Chifuyu is a therapeutic counsellor and an RTT practitioner. She uses a unique way of counselling with the knowledge of how the body/mind works, Rapid Transformational Therapy skills, and the gift of intuition to help you realize your long-term false beliefs and overcome who you learned to be.
Acceptance. There are a lot of things you can accept. Accept gifts. Accept rewards. Accept invitations, honours, awards, and so on. Accepting is receiving. We accept love, apology, gratitude as well as kindness. Accept emotions behind people’s actions, gestures, or words. A lot of times, we even accept negative emotions and thoughts. One thing we tend to forget to accept is ourselves. Have you given yourself love, gratitude, and kindness lately? Or ever? Have you ever thought about receiving all from yourself? While accepting others is much easier, people have the hardest time accepting themselves, let alone receiving love from themselves. But if we ask anyone if they want their kids or loved ones to love and accept themselves, the answer is usually 100% hell yes! Do you see the double standard that is happening in our lives? We need to realize what we’ve been doing. Without becoming aware of our behaviours, we wouldn’t be able to know what to fix. But now we do. This double standard has got to go. Now, let’s get down to the nitty-gritty of accepting ourselves.
Why do we not accept?
Have you wondered about this question yourself? Why is it so hard for us to accept ourselves? Not just ourselves, but many good things people tell us about ourselves. This comes from what we’ve learned growing up. All experiences give us wisdom and skills. But sometimes, we misunderstand and give a different meaning to an experience instead of actually learning the beneficial lesson. Depending on how we perceive reality, each of us always experiences it differently. And this different interpretation sometimes becomes the reason for not accepting ourselves. Let’s give an example to understand how this “meaning towards experience” plays in our lives.
There are two children in the family. Let’s say twins. One is academic. The other one is very athletic. Their parents raised them equally and loved them both deeply. One year, they were put in two separate classes. One teacher was always stressed out, and a bit of a perfectionist. The athletic twin soon became the teacher’s target because this teacher was never good at sports,
so she saw her athletic childhood bully in this student. So one day she tells this twin, “You are never going to be as smart as your sister.” Just out of her frustration with herself. Her stress had nothing to do with this poor student. But she took it out on the student every chance she had. This teacher had no emotional intelligence. This student was raised with so much love at home. But at school, there wasn’t much love. This teacher made her feel inferior for one entire year.
She started to accept what the teacher said to her. After all, she was the teacher and an adult. Her interpretation of this experience was, “Adults know everything. On top of that, she is my teacher. She might be right. I am a failure.” Adults know everything. Or at least more than this girl does, right? Wrong. Adults with no emotional intelligence say or do things not from their hearts but from their anger, fear, or stress. When they let their negative emotions take over them, nothing true to their heart comes from them. Which means nothing they say or do is true. Ever. If only this girl talked to her parents, they would have explained that this is nonsense, but she’s already accepted this as her truth. She would carry this on as her belief for many years, long after she graduated from elementary school. She fears to do anything new because she’s lost confidence in herself. She struggles with schoolwork because she feels she’s not capable. Her suffering continues.
The other twin in a different class had a bully. He bullied her and told her that she’s too slow in the gym class. Or she’s clumsy. Or she doesn’t know how to control her body. Little did she know, he had a crush on her. All he wanted was for her to notice him. Not a smart way of doing it, but this was the only way he knew how. Although she didn’t realize he liked her, she didn’t accept what he said as truth. She challenged what he told her every time. She knew she was not the best at sports but could manage her body just fine. She knew what he told her didn’t make sense. She dismissed everything and didn’t pay too much attention to him. She interpreted this experience as “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I am fine with my body.” Soon he stopped bullying her. She goes on with great confidence in her and even started dancing as a hobby. This is exactly why we each live a different reality. Different meaning, different experience.
Why do we accept lies and all the nonsense?
So, how did we start perceiving reality as we do? As I mentioned earlier, this comes from the environment we grew up in and the people in our lives. You’ve heard the expression that children are like sponges. It means that they learn so much very easily and quickly. Between the ages of 2 and 6, their brain waves in the waking state are at theta frequencies of 4-8 Hz*. Theta brainwaves are associated with sleep, meditation, and deep creative dreams. Theta brain waves are also found in a hypnotic state. Which means children are suggestable to ideas. Most of them accept what they see, hear, and feel. They are constantly learning. This is one of the stages in which they start their way of perceiving reality. If many pessimistic adults are in their lives, some children can learn to be also pessimistic. This is accepting what’s not true to them. A lot of children get mixed messages from adults. So, they do their best to connect dots in their mind, forcing the experience to make sense. They try hard to come up with a reason why from their point of view. So that they can conclude in their own way. Some abused children possibly perceive that “they are bad”, just so that they can accept the abuse as “punishment for their badness”. Because if they are good, this makes no sense. Why would they get punished? It’s their coping mechanism to survive in a horrific, unimaginable environment because, instinctively, they know they can’t make it on their own. They need to make themselves accept to stay in the same environment. They need to understand the reason why they are getting treated this way. Of course, this is far from being true. No children are bad. This is accepting the lie, and this acceptance can turn into a damaging rule in their minds later.
What does it mean to accept “self”?
Accepting yourself means loving all of who you are. To be your true self. Have you seen a child who is busy enjoying himself? His eyes are full of sparkles and twinkles. He’s running around following his passions and excitement. It never occurs to him to doubt himself or dwell on fear.
He’s adventurous, courageous, and full of life. He can’t stop talking about all the creative fun he’s had today and awaits excitedly for the unknown mystery of tomorrow. This is someone who accepts himself. He knows he’s capable. He knows to follow his heart’s desire.
He loves himself. He loves life. Sure, sometimes he feels defeated fighting with his friends or making mistakes. But he’ll soon get up and apologize to that friend because he wants the friendship more than his pride to stay mad. He learns from his mistakes so that he can improve himself. He’s ok to make mistakes. He’s very forgiving to others because he forgives himself. He’s ok to experience some hardships. Whatever comes his way, he is confident that he can overcome it. Because his heart knows this life is for him to enjoy.
Every single day of it is his to learn and enjoy. Accepting is never to blame yourself. Never put yourself down. Never doubt, worry, or bully yourself. He also fully understands what he wants and what he is capable of. Accepting is to acknowledge that we are all equal. He never sees anyone as superior or inferior. He supports others when he can, but he also knows when to put himself first. He loves himself, others, and the world. If this person describes you, congratulations.
You are probably at your best often, expressing your creativity in some ways and helping to make a better world already. Those who are not quite there yet, this is who you can become when you completely accept yourself. I’m sure you are already doing your best, but you can be more of a force in this world with ease. You are one and only, completely unique, absolutely an amazing human being. You have a unique combination of abilities and talents that let you follow your passions and accomplish what you want to help others and make a better world. This is who we are all supposed to be. What do you say, are you up to accepting your whole self?
Start practicing gratitude
You might say, “What does that have to do with accepting myself?” It has everything to do with it, actually. Many of us have learned to bully ourselves in our minds over the years. And we do it very well. I’m talking about the negative thoughts that are played over and over again in our heads. Or thoughts to limit us. To stop these damaging thoughts, we need to focus our consciousness on the positive aspects of ourselves. Gratitude is the best positive thought and feeling you can get. Because when you are not conscious and aware, you go into autopilot. These negative thoughts are in the autopilot program. If you don’t become aware, it keeps playing in the background. Your body is an intricate, superb, incredible system with a supercomputer brain. You can program it in almost any way you want with your intentions and repeated actions.
But the key is to become aware of what you are putting into a program. This is where gratitude comes in. What do you appreciate about yourself? Your life? What about people you love? Whatever they are, write them down first thing in the morning. You can write 3 in the morning and 3 before you sleep. If you feel you don’t have much to appreciate, go general. Sun, clean air, trees, the roof over your head, etc. Like anything you feel thankful about.
Once you write them down, feel the gratitude. We are given a life. We are here to experience life. Love, Joy, satisfaction. Fun, excitement, and fulfillment. Hardships, broken hearts, stress, challenges. Above all, we are here to create the world we want. With this intentional gratitude, you start making the program of seeing the good in yourself. This is exactly the first step you need to accept your beautiful self. Remember what Gandhi said, “Be the change you want to see in the world”*. If you want your loved ones to accept themselves, you are to do it first.
Know thyself
During the practice of gratitude, you start focusing on what you have. Quality, ability, talents, character traits, core nature of yourself, etc. This is the reason why it is so great to face yourself. Look within yourself. You are the only person in this world who can understand and know yourself completely. Knowing yourself helps you to see all the values you bring to the table. You realize what you want. What your passions are. What you love doing. How you want to think about yourself. What makes you feel happy. What makes you feel good. Focusing on gratitude can help you find all these great aspects of yourself. Your kindness. Your generosity.
Your warmth. Your courage. How you love helping people. Your respectfulness to yourself and others. You’re good at sewing. You are amazing at drawing. You can fix any electronics. You have awesome computer programming skills. You are a baby whisperer. Your intelligence and thirst for knowledge. Your passion for learning languages. There are numerous talents, abilities, and beautiful characteristics in humans. And when you think about combinations of these, it’s the same number as the entire population on Earth. Because everyone is different. Unique. Original. Everyone is one and only. What is your unique combination? You can’t find out about yourself when you are busy talking about others or listening to what others say about you. You must focus on yourself. Start rediscovering what you are great at, what you are capable of, and your incredible characteristics. Once you rediscover yourself, follow that. Let’s stop being the person others want you to be. Stop listening to society, social media, or people from the past. Know yourself. Listen to your heart. Be yourself unapologetically. Don’t accept any stereotype as you. Don’t accept people’s image of who you are. Don’t accept the false truths about you. People want you to change so that they can feel better in some ways. But their feelings are their responsibility. Just as your responsibility is to make yourself feel good. And do you know what makes you feel good? Accepting your true self and becoming true you.
Once accepting your true self
We talked about how much fun a kid is. The one who accepts himself for who he is. Imagine if all of us accept our true selves. Happy being as we are. Content most of the time because we would be mostly doing what we love doing. We probably have more friends because we are loving, peaceful, and supportive. We would be eager to share our talents and skills with others. I can imagine we would be laughing a lot more because there would be no bullies, including our internal bullies, the horrible negative thoughts in our heads.
When we get curious, we would dive right into it because we don’t doubt ourselves and fear failure. This would help us discover even more of our talents. We wouldn’t be put inside the nonsense of “You should be…” and, ”You are supposed to be…”, so we can come up with many more brilliant ideas thinking outside the box. No one has double standards. We say what we mean and mean what we say. And we walk the walk. Because there is no need to cover up, justify, or rationalize. The world would make a lot more sense. Simplified. We would take 100% responsibility for ourselves so there is no blaming.
We can discuss any disagreement calmly and even have some fun sharing each other’s opinions. People are loved and accepted because we all know that we’re equal. What’s not to love others when they have much to share with you? Talents, abilities, love, kindness, and support. This sounds like a pretty amazing world to me. What do you think? OK, maybe we can’t all accept ourselves at the same time. But we can try. One at a time. If you read this article and start your journey to discover, accept, and love yourself, you are making a difference in the world.
So I thank you. I’m so grateful that you took the time to read this long article of mine and decided to do something. You are doing something pretty big. You are putting yourself at the top of your priority list. You are making yourself the most important person in your life. Pretty incredible. It won’t be that easy as there are a lot of programs you built unknowingly growing up. Many false beliefs entered our lives. So first find one absolute truth in you. Mine is “I see the good in people”. Somehow, this lifts my mood right away. My heart gets warm. I love doing it. And this feels good every time I think about it. We know babies are born good. So it shouldn’t be that hard to find the good in people. Good luck on your journey. Remember, we are all together on this journey. Let’s have fun on our way to accepting ourselves and making a beautiful world.
Excerpted from Elite Learning.
Fun fact. Apparently, Ghandhi didn’t exactly say this, according to Joseph Ranseth.
His actual quote was, “We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.”
Chifuyu Casaclang, Therapeutic Counsellor/ RTT Practitioner
Chifuyu is a therapeutic counsellor and an RTT practitioner. She uses a unique way of counselling with the knowledge of how the body/mind works, Rapid Transformational Therapy skills, and the gift of intuition to help you realize your long-term false beliefs and overcome who you learned to be. She has this absolute “knowing” that everyone is more than capable of becoming the “extraordinary”. Believing in yourself is the key to transforming yourself. You are what you believe. Chifuyu guides your journey of discovering and mastering yourself through overwriting your false beliefs. Above all, she shows you how to have fun in the process, on your way to becoming your “ideal” self.
