Category Archives: self-acceptance

Are You Still Working on Yourself?

Working on car

Jill came to our first coaching session saying that she’s been “working on herself” for twenty years but still feels she has more work to do.

Every time I hear that phrase, “working on myself,” I visualize a car with the hood up and someone bent over the engine with a wrench. Frankly, it makes me cringe.

Like many women I know, Jill’s taken workshops, trainings, and courses with top self-help experts–the best out there. Meditation, spiritual direction, success training, more productivity, self-compassion, better thinking, building confidence–she’s done them all.

She even saw a therapist to see if she was depressed. The therapist told her she wasn’t and sent her away.

“So what’s the problem?” I asked.

“I just don’t ever feel good about myself,” she said. “I’m a phony and a quitter. I procrastinate. I don’t use the tools I learn. I keep trying, taking courses, listening to podcasts, but I think I’m just not good enough.”

“Jill, what if the real issue is your self-attack? You’re believing what you’re telling yourself–that something is wrong with you that needs work. What if you don’t need more confidence or self-compassion or productivity? What if the key to feeling good about yourself is accepting yourself right now, this minute, just exactly as you are?”

This is a novel concept for Jill and for many of the women I talk to. It’s as if there is a far-off destination, the land of “I’m fixed and don’t need to work on myself any more.” It’s always a faraway destination, miles from where they are.

But here’s the truth: We have good days and bad days, times we screw up and times we succeed. Sometimes we’re articulate and confident, sometimes we’re withdrawn and awkward. Sometimes we’re kind and sometimes we’re not, especially to ourselves.

In short, we’re human.

When we listen to the inner voice that attacks us, we forget our victories, our successes, and our kindnesses. We don’t remember our loving acts towards others and we can’t see the beauty that surrounds us.

The biggest problem Jill and many other bright, competent women share is believing the inner voice that tells them they’re not good enough exactly as they are

Consider these words from “Wild Geese,” by Mary Oliver:

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

We’re all magnificent and messy, fabulous and awkward, deeply spiritual and disappointingly profane. And we don’t have to crawl on bruised and bloodied knees across a desert, futilely trying to be so good.

So how about getting your nose out of the engine of your heart and soul and gently lowering the hood. Walk away from the idea that you need to be fixed, tinkered with, worked on.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Can you quiet and listen to its soft whispers?

Can You Love All of You?

pink-flower_000005420955xsmallI love the story of Evy McDonald, who suffered from ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease), an incurable, usually fatal, neuromuscular disease that destroys the body’s motor neurons, the nerve cells that control voluntary movement.

Sitting in her wheelchair, Evy chose to literally face her disease, and sat before a mirror looking at her deteriorating body.  In the beginning, she was revolted by herself.  Gradually, she became able to find aspects of herself to admire.  In time, she made peace with herself and her weakened body.

That’s when a miracle occurred.

In a newsletter of the Canadian Holistic Healing Association, Evy wrote, “I couldn’t pinpoint just when the shift occurred, but one day I noticed that I had no negative thoughts about my body. I could look in the mirror at my naked reflection and be honestly awed by its beauty. I was totally at peace, with a complete, unalterable acceptance of the way my body was – a bowl of jello in a wheelchair.”

Although she had been given only a year to live, Evy ultimately made a full recovery from the disease.  In writing about her process, which you can read more about here, Evy stressed the importance of letting go of outcome in her quest to accept herself.

Easier said than done. But she persisted.

Evy suggests this as a step in the healing journey, a step we can all wisely follow, no matter what kind of healing we are doing:  “Release all expectations of how it will turn out. Your body may heal completely – or not at all. You may find that a wheelchair, cane, walker or crutches becomes an integral part of your daily life. That does not determine whether or not you live in a state of wellness.”

Our wellness, indeed our wholeness, then, does not depend so much on whether we lose the weight, heal our knee, or find the perfect career.  We become well and whole when we make peace with all of us, with ourselves exactly as we are.

Our jobs then are to make peace with our overweight bodies, our strained backs, the times we yelled at our kids when we were tired and angry, the unkind things we said to ourselves, marrying the wrong person, failing the test, and so on.

When we can accept all that we are, all that we’ve done, all the decisions we’ve made, we become whole.

The only thing that’s stopping us is the our failure to see the truth about our beauty and our magnificence.

It’s the work of a lifetime, but I can’t think of anything better to do.