How to accept yourself

We all live in an ever-changing world where everyone around us seems to be rushing around at 90 miles per hour. Sometimes you may feel that life is moving on, but you can't. Emotions from past experiences can get in the way of living your life. This is more common than you may think, and many of us feel like this at some point in our lives. It's as though past feelings or events prevent us from moving forward and taking control. Negative thoughts and emotions must be identified and turned into a positive.

There are many negative feelings that may feel like a barrier and prevent the new you from emerging. I have listed some of these, which you may be able to identify with:

• sadness
• anger
• fear
• stress
• revenge
• worry
• stress
• hopelessness
• failure
• envy
• ashamed
• embarrassed
• humiliated
• worthless
• judged
• lonely
• trapped
• violated
• abandoned

The first step is to begin to acknowledge them and begin the process of breaking them down in order to deal with them. There may be an underlying cause.

Example:

You may wake up each morning feeling bitter and angry. There could be some deep-rooted cause for feeling this way. You could be feeling angry towards your wife/husband/partner because there was a messy break up. There needs to be time to adjust to life without him/her, and when you are ready, you need to accept that it didn't work out. Taking a positive from a situation like this is difficult to do, but the old adage that "time heals all wounds" really is true in cases of this nature. Moving on and adopting a positive attitude could be the fact that if you hadn't met your partner, you would never have had your children or have shared so many happy memories.

It's all about letting go of the fear which is behind the negative emotion that you are feeling, and being honest with yourself. Throughout our lives, we will have good times and bad. We may feel at times that life has dealt us a bad hand, but it's how we get through it that makes us who we are.

Be honest with those around you, and in turn you will be honest with yourself. Talk openly with someone you can trust - a friend, colleague, family member or a counselor. A problem shared is a problem halved.

Accepting yourself for who you are takes time, honesty and confidence. Much of the problems come about from us worrying what others think. None of us like to be unfairly judged and we all want to be seen to be coping and doing the right thing.

Accept that you are not perfect, but don't beat yourself up over what you can't control or change. Having recurring negative thoughts can get you down and make you feel even worse. Try to replace them with happy, positive thoughts which have the opposite effect - think about what you do well.

Try not to worry as this will achieve nothing, come up with another solution, and if you can't and it's out of your control, learn to deal with it. Stop being so hard on yourself and start believing in you. Don't dwell on past mistakes, focus on the future and what you can achieve.