Simple Tip #13

Simple Tip #13: Acceptance of Self and Others

"In my ideal world, no child would suffer. Charitable instincts would prevail. There would be global acceptance of all different types of people." - Clay Aiken

I've never been much of a fan of Clay Aiken, but he knows what he's talking about. In light of the news of Dove World Outreach Center's plan to burn the Muslim holy book, the Qur'an in honor of 9/11 and as a girl whose best friend is Muslim, I feel as though it is necessary to have a post on acceptance.

There are many kinds of ways to be accepting, but I wanted to talk about the importance of accepting yourself and others. We live in a society that is not often accepting; we are bombarded with images of intolerance all the time. They can be blatant and they can be subliminal. Such an important part of having a simple life, at the most basic level, is being accepting.

Acceptance is a basic value, a fundamental value to life, society, religion, relationships. I think that to find acceptance in others, you must first accept yourself. How would you do that? I cannot tell you. What I can tell you are suggestions for finding acceptance within yourself.

Accepting Yourself

Spend time with yourself. By this I mean, give yourself a day to be alone. Sometimes its good not to be a social butterfly. Take this time to read a book, listen to music, watch a movie. Just sit by a window and think. Go to the beach and sit on the sand. Hug your dog for thirty minutes. Sleep. I find that when I do these things, I come to some understanding. I try to accept something new about myself everyday. Why, today, for example, is that I'm not going to succeed every time and I just need to keep trying.

Write out everything you like about yourself. If you can define what you love about yourself, then that's great. But defining what you love about yourself makes it easy to see what you don't love. You can look at those things, and then find some good in them. Slowly but surely you can find some acceptance in that.

Accept compliments. This is one of the hardest things for me to do. I just want to analyze and criticize the compliments given to me. I don't always trust them. This is something I'm working on. I think that a person who can accept a compliment with ease and without giving it another thought has the best confidence in the world and is in tune with herself. Strive to take the praise given to you. Chances are you deserve it.

Accepting Others

This one is always a hard one. Everyday we see images on the news of intolerance towards religion, sexuality, ethnicity, sex, political preference, etc. And the ideal would be to accept people on a grand scale. But in reality, no one will be able to accept something as a whole because there will always be something they find wrong, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try.

Because Islam is such a hot topic in the news lately, let's use it as an example. People aren't going to accept the religion as a whole because there are certain highly questionable factions of Islam that people are going to be at odds with. There are rules in Islamic Law that people aren't going to agree with. These things make it hard to accept Islam as a whole. But, it is possible to take baby steps towards acceptance. It is possible to accept the people. Nearly the entire majority of Muslims aren't part of extremist factions; some follow the sometimes shocking and stringent (to the Western world) Islamic Law, but that doesn't make them bad people. It is possible to accept Islam as a religion of individuals who are good, bad, and beautiful, just like Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc.

That is where the path to acceptance starts. It starts at the very basic level. The person. I can't tell you to accept someone because I think you need to. But I hope that I can make it clear that learning to accept a person for who they are as a person will lead to acceptance of where they come from, what they believe, what they do.I hope that I can encourage you to listen to someone and their stories and that they will listen to you. I hope that I can help expand the mindset to be accepting. That is all I can do.

"Tolerance is the eager and glad acceptance of the way along which others seek the truth." - Sir Walter Besant