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· Know yourself and your beliefs
· Take a good hard look at your honesty level

· Know you are doing the best you can
· Relax your value judgments

· Examine your guilt
· Understand your motivations

· Ask yourself questions about what you don't accept

Society & Acceptance
Like happiness, society has some rather bizarre notions about self acceptance. On the one
hand we have psychologists telling us it's good to improve our self-esteem while at the same
time, society says we shouldn't have too much acceptance and appreciation for ourselves.
We are encouraged to be humble and show humility. Do you know the definition of humility?

humility: the quality of being without pride, voluntary self-abasement.
pride: proper self-respect, a source of great satisfaction for which one feels some responsibility,
a sense of satisfaction with one's achievements.

abase: to degrade, to humiliate, lowered
WHY would anyone value humility? Why would it be good to degrade and humiliate yourself as
well as lack self-respect and feel no sense of satisfaction or responsibility for your achievements?
How could this be beneficial for anyone? What is it about someone feeling "too good" about
themselves that bothers us so? Yet our culture promotes humility as a desired virtue. It doesn't
make sense.
Accepting Yourself Unconditionally

Self-acceptance begins in infancy, with the influence of your parents and siblings and other im-
portant people. Your own level of self-acceptance is determined largely by how well you feel
you are accepted by the important people in your life.

Your attitude toward yourself is determined largely by the attitudes that you think other people
have toward you. When you believe that other people think highly of you, your level of self-
acceptance and self-esteem goes straight up. The best way to build a healthy personality in-
volves understanding yourself and your feelings.

This is achieved through the simple exercise of self-disclosure. For you to truly understand your-
self, or to stop being troubled by things that may have happened in your past, you must be able
to disclose yourself to at least one person. You have to be able to get those things off your
chest. You must rid yourself of those thoughts and feelings by revealing them to someone who
won’t make you feel guilty or ashamed for what has happened.

The second part of personality development follows from self-disclosure, is self-awareness. Only
when you can disclose what you’re truly thinking and feeling to someone else can you become
aware of those thoughts and emotions If the other person simply listens to you without com-
menting or criticising, you have the opportunity to become more aware of the person you are
and why you do the things you do. You begin to develop perspective, or what the Buddhists call
“detachment.”