The Vagaries of Self-Acceptance (long)
The Vagaries of Self-Acceptance
For me, 2008 was about weight loss and learning how to take better care of myself. I was determined to keep pushing and make 2009 about self-acceptance and maintaining my weight loss. Both efforts have been a success. On any given day I weigh 5-7 pounds less than I did a year ago. I have also learned to accept more about myself this past year than I had in the previous 48 years of my life. The funny and appalling thing about working on self-acceptance, though, is that it is akin to doing your own emotional proctology exam. Not an easy or a pleasant task; poking about in all the presumably disgusting things that left me feeling embarrassed and ashamed about who and what I am.
Revelation, revulsion, joy and despair have all taken their turns with me over the last 12 months. I have discovered a penchant for writing and have received much encouragement and support for opening my tender inner self up to others in that medium. I now let my emotions flow through me rather than try to curb or smother their effects with food. At times the outward display of those raw, powerful emotions makes me look like a selfish, irritable jerk, a part of me that I hid so well from the world for so long because I desperately wanted others to like me no matter what , to accept me, even if minimally so, because I couldn’t accept myself. I have found great joy in new friendships and in pushing myself to new physical limits. I have also questioned the value of my own existence, temporarily convinced that the people in my life would be better off without me.
Once I had at least accepted the good, the bad and the truly ugly aspects of myself, I assessed what had to change in my life in order for it to work better in that newly revealed context. I want to thrive as a thinner, happier person. In the process of blindly trying to please others in the past, I had effectively undermined my own well being by failing to orient my life to meet my particular emotional needs. I couldn’t let that continue and hope to end up a happier man.
I have been working for some months now on a change in career direction that I hope will result in greater job satisfaction, which I want more to do with the value of creative ideas I bring forward than my willingness to climb the corporate ladder. Just this week I started some part-time consulting work that may eventually lead in that direction. I am both excited and scared of that prospect as this new career direction is much less certain than what I have been doing for the past 25 years.
I have also been addressing personal relationship issues while letting my emotions flow outwardly. People are struggling to accept the more complete me. I am harder to live with, my expectations are greater and I have actually been trying to express my needs for a change. I don’t know where things will go from here, but it seems certain that they will be different.
I couldn’t have imagined that in the process of learning to like myself more that others might wind up being less accepting of me as a whole person. I am OK with that reality. Apparently the worm has turned and I like it that way. Such are the vagaries of self-acceptance
RP
