Have you ever entered into a conversation with an acquaintance and uttered some words you realized you shouldn’t have and immediately started beating yourself up about the way you came across? And the beating down doesn’t stop and runs into the following day? Have you ever encountered similar experiences under different circumstances and berated yourself after that? Well, you need to stop yelling at you and start accepting you.
We all have personalities that define us and set us apart from others. Rooted in these personalities are behaviors that might be unique to us but accepted by people around us and/or by us. There’s a fine line, however, between managing these behaviors and censuring them.
When you manage behavior, you’re accepting the way it is but ensuring that it is not at the expense of others. Your bubbly or in-your-face personality might work very well when you’re marketing a product or hanging out with your friends. It might not work so well with people you’re meeting for the first time in a social gathering who still need some time to warm up to you and appreciate you. This is not intimating that you should wear sequins jacket over your personality until it’s safe for the big reveal, no. It means that you should be yourself but manage the release of your “self” during the period of engagement while being respectful of others.
Now, censuring is disapproving. When you disapprove your own behavior you disapprove yourself and that disapproval weaves itself into different areas of your being, emotionally and mentally. You begin to self-doubt and believe there is something to change about yourself. You being to question your ability to work on this “problem” and change, but change for who? This wheel starts to spin fast into dissatisfaction with yourself which eventually breaks into tiny bits of low self-esteem and insecurity. But is it worth it?
The journey to self-acceptance is no easy matter as it might seem to others. For some, it is that constant mental communication that requires a person to be gentle and gracious to themselves. If you’ve been harsh with yourself lately or for a long period of time give your “self” a break, really, and ask yourself whether you’re that bad?