Quotes About Self-acceptance

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody but yourself means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting." "Staying real" is one of the most courageous battles that we'll ever fight.

Heroics is important and we certainly need heroes, but I think we've lost touch with the idea that speaking honestly and openly about who we are, about what we're feeling, and about our experiences (good and bad) is the definition of courage.

Perfection is an unattainable goal.

Talk to yourself the way you'd talk to someone you live. Most of us shame, belittle and criticize ourselves in ways we'd never think of doing to others. I would never look at Ellen or Charlie and say, "God, you're so stupid!" Yet I can whisper that to myself in a heartbeat. p158

Shame is a social emotion. Shame happens between people and it heals between people. Even if I feel it alone, shame is the way I see myself through someone else's eyes. Self-compassion is often the first step to healing shame—we need to be kind to ourselves before we can share our stories with someone else.

choosing authenticity and worthiness is an absolute act of resistance. Choosing to live and love with our whole hearts is an act of defiance.

our worthiness, that core belief that we are enough, comes only when we live inside our story. We either own our stories (even the messy ones), or we stand outside of them—denying our vulnerabilities and imperfections, orphaning the parts of us that don't fit in with who/what we think we're supposed to be, and hustling for other people's approval of our worthiness. Perfectionism is exhausting because hustling is exhausting. It's a never-ending performance.

Sometimes choosing being real over being liked is all about playing it unsafe.

I believe that owning our worthiness is the act of acknowledging that we are sacred.

No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough.

shame is much more likely to be the source of destructive behaviors than it is to be the solution.

Belonging to ourselves means being called to stand alone - to brave the wilderness of uncertainty, vulnerability, and criticism.

The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself. —ANNA QUINDLEN1

We hustle for worthiness by slipping on the emotional and behavioral straitjacket of cool and posturing as the tragically hip and terminally "better than." Being "in control" isn't always about the desire to manipulate situation, but often it's about the need to manage perception. We want to be able to control what other people think about us so that we can feel good enough.

E. E. Cummings wrote, "To be nobody-but-yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody but yourself—means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight—and never stop fighting.

They practice critical awareness by reality-checking the messages and expectations that tell us that being imperfect means being inadequate.

The heart of compassion is really acceptance. The better we are at accepting ourselves and others, the more compassionate we become.

Self-kindness is self-empathy.

No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough. It's going to bed at night thinking, Yes, I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but that doesn't change the truth that I am brave and worthy of love and belonging.

When we dig past the surface, we find that shame is often what drives us to hate our bodies, fear rejection, stop taking risks or hide the experiences and parts of our lives that we fear others might judge. This same dynamic applies to feeling attacked as a mother or feeling too stupid or uneducated to voice our opinions.

Nothing has transformed my life more than realizing that it's a waste of time to evaluate my worthiness by weighing the reaction of the people in the stands. The people who love me and will be there regardless of the outcome are within arm's reach.

Shame cannot survive being spoken. It cannot tolerate having words wrapped around it. What it craves is secrecy, silence, and judgment. If you stay quiet, you stay in a lot of self-judgment

We're sick of being afraid and we're tired of hustling for our self-worth.

Perfection is about the furthest thing in the world from badassery.