Six pillar of self esteem – Accept Your Negative Emotions and Learn From Them
High self esteem is impossible without a high degree of self acceptance. The two go together hand in glove. One of the areas where many people find great difficulty is in accepting their negative feelings. Understanding the importance of doing this and the benefits it brings will help you to better accept them.
Self acceptance is refusing to deny the existence and reality of any part of our bodies, our thoughts, our deeds, our emotions and desires, and our dreams. When you truly accept yourself you are at peace with every part of you whether you regard it as good or bad. If you achieve complete self acceptance you will be a person who is filled with inner confidence and calm.
You may find it difficult to accept many things about yourself. There may be parts of your body you find unattractive, you may feel ashamed of things that you have done, you may be unhappy about the way that you relate to other people.
One of the areas that many people find the most difficult to accept is when they have strong negative feelings about something. For example you may have a strong dislike for an individual that you cannot justify in any way. This can lead to feelings of denial and shame. We are often encouraged to believe that such strong feelings are somehow bad and unworthy and this can lead us to deny their existence.
Of course, if your feelings are unjustified, then you should not simply vent them on the person, object or idea that has led to negative emotions. However you should not try to deny them. Denial can lead to frustration and pent up emotion which can eventually spill over in to strong emotional outbursts and more actions to feel ashamed of…
Accepting negative emotions
Very often if you feel strong negative emotions, and particularly when they are directed at a person, you are reacting to something that you don’t like about yourself. Your emotions are your own unique reactions to a set of circumstances and they can give you a great deal of insight into your inner self.
When you look at someone and feel irrational negative feelings about them it is because you are seeing something that you don’t like about yourself reflected back at you. You need to be honest with yourself as you ask “What are my emotions telling me?â€
You need to allow yourself to fully experience your negative emotions and fully accept them for what they are. Often as you do so, you will find that you are able to let go of them and move on. By understanding the message they bring, accepting their reality for you and experiencing them, you will let them have their ‘moment in the spotlight’ and they will then become less important to you.
Self esteem is intimately linked to self acceptance. Many people find that negative feelings directed towards other people, things or events are very difficult to accept. If you pay attention to the insight they can give you about yourself and don’t deny their existence, you can frequently overcome such negative feelings. The alternative is to carry on experiencing them with increasing levels of discomfort until something triggers an undesirable reaction from you.
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