Self Acceptance Quotes

Several times in my ministry people have expressed the fear that self-acceptance will abort the ongoing conversion process and lead to a life of spiritual laziness and moral laxity. Nothing could be more untrue. The acceptance of self does not mean to be resigned to the status quo. On the contrary, the more fully we accept ourselves, the more successfully we begin to grow. Love is a far better stimulus than threat or pressure. ~ Brennan Manning

Every relationship will suffer to some degree without finding self-acceptance and treating yourself like your own best friend. ~ L.K. Elliott

Years are an optical illusion that obscure our lived experiences. ~ Efrat Cybulkiewicz

In this culture, cultivating unconditional self-acceptance truly is radical. ~ Yancy Lael

When someone comes to a pastor or a close friend and says "I think I'm gay", rest assured 99% are. How we respond creates light or darkness.
Please be aware that when you've never heard anything positive about being gay and you've laboured secretly over this for ages, you don't make a declaration like that lightly. It takes an enormous amount of courage to eventually tell someone. This is not an empowering coming out though or finally finding a place of self-acceptance; the statement is cloaked in fear and shame. The statement "I think I'm gay" is not really about doubt or confusion it's more likely they are saying "I'm gay, but it scares the shit out of me and I don't want to be. Help!"
At that point the pastor or friend has the privileged opportunity to provide a place of safety and compassion that will lead them on into self-acceptance and an authentic life. Handled unwisely could lead them into years of internal torment. ~ Anthony Venn-Brown

Forgive yourself. The supreme act of forgiveness is when you can forgive yourself for all the wounds you've created in your own life. Forgiveness is an act of self-love. When you forgive yourself, self-acceptance begins and self-love grows. ~ Miguel Angel Ruiz

Happiness is long-lasting, a condition of the soul, the foundation on which the circumstances of life are experienced, endured, or enjoyed. ~ Auliq Ice

Love what you are. ~ Debasish Mridha

We always condemn most in others, he thought, that which we most fear in ourselves. ~ Robert M. Pirsig

My Dear Friend,
Don't ever allow yourself to forget how incredibly special you are, even for a single second. Without you, the world would not be as magnificent. Let yourself remember to love again, starting with you loving you. ~ Miya Yamanouchi

Where we see self esteem, we see self acceptance. High self esteem individual tend to avoid falling into an adversarial relationship with themselves. ~ Nathaniel Branden

Accept yourself in the way you were created by God, do not anyone else ~ Sunday Adelaja

It is not depression or anxiety that truly hurts us. It is our active resistance against these states of mind and body. If you wake up with low energy, hopeless thoughts, and a lack of motivation - that is a signal from you to you. That is a sure sign that something in your mind or in your life is making you sick, and you must attend to that signal. But what do most people do? They hate their depressed feelings. They think "Why me?" They push them down. They take a pill. And so, the feelings return again and again, knocking at your door with a message while you turn up all the noise in your cave, refusing to hear the knocks. Madness. Open the door. Invite in depression. Invite anxiety. Invite self-hatred. Invite shame. Hear their message. Give them a hug. Accept their tirades as exaggerated mistruths typical of any upset person. Love your darkness and you shall know your light. ~ Vironika Tugaleva

I feel the greatest gift we can give to anybody is the gift of our honest self. ~ Fred Rogers

How easily we accept the fact that this is a varied world, with many races, cultures, and mores. In America we rejoice in this diversity, this pluralism, which makes up the rich pattern of our national being. We should learn to accept this pluralism in ourselves, to rejoice in the truth that we human being consist of a variety of moods, impulses, traits, and emotions ... If we become pluralistic in thinking about ourselves, we shall learn to take the depressed mood or the cruel mood or the uncooperative mood for what is, one of many, fleeting, not permanent. As pluralists we take ourselves for worse as well as for better, cease demanding a brittle perfection which can lead only to inner despair. There are facets of failure in every person's makeup and there are elements of success. Both must be accepted while we try to emphasize the latter through self-knowledge. ~ Joshua Loth Liebman

Remembering that the impulse to control is an indication that we are having a neuroception of danger, perhaps we can be compassionate rather than critical of ourselves when we do step in to overtly manage the process.

Perhaps we can begin to ask inside about the nature of the threat that brings on the need to assert control and fix.

As always, dropping the questions into our right hemisphere and not expecting a particular answer in this moment opens the way for a deeper understanding to emerge bit by bit. ~ Bonnie Badenoch

I am willing to release the need to be unworthy. I am worthy of the very best in life, and I now lovingly allow myself to accept it ~ Louise L. Hay

It should be some kind of goal to be absolutely clear about your past experiences and have let them all go and accepted them in full. ~ Auliq Ice

I called it a baptism in flaming ink that forced me to shed my shyness about recognizing myself as a poet and to accept the fact that life had never given me any choice in the matter. And then I had to discover exactly what that meant. ~ Aberjhani

Acceptance is the vessel of realization. ~ Eric Micha'el Leventhal

Anger is a sentry, stalking the edges of our boundaries and standing ready to defend them. ~ Jessica Moore

A person must make peace with oneself before they will find peace with the world. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Assured of your salvation by the unique grace of our Lord Jesus Christ is the heartbeat of the gospel, joyful liberation from fear of the Final Outcome, a summons to self-acceptance, and freedom for a life of compassion toward others. ~ Brennan Manning

Pain and self-loathing habitually implants its incendiary embers in the universal desire for other people to love us. What a life torn asunder by bolts of pain laced with shame teaches us is that we cannot look endlessly for other people to love us. We must delve from ourselves the ability to unreservedly love all life forms and empathize with all people. We should care for, and not judge, or be envious of other people. When we learn unconditionally to love other people, we learn to accept our own fitful humanity. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Be kind to yourself. Remember that when you abuse yourself, you will experience the anger, regret, and apathy of the bully as well as the depression, anxiety, and insecurity of the victim. Whatever you do, be kind to yourself. ~ Vironika Tugaleva

We must be able to love other people or forever endure the stain of disgraceful loneliness. By recognizing and expressing empathy for other people, we come to accept our own fallibility. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

The mistake ninety-nine percent of humanity made, as far as Fats could see, was being ashamed of what they were; lying about it, trying to be somebody else. ~ J.K. Rowling

Self acceptance is common, Unfortunately, for some daft reason you are expected to have some kind of psychology degree to learn it. ~ Auliq Ice

All your body requires of you is that you turn toward it with kindness and compassion, with nonjudgment and plain-vanilla acceptance of all your contradictory emotions, beliefs, and longings. ~ Emily Nagoski

The world is so obsessed with defining sexuality for everyone and attaching labels to it. Any time any person openly leaves the sexual norm, their sexuality becomes, more often than not, the absolute defining characteristic of that person. It becomes the first thing people think about and often the first thing they mention. Every other part of that person all but disappears. ~ Dan Pearce

For twenty-one years, I have been paralyzed by the fear of what this society will do with me if they ever were to know of the thoughts that I continually push away. For more than two decades, I have made a choice to be straight. After all, it's as easy as making a choice, isn't it? This culture has made sure that I know that. Anyone who is anything other than straight was just someone deceived by the devil. He is unnatural. He is confused. He is mistaken. He is weak. He can control it if he desires to control it. Such a compelling and ongoing argument has been made that I have always trusted it.
I believed that if I hid it long enough, and ran from it long enough, and refused to acknowledge it for long enough, I could indeed succeed at living up to their decrees. I believed that I could force myself to never be anything else. ~ Dan Pearce

When you stop living your life based on what others think of you real life begins. At that moment, you will finally see the door of self acceptance opened. ~ Shannon L. Alder

You have peace," the old woman said, "when you make it with yourself. ~ Mitch Albom

People will ask you the question 'how is life treating you?' But my question is 'how are you treating life?' On that your happiness rests ~ Rasheed Ogunlaru

I always thought that people told you that you're beautiful-that this was a title that was bestowed upon you ... I think that it's time to take this power into our own hands and to say, "You know what? I'm beautiful. I just am. And that's my light. I'm just a beautiful woman." ~ Margaret Cho

Genuine self-acceptance is not derived from the power of positive thinking, mind games or pop psychology. IT IS AN ACT OF FAITH in the God of grace. ~ Brennan Manning

Self-acceptance is self-love in action. ~ Jodi Livon

I may say that (Being) love, in a profound but testable sense, creates the partner. it gives him a self-image, it gives him self-acceptance, a feeling of love-worthiness, all of which permit him to grow. It is a real question whether the full development of the human being is possible without it. ~ Abraham Maslow

Body love is more than acceptance of self or the acceptance of the body. Body love is about self-worth in general. It's more than our physical appearance. ~ Mary Lambert

Self-acceptance means fully accepting yourself no matter what your traits or how you perform or achieve. It does not mean self-esteem, self-confidence, or self-regard. These terms imply that you accept yourself because you perform or behave in a specific way or because people accept you based on your achievements. Self-acceptance means that you non-judgmentally accept yourself for who you are without rating or evaluating yourself, or requiring the approval of others. ~ Lee A. Wilkinson

Over the last few years, my comfort level with how I look has improved. My age has helped. You get used to yourself and accept yourself. ~ Lynn Redgrave

Today Lord I am going to do my best with Your help and for Your glory. I realize that there are many different people in the world with a variety of opinions and expectations. I will concentrate on being a God-pleaser and not a self-pleaser or man-pleaser. The rest I leave in Your hands lord. Grant me favor with You and with men and continue transforming me into the image of Your dear Son. Thank You Lord. ~ Joyce Meyer

If you love someone, you will want to understand them and accept them as they grow and change; similarly, loving yourself involves a never-ending process of self-understanding and self-acceptance through life's ups and downs...we are finally coming to understand that love for neighbor and love for self naturally lead to love for the earth...if you love your neighbor as yourself, you want both them and you to be able to breathe, so you need to love clean fresh air...you want them and you to be able to drink, so you need to love pure water in all its forms...you want them and you to be be able to eat, so you need to care about the climate...." (p. 59-60) ~ Brian McLaren

Every thought, feeling, and sensation within your body throughout the day offer you an opportunity to love. Good or bad, whatever you experience is a lesson or a reminder to connect with love. ~ Aletheia Luna

If you are not yourself, you have nothing to offer the world but a cheap imitation of someone else. ~ E'yen A. Gardner

See If You Can Give Yourself Gifts That May Be True Blessings, Such As Self-Acceptance ~ Jon Kabat-Zinn

I don't break the rules, I simply bend them in my favor. ~ Efrat Cybulkiewicz

I am not sure how we came to believe that we know more about what our people need than they do. A core, culturally supported assumption about their brokenness may have something to do with it, and so might our left-dominant culture and training that makes it more challenging to be present to anyone's implicit experience. Many it is equally about our inability to trust our own inner wisdom to guide us because no-one helped us listen when we were young. Without this trust, we may get frightened for our people and the process, and such feelings bring on the need to assert control ...

experiment with the pause, remembering that our rupture and repair are optimal, trust will grow as we and our 'patients' stumble together into the tentative, fluid process of attunement with one another that supports the awakening of the inherent wisdom and health. ~ Bonnie Badenoch

All our dreams can manifest in life not because we are white or black, but because we believe. ~ Auliq Ice

POPPY (standing up to Paul): I see family life as invading everyone's privacy and saying whatever I feel and treating everyone as they're treasured because they're my family and thus special as compared to the rest of the world. I see a good family as loud and frantic and intrusive. ~ Bijou Hunter

I seek to use the tools of the mind to overcome a narcissistic self and attain self-mastery. I aspire to engage in self-cultivation by making practical usage of the process of enduring privations, overcoming challenges, and rejecting illicit temptations in order to gain fortitude, courage, and wisdom. I shall reflect upon grievous personal mistakes and embrace the concept of repentance as a lifelong growth process through which humankind conscientiously learns to make better choices by forsaking vice, immorality, and wickedness. I must also unreservedly embrace fate by perceiving everything that happens in life including suffering and loss as good, and affirm a life filled with indignity, sorrow, and tragedy. I can only discover happiness – a meaning, purpose, comprehensible truth, and essential value of existence – by living with dignity in the face of absurdity. When we affirm all aspects of being, we enjoy a tranquil existence. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

This season trim your inner tree with self kindness. You deserve it. Because you are perfect, just as you are. ~ Amy Leigh Mercree

Peculiar Western self-hatred ... is nothing short of pathological. It is commendable that the West is trying to be more open, to be more understanding of the values of outsiders, but it has lost the capacity for self-love. All that it sees in its own history is the despicable and the destructive; it is no longer able to perceive what is great and pure. What Europe needs is a new self-acceptance, a self acceptance that is critical and humble, if it truly wishes to survive. ~ Pope Benedict XVI

If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Our inner Witch isn't something we acquire.
It's already within us. It's something we become ready and willing to experience. Something we
realize we ARE. ~ Dacha Avelin

Be what you are. Do what you love. Speak what you feel. Don't hide
your humanity. Celebrate it. Embrace it.
That is how you change the world. ~ Vironika Tugaleva

There is, I believe, no such thing as unconditional self-acceptance. Those who say so are promulgating a pernicious lie. One must first live a decent, honorable and productive life. Only then do you get to feel good about yourself.
Seeking to heedlessly gratify your desires or impulses of the moment to do things (or fail to do things) your conscience knows to be contrary to your standards of right, worthy and virtuous behavior is, in a mental, emotional and spiritual sense, akin to spending capital that you have not earned, and therefore will eventually cause you to feel very negatively ... about who and what you are. You cannot in the long run have your cake and eat it too. The longer ... you behave in certain ways, the more it comes to define you, not only to others, but also to yourself. ~ Laura C. Schlessinger

Knowing trees, I came to realize, understand and appreciate the act of patience. ~ Ogwo David Emenike

Magick happens when you step into who you truly are and embrace that which fulfills your soul. ~ Dacha Avelin

Leave your hair natural. Let your beard grow out. Leave the makeup in the bag. Wear comfortable clothes. Stop worrying so much about your looks and start looking around you. You have missed so much beauty trying to become beautiful. You have missed your own worth trying to become worthy. Let the mask break open. Let it lie on the floor. Let yourself be seen. Let yourself see. ~ Vironika Tugaleva

It's hard to remember who you were when you're constantly pretending to be someone you're not. ~ Amy Ewing

POPPY: 25 December 2016

POPPY (standing up to Paul): You see family life as respecting boundaries and saying what makes people happy and treating everyone like they're treasured but only in a sanitized way.

I see family life as invading everyone's privacy and saying whatever I feel and treating everyone as they're treasured because they're my family and thus special as compared to the rest of the world.

I see a good family as loud and frantic and intrusive...He fits me, and I don't want to change. Not for you or anyone. I'm deeply in love with myself, and Emmett respects that...

"I'm not her (Christine). I don't have a dream to fix animal boo-boos. Loving Emmett and living close to my family are the only dreams I see as worth having. ~ Bijou Hunter

Generosity is another quality which, like patience, letting go, non-judging, and trust, provides a solid foundation for mindfulness practice. You might experiment with using the cultivation of generosity as a vehicle for deep self-observation and inquiry as well as an exercise in giving. A good place to start is with yourself. See if you can give yourself gifts that may be true blessings, such as self-acceptance, or some time each day with no purpose. Practice feeling deserving enough to accept these gifts without obligation-to simply receive from yourself, and from the universe. ~ Jon Kabat-Zinn

Attempts to help humans eliminate all self-ratings and views self-esteem as a self-defeating concept that encourages them to make conditional evaluations of self. Instead, it teaches people unconditional self-acceptance. ~ Albert Ellis

Ironically, your trust in your inner belonging radically alters your outer belonging. Unless you find belonging in your solitude, your external longing will remain needy and driven. ~ John O'Donohue

POPPY (standing up to Paul): We're different. You make appointments to see your family. You're careful with what you say and do around people. You care about the opinions of strangers.

None of that makes any fricking sense to me, but I respect your decisions to care about pointless crap. ~ Bijou Hunter

Self-love is essential. Until you can learn how to feel loved in an empty room, you will not feel loved for very long in any other room. ~ Vironika Tugaleva

If you go to war with your mind, you will always be at war. ~ T. Scott McLeod

People get so caught in how they don't like one part of themselves; nose, thighs, tummy, whatever.
Things like flour and baking powder go into cakes and those things are gross alone, but the cake is pretty damn delicious. ~ Todd El Holley

Accept yourself in a way you are created ~ Sunday Adelaja

What would happen if you stopped fighting, and gave yourself permission to feel? Not just the good things, but everything? ~ R. J. Anderson

Those who
disrespect you
with their mouth
don't deserve
your ear. ~ Curtis Tyrone Jones

Either nobody's perfect,
or everyone is. ~ Eric Micha'el Leventhal

I'm nothing great. But I'm a rose… I'm a rose whether I'm admired or not, I'm a rose whether anyone's crazy about me or not… Like I said, nothing great. Just a rose… But, do you know what it means to be a rose, my friend? Being a rose means 'freedom.' It means not existing by the praises of Others or not ceasing to exist by their disapproval. ~ Serdar Özkan

The angel in me loves the devil in me. ~ Marty Rubin

I learned that true forgiveness includes total self-acceptance. And out of acceptance wounds are healed and happiness is possible again. ~ Catherine Marshall

You are under no obligation to look pretty, least of all someone else's definition of pretty. ~ Mina Rehman

Stop trying to convince people to like you. Just be yourself. ~ Akiroq Brost

The greatest miracle you can hope for is self-acceptance. ~ Maxwell Maltz

You are Perfection and Imperfection's Love Child. ~ Sera Beak

A second quality of mature sirituality is kindness. It is based on a fundamental notion of self-acceptance ... ~ Jack Kornfield

At the end of the day, remind yourself that you did the best you could today, and that is good enough. ~ Lori Deschene

Practicing self-love means learning how to trust ourselves, to treat ourselves with respect, and to be kind and affectionate toward ourselves. This is a tall order give how hard most of us are on ourselves. I know I can talk to myself in ways that I would never consider talking to another person. How many of us are quick to think, "God, I am so stupid" and "Man, I'm such an Idiot."? Just like calling someone we love stupid or an idiot would be incongruent with practicing love, talking like that to ourselves takes a serious toll on our self-love ~ Brene Brown

Many people can't sing their praise or feel proud of themselves in front of others because they are scared to be labelled as 'arrogant' or 'big-headed'. Social acceptance is more important than self-esteem in the 21st century - and that's not good. ~ Maddy Malhotra

Make life easier for those around you, not harder.
Every person you know is fighting their own great battle. Few of us ever know what those battles entail, and so often we say and do things that push others deeper and harder into the front lines of those battles. I know such has been the relentless lifelong reality for me.
Love a person for the person that they are.
Or dislike them for the person that they are.
But don't love or dislike them for the sole reason that they see people differently than you do. Don't love or dislike them because they experience the world differently than you do.
And please don't eternally and wholly define them with sexual labels just because they were among those who finally found the courage to acknowledge their truth. ~ Dan Pearce

It has long been my motto that if you cannot get your act together... then the very least you can do is try to make your act entertaining. ~ Becky Johnson

To reach the stars of your dream, you need to take a brand-new path, overcome the challenges of life and rise above the horizon like a new sun. ~ Amit Ray

We must never allow the scars to define us, if our sole aim is to reach for the stars. ~ Gift Gugu Mona

I lock eyes with my reflection and don't look away. The day you look away you start to lose yourself. I'm never going to lose myself. You are what you are. Deal with it or change. ~ Karen Marie Moning

The sense of your own experience will grow along with your confidence. ~ Auliq Ice

She was perhaps too young to realize that what she assumed was her love for [him] was actually a tentative, timorous, acceptance of herself. ~ Arundhati Roy

When we accept ourselves as we are, we aren't "settling" or "keeping the problem in place." We're showing love and compassion for ourselves-for our feelings, our situation, and our history. ~ Nick Ortner

The highest degree of human attainment comes when a person is blissfully at peace with his or her own nature and the natural world. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

The message of love is self-acceptance in the smaller sense and self-acceptance in the large sense - the Self as eternity. ~ Frederick Lenz

To say "I love you" one must know first how to say the "I". ~ Ayn Rand

CANDY: I learned long ago not to give a flying f*ck what strangers thought about me. H*ll, I only mildly care what my friends think. Life is too short to stress others' opinions. ~ Bijou Hunter

You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection ~ Gautama Buddha

You are in God, and all of God is in you. When you talk to yourself, you are talking to God/the Universe. When you talk to God/the Universe, you are taking to yourself. Loving yourself is synonymous with loving God/the Universe. Loving God/the Universe is an act of reconnecting, self-discovery, self-acceptance and self-love. The Principle of Oneness is the recognition of the Divine in everyone and everything. ~ Russell Anthony Gibbs

It's ok to reinvent yourself as many times as it takes to live out your most authentic self. ~ Nikki Rowe

If I'm convinced that I'm not good enough, I will have a difficult time accepting someone into my life who thinks I am. It's the Groucho Marx syndrome of not wanting to like anyone who would want me in their club. The only way that I can accept someone's finding me wonderful, is if I find myself wonderful. But to the ego, self-acceptance is death. ~ Marianne Williamson