Accept others but first accept yourself

“Do you accept yourself as you are or would you like to be someone else?” Accepting others is important to safeguard yourself from unnecessary stress and to attain peace of mind. Acceptance is indeed the key to a calm and peaceful mind. Acceptance is often thought of in terms of others- other people, situations or things. Rarely we think of accepting ourselves the way we are.

Lives of others always seem to be better. Facebook, instagram and other social media have made us increasingly dissatisfied with our own lives. Others always seem to be having more fun or going to better vacations. The result is that we often feel inferior without a reason. We feel that people are so happy while our lives are full of botherations.

Ask yourself this question time and again. And remember that nobody has a perfect life. Everybody is flawed in some way or the other. Only by accepting ourselves the way we are, we can aim at improving ourselves and becoming a better person. Acceptance is not a passive thing. Accepting your flaws doesn’t mean that you stop doing anything to become better. But you have to stop worrying or feeling inferior because of the way you look or how much you weigh and so on. Similarly life has its beautiful moments as well as not so happy moments. Its the not so happy moments which make us appreciate the good times. Stewart O’Nan has stated so beautifully,”You couldn’t relive your life, skipping the awful parts, without losing what made it worthwhile. You had to accept it as a whole–like the world, or the person you loved.”

You must accept and embrace all human beings in order to progress spiritually. All prayers are futile if you cannot love your fellow human beings. But unless you learn to accept yourself, how can you learn to accept and love others?  Michael J. Fox sums up the importance of acceptance in a simple sentence- “My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance, and in inverse proportion to my expectations.”

Set the standards. Stop expecting love, respect and acceptance from others when you don’t love and accept yourself. Remember that you are beautiful and perfect for you are God’s creation and that’s all that matters!

 

© 2017 Shaloo Walia All rights reserved

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