thought this about themselves?

The answers to these questions can formulate some new positive selftalk phrases.

Step Three

Ask students to keep these phrases written down, either on their phone or in a notebook, that they keep with them. When they start to use negative self-talk, remind them to refer to this exercise and the positive self-talk phrases they created instead.

ACTIVITY 4

Using games, especially with young people, can be a great way to help get them engaged in the concept of positive self-talk.

A popular game is Negative Ned versus Positive Pat, which can be adapted for use with young people, teenagers, and adults. Here’s what it involves:

Number of players:

Minimum of 2, maximum of six, for ages 5 and up.

Game Materials Provided:

Two sets of game cards (One set Negative Ned and one set Positive Pat)

One set of scenario cards

Two tubes

Game Materials Needed:

Colored paper or card

Scissors and sellotape or glue

How to Play:

Cut out the phrases and glue them to the card. Shuffle the scenario cards and then shuffle the Negative Ned/Positive Pat cards together separately to create two piles of shuffled cards.

Decide who goes first and ask them to turn over one card from each deck – so one from the scenario deck and one from the Negative Ned/Positive Pat deck. The player reads out the scenario and depending on whether they have turned a Ned or Pat card will need to:

Provide an example of the self-talk that the card represents (negative or positive).

Explain how this type of self-talk would make them feel and respond to the scenario.

Then they must place the Ned or Pat card in the corresponding tube (so there should be a tube or place card on the table that represents Ned and Pat.

Continue around the group of players in this fashion.

In the Ned/Pat deck will also be ‘Pick a tube’ cards. If a player turns this card, they will need to pick a tube of accumulated cards, and depending on which they pick they must:

Describe the benefit of using positive self-talk.

Describe a consequence of using negative self-talk.

The player then keeps the cards from the tube they selected.

The game continues until all of the Ned/Pat cards have been gone through.

The winner is the player who has accumulated the most Ned or Pat cards at the end.

You can download a PDF of the game instructions, including printouts of the card decks needed.