4th December 2023

How you can be more accepting of yourself…

Do you ever feel “not enough” in different areas of your life?

Self-acceptance is all about accepting ALL aspects of yourself – the positive and the negative. When we accept ourselves for who we are now, we embrace all aspects of ourselves unconditionally; we recognise our weaknesses but still feel satisfied with who we are. When you’re more accepting of yourself, you’ll likely be happier, have higher self-esteem and self-worth, won’t be so bothered about what others think, have less fear of failure, and be less self-critical.

Where a lack of self-acceptance begins…

I developed early at school. I started my periods at age 10 and was always bigger than my school friends.

I felt undesirable and never got attention from any of the nice boys. It didn’t help that I didn’t get hugs or an “I love you” from my Dad, and therefore I always felt awkward around boys and unlovable. I was never a natural hugger as it felt alien to me, although I secretly loved receiving hugs.

My mum was constantly on a diet (remember the cabbage soup diet?!) and therefore I believed I should always be watching what I was eating and felt I was fat.

Most of my childhood was spent not being able to “afford” nice things as our family was always on a tight budget.

Emotions were never talked about and therefore I felt ashamed or confused about a lot of my feelings.

This all led to feeling not good enough, not worthy enough, not pretty enough, popular enough, lovable enough, desirable enough, successful enough… (the list goes on)

I used to hate having my photo taken, and I used to run away and hide when my parents tried to record family videos because I was so self-conscious. I just hated how I looked and was scared of what others thought when I was completely myself. It was possibly due to an early memory of being laughed at (maybe not even in a nasty way) for how I looked or acted in front of the camera, but I don’t remember.

Ginny Marsh as a child — This is little me (Ginny) as a child – low self-esteem, low self-worth, low self-confidence…

When I was growing up, not enough emphasis was placed on celebrating personality, individuality and unique qualities – I focused a lot on how I looked because I didn’t know myself well enough.

We’re told a lot of lies and limiting beliefs from society, social media, and the family we grow up in about what it means to be “beautiful” or how we should behave and who we should be… such as girls are supposed to be pretty and take pride in their appearance, but not be too slutty; we should be well spoken and successful, but we can’t be too ambitious because it’s unrealistic.

All these “shoulds” add to not feeling good enough. We live our lives on autopilot, being who we’re told to be until we wake up and become conscious. We realise one day that we want to be better, to feel happier, to feel like we fit in, to feel worthy, and to feel enough.

It’s only by doing the self-healing work and constantly putting in the time and effort to improve ourselves that we create change and are the cycle breakers of generational patterns.

Our bodies and minds are constantly changing and evolving, and we’re never going to be exactly the same as we once were. And that’s ok.

Here are some questions for you to ponder and journal on…

Who/what does your inner voice tell you you “should” be? Who’s voice is it? Is it your voice or a close friend or family member, for example?
How can you be more accepting of yourself as you are now?
What are the repeating patterns in your life that you want to change and improve?
What are you afraid of?
If you completely accepted yourself as you are, and had no fear, who would you be? What would you do?
How can you be more honest, open and authentic about who you are?

If you’d like help exploring these questions and how to be more accepting of yourself, just click below to book your free coaching session, where I’ll help you gain clarity on what you’d like to focus on and create some action steps to start making a change in yourself 🙂