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Self-Acceptance

You don’t have to change what you are or what you have to be happy, but instead change
the emotion you are expressing. If you are expressing anger then you will feel angry. If you
express jealousy or guilt, then you will feel jealousy and guilt. If you are expressing love then you
are likely to experience happiness and fulfilment. Think back to different times in your life and
make a note of what you were expressing. We often associate feeling happy with who we were
with what we had, or what we were doing. Those external things and people were not making
us happy. It was the love we were expressing at the time that fulfilled us.
Studies show that people who are happy are spending time doing the things they love, with
people they love, and working on things they are passionate about. The common element is not
the things they achieve, or what they are doing. The common element that creates happiness is
that they are expressing love in all those instances. They are expressing love to who they are with
or for what they are doing.

Self acceptance is the first step toward expressing love for yourself. If trying to “be something
different” creates an expression of self rejection, then the solution is to create an expression of
self acceptance. Saying this in words is simple, but doing this is not necessarily easy.