The seventh and final component to a “Success Personality” is to have self-acceptance. This is the next part in my series of what is required to have on-going success throughout your life; what personality traits you need to be a lifetime success.
All the ingredients of a success personality include:
- Sense of Direction
- Good Communication and Understanding
- Courage
- Giving
- Self Esteem
- Confidence
- Self-Acceptance
A good personality is one which enables you to deal effectively and appropriately with environment and reality, and to gain satisfaction from reaching goals which are important to you.
The seventh and final component is…
SELF ACCEPTANCE:
No real success or genuine happiness is possible until a person gains some degree of self-acceptance.
The most miserable and tortured people in the world are those who are continually straining and striving to convince themselves and others that they are something other than what they basically are. And there is no relief and satisfaction like that that comes when one finally gives up the shams and pretences and is willing to be themselves.
Success, which comes from self-expression, often eludes those who strive and strain to “be somebody,” and often comes, almost of its own accord, when a person becomes willing to relax and “be themselves.”
Changing your self-image does not mean changing your self, or improving your self, but changing your own mental picture, your own estimation, conception, and realisation of that self.
The amazing results which follow from developing an adequate and realistic self-image, come about, not as a result of self-transformation, but from self-realisation, and self-revelation.
Your “self,” right now, is what it has always been, and all that it can ever be. You did not create it. You cannot change it. You can, however, realise it, and make the most of what already is by gaining a true mental picture of your actual self.
There is no use straining to “be somebody.” You are what you are—now. You are somebody, not because you’ve made a million dollars, or drive the biggest car in your block, or win at tennis or golf, but because you are unique.
Most of us are better, wiser, stronger, more competent now, than we realise. Creating a better self-image does not create new abilities, talents, powers—it releases and utilises them. We can change our personality, but not our basic self.
Personality is a tool, an outlet, a focal point of the “self” that we use in dealing with the world. It is the sum total of our habits, attitudes, learned skills, which we use as a method of expressing ourselves.
“You” Are Not Your Mistakes
Self-acceptance means accepting and coming to terms with ourselves now, just as we are, with all our faults, weaknesses, shortcomings, errors, as well as our assets and strengths. Self-acceptance is easier, however, if we realise that these negatives belong to us—they are not us.
Many people shy away from healthy self-acceptance because they insist upon identifying themselves with their mistakes. You may have made a mistake, but this does not mean that you are a mistake. You may not be expressing yourself properly and fully, but this does not mean you yourself are “no good.”
We must recognise our mistakes and shortcomings before we can correct them.
The first step toward acquiring knowledge is the recognition of those areas where you are ignorant. The first step toward becoming stronger is the recognition that you are weak.
All religions teach that the first step toward salvation is the self-confession that you are a sinner. In the journey toward the goal of ideal self-expression, we must use negative feedback data to correct course, as in any other goal-striving situation.
This requires admitting to ourselves—and accepting the fact, that our personality, our “expressed self,” or what some psychologists call our “actual self,” is always imperfect and short of the mark.
No one ever succeeds during a lifetime in fully expressing or bringing into actuality all the potentialities of the Real Self. In our Actual, expressed self, we never exhaust all the possibilities and powers of the Real Self.
We can always learn more, perform better, behave better. The Actual Self is necessarily imperfect. Throughout life it is always moving toward an ideal goal, but never arriving.
The Actual Self is not a static but a dynamic thing. It is never completed and final, but always in a state of growth.
It is important that we learn to accept this Actual Self, with all its imperfections, because it is the only vehicle we have.
The neurotic rejects their Actual Self and hates it because it is imperfect. In its place they try to create a fictitious ideal self which is already perfect, has already “arrived.”
Trying to maintain the sham and fiction is not only a terrific mental strain, but you’ll continually invites disappointment and frustration when you try to operate in a real world with a fictitious self.
A stage coach may not be the most desirable transportation in the world, but a real stage coach will still take you coast to coast more satisfactorily than will a fictitious jet air-liner.
Exercise Prescription
Accept yourself as you are—and start from there.
Learn to emotionally tolerate imperfection in yourself.
It is necessary to intellectually recognise your shortcomings, but disastrous to hate yourself because of them. Differentiate between your “self” and your behaviour.
“You” are not ruined or worthless because you made a mistake or got off course, any more than a typewriter is worthless which makes an error, or a violin which sounds a sour note.
Don’t hate yourself because you’re not perfect. You have lots of company. No one else is, either, and those who try to pretend they are are kidding themselves.
You Are “Somebody”—Now!
Many people hate and reject themselves because they feel and experience perfectly natural biological desires. Others reject themselves because they do not conform to the current fashion or standard for physical proportions.
In the 1920’s, many women felt ashamed of themselves because they had breasts. The boyish figure was in vogue and bosoms were taboo.
Today, many young girls develop anxieties because they do not have 40 inch busts.
In the 1920’s women used to go to cosmetic surgeons and in effect say—”Make me somebody, by reducing the size of my breasts.”
Today, the plea is, “Make me somebody, by increasing the size of my breasts.”
This seeking for identity—this desire for selfhood—this urge to be “somebody” is universal, but we make a mistake when we seek it in conformity, in the approval of other people, or in material things.
Many people say in effect to themselves, “Because I am skinny, fat, short, too tall, etc.—I am nothing.”
Say to yourself instead, “I may not be perfect, I may have faults and weaknesses, I might have gotten off the track, I may have a long way to go—but I am something and I will make the most of that something.”
It is the young man of little faith who says, ‘I am nothing,’.
It is the young man of true conception who says, ‘I am everything,’ and then goes to prove it.
That does not spell conceit or egotism, and if people think it does, let them think so.
Enough for us to know that it means faith, trust, confidence, the human expression of the God within us.
He says, ‘Do my work.’ Go and do it. No matter what it is. Do it, but do it with a zest; a keenness; a gusto that surmounts obstacles and brushes aside discouragement.
Accept yourself. Be yourself. You cannot realise the potentialities and possibilities inherent in that unique and special something which is “YOU” if you keep turning your back upon it, feeling ashamed of it, refusing to recognize it.
Edward W. Bok, Dutch-born American editor, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and editor of the Ladies’ Home Journal
Yours optimally,
Scott
This post is inspired by and a modified extract from the book, ‘Psycho-Cybernetics‘ by Maxwell Maltz
