From Fear To Freedom: Embracing Total Self-Acceptance
I’m a driven woman, and I work with driven women and men. Being driven is a wonderful way to live, if one’s drive is the kind that feeds one’s spirit. It is for many of us. And at least for some, it’s tinged with something that doesn‘t feed the spirit.
If you find yourself worried you won’t meet an unreasonable deadline imposed by someone else, or worried that someone won’t like your work no matter what effort and care you put into it. If no matter what mountains you climb or successes you accumulate, there is still something inside you that feels you haven’t done enough, that kind of drivenness depletes your spirit. Eventually, you begin to feel dragged down. You lose energy and get colds more often. You make mistakes, then more mistakes as you try to correct the former ones.
Life begins to feel like a never-ending grind.
For some of us, we do carry that bit of fear-based drivenness, even if most of what drives us feeds our spirit. How can we release that fear and truly free our spirits?
Through total self-acceptance.
Totally accepting yourself means accepting who you are right now. Not 5 or 10 years from now when you might be perfect – that’ll never happen. But right now. Even those seeming imperfect parts of you are with you for a reason, and are part of that unique package that is you.
Someone I was speaking with recently mentioned that she just delivered a product to a customer that she was really proud of. But before she delivered it, she found herself fretting over if it was truly what the customer wanted: what if he didn’t like it? what if she completely got it wrong. Thankfully, she caught herself and altered her thinking to knowing the work and creativity she’d put into it, feeling by doing so a huge weight falling away.
That’s the difference between fear-driven and spirit-driven in a nutshell!
Quote of the Week
Self-acceptance is a truly heroic act.
― Nathaniel Brandon
Success, failyre and the drive to keep creating
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Maryanne Nicholls is a Registered Psychotherapist. To find out more, gain access to her weekly newsletter, meditations and programs, sign up at www.thejoyofliving.co .