When do you have to accept something?
29 November 2006[Words: 985, Reading time: 4-5 minutes]
It was pointed out to me that in my post “The 8 Components of Confidence†that one of my statements under Self Esteem directly contradicted what I’d said in Self Acceptance. I’d mentioned that having self acceptance meant accepting your faults yet self esteem means not accepting what you consider substandard in yourself. Allow me to explain.
Self Acceptance involves accepting everything that’s inside your boundary or sphere of control. So if in the past you didn’t commit yourself fully to an interaction or a relationship or felt like you let yourself you need to accept that. Self Acceptance has to do with accepting who you are and who you’ve been. Self esteem will determine what you do going forward in life.
If you see yourself as substandard, inherently substandard, then you’ll feel worthless. If you accept yourself as you are, your value (Self Esteem) will rise, even though you haven’t changed any outward behaviours. In future social situations, deciding on and committing to exceptional behaviour is fuelled by having self esteem. You’re valuable, so you give your best and provide value to others you meet. Self esteem is the cause of your behaviours, not the effect.
So, when do you have to accept something? Let’s say someone is rude to you. If you get angry with them for being rude, you have to accept your anger. Once you’ve accepted and recognised that you’re angry (and that you chose to be angry) then you can move towards a different emotion and state. Before you react to the rudeness, you have a choice how you’ll respond to it.
Think of the anger (or whatever it is you’re dealing with) like a parcel. You have a choice to accept it or not. But once you accept the parcel (have the emotion) you need to accept it if you want to have another, more positive emotion.
Another example would be fear of some situation, say approaching a stranger and starting a conversation. If this thought fills you with apprehension, you’re already afraid and you need to accept that before you can deal with it. If you don’t acknowledge the fear you can’t overcome it. There’s nothing that states confidence is an absence of fear, or absence of any emotion. Confidence involves acknowledging your emotions and actions, and following your own happiness regardless – that’s the definition of bravery.
What about someone being rude to you, do you have to accept that? Yes, and no. Yes, you need to accept that the other person was rude. If you get flustered and get indignant claiming that they shouldn’t be rude and should treat you nicer you’re failing to accept that they were rude you’re suffering because the fact was they were rude to you. By denying the truth you aren’t doing yourself any favours. You can’t change the past, you can’t go back in time (even 5 minutes) and change what they said and did. Another person’s behaviours are ultimately outside your control and by allowing their behaviour to influence your moods you’re giving away your power and making yourself a victim of circumstance.
Once you’ve accepted that the person is rude, I don’t recommend you stick around a let them continue to be rude to you. You don’t have to tolerate the bad behaviour from them. Depending on the situation, you can punish them by walking away and refusing to interact with them, or by telling them their behaviour is out of line. This is not the same as getting upset and complaining to them. It’s simply telling them that you’re not going to tolerate them disrespecting and undervaluing you by treating you in that substandard way.
This can be frightening, particularly if you’re worried about losing that person if they have a lot of value for you. But allowing someone to undervalue you just to keep them around lowers your self esteem. If a relationship isn’t good for you it isn’t good for the other person either. They might gain a short term win from it, but ultimately you’ll both lose. This is not just confined to romantic and sexual relationships, but to all our relationships.
What if it’s not explicit rudeness or bad behaviour, it’s just substandard in your opinion? In that case you’re still accepting their behaviour, you’re not judging. Once you’ve accepted that that’s the way they are you can make the choice as to whether you want that or not. I accept that’s who you are. That’s cool. I’m after something different. Imagine you were shopping for a blue shirt. You see a black shirt. Now imagine you got upset because this shirt wasn’t blue and should be blue. Seems pretty ridiculous doesn’t it. Would you do it? I certainly hope not!
A good question to ask is: What are my standards? What do I want in my life, in my relationships? Spend some time thinking about what’s the ideal behaviour you want to exhibit to the world and who you want to be.
(There are ways of modifying people’s behaviour around you through the use of intention maps, but that’s not the point of this entry.)
Now, here’s the real kicker, the interesting part. If you’re constantly bringing substandard people, behaviours, or situations into your life, you need to accept that you brought them into your life in the first place.
Through your intentions or actions, these things happened. Use it as an opportunity to see how you’re attracting these things into your life. Two things can help: either you were/are unclear on what you were asking for, or somehow you’re blocking what you want.
To sum up:
- Accept everything inside your boundary/already in your life. Only then can you change and master it.
- Accepting does not mean resigning, judging or tolerating. It simply means accepting.
- Self Esteem drives behaviour, it’s not a result of it (like every form of inner confidence)
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