Embracing Your Authentic Self. A Path to Inner Power

Dr Michael E. Bernard

Founder, You Can Do It! Education

Emeritus Professor, California State University, Long Beach
Former Professor, Melbourne Graduate School for Education, Melbourne University
Doctorate of Educational Psychology

Best practices to create a more enjoyable and less stressful workplace experience

There is no better ticket to getting off life’s rollercoaster of ups and downs than self-acceptance. Self-acceptance has made a big difference in my life. Self-acceptance helps anyone live a happier, stress-free life. When younger, I used to take things quite personally, whether it was a lower-than-expected rating of my teaching, criticism from a colleague, or difficulties in my personal life. I’ve now learnt that it doesn’t have to be that way.

With self-acceptance, you choose not to rate your self-worth based on your work performance, what others think or say about you or your physical appearance. You accept yourself with your imperfections. However, rather than being complacent, you work on doing things the best you can. And you take pride in being you because of your positive qualities, knowing that you are unique and special.

It takes time to become proud of who you are and accept yourself no matter what. Similarly, it takes time to choose not to define your value as a person based on what’s happening in the outside world and to not judge yourself based on your imperfections.

Self-Acceptance at Work

Let’s look at common work-related events that often can start a downward spiral of stress because of a lack of self-acceptance.

You are faced with criticism or are thought poorly of by someone at work. This could be a disgruntled customer,
a colleague’s critical response to your leadership, or negative feedback from a team member.

At these times, your mind can be your worst enemy. How? By taking these events personally – putting yourself down, illogically thinking: “What’s wrong with me? I must be a totally hopeless teacher.” At these times, your mind can lose sight of and memory for those aspects of yourself you are proud of that prove you have intrinsic value.

The great news is that when faced with a work performance that is not up-to-standard or when other people’s judgments of your performance are negative, your mind can be your best friend. How? You can choose not to take things personally – not putting yourself down, and, instead, continue to be proud of who you are and accept yourself unconditionally.

Many individuals gauge their self-worth using external criteria—such as their achievements or the opinions of others.

Self-acceptance is a Mindset

Self-acceptance helps you accept yourself in the face of mistakes and criticisms and continue to improve your work performance. I was first introduced to this idea by Albert Ellis, a world-famous psychologist with whom I had the fortune to work with for many years. I have written and edited many books on Ellis’ theory, practice, and rational emotive behaviour therapy.

Here’s how Ellis explains self-acceptance in his book, The Myth of Self-Esteem:

Self-acceptance is a single idea that can make you radically different in many ways, and that you can choose to have it or not have it. People’s estimation of their value, or worth, is exceptionally important. If they seriously denigrate themselves or have a poor self-image, they will impair their normal functioning and make themselves miserable in many significant ways. When people do not value themselves very highly, innumerable problems arise. The individual’s judgment of his value or worth has such an impact on his thoughts, emotions and actions, and how it is possible to help a person consistently appraise himself so that, no matter what kind of performance he achieves and no matter how popular or unpopular he is in relations with others, he almost always accepts or respects himself.

Here's What to Know and Do

Two bits of self-exploration help develop the foundations of this mindset:

Be Proud of Who You Are. Be aware of and value who you are and your strengths. Don’t over-focus and get stuck on things about yourself or what you have or haven’t done that you are not proud of.
Rational Self-Acceptance. Appreciate that it never makes sense to judge your overall values as a person based on things about yourself you are not proud of. You don’t lose your positive qualities when faced with negative events.

It is helpful to begin by objectively examining your strengths of character, multiple intelligences (what you are clever or smart at), and aspects of family/culture that you are most proud of and that contribute to defining not only who you are, your uniqueness, but your intrinsic value as a person.

Be Proud of Who You Are

Four questionnaires appear next that can assist you in this process. Take a few minutes to complete each, or look them over and take stock. You can also download an interactive PDF file of the questionnaires here.

The final questionnaire, What is There to Be Proud of? is the most important to complete. By doing so, your brain can assert dominance over how your mind operates when faced with negativity. Henceforth, your mindset can assert itself by thinking: “I am proud of who I am no matter what.”

1. Spot Your Character Strengths

Directions: In the list below, select your five top character strengths.

Name of Strength	Description
Appreciation	Appreciating people who perform with excellence or noticing beauty in nature.
Bravery	Not being afraid to give hard things a go, being willing to stand up and say what you believe.
Caution	Not saying or doing things you later regret.
Creativity	Thinking of new and productive ways to do things.
Curiosity	Taking an interest in experience for its own sake.
Enthusiasm	Starting every day with a sense of excitement and energy.
Fairness	Treating everyone with respect and equality.
Forgiveness	Forgiving those who have done wrong.
Gratitude	Being aware of and thankful for good things that happen.
Honesty	Being truthful.
Hope	Expecting things will turn out for the best.
Humour	Liking to laugh and joke and bring smiles to people’s faces.
Kindness	Doing good deeds and being nice to others.
Leadership	Organising group activities and making things happen.
Love	Valuing close relationships with others.
Love of Learning	Enjoying learning new things and mastering new skills
Modesty	Not bragging, letting your accomplishments speak for themselves.
Open-mindedness	Seeing things from all sides and thinking things through.
Perseverance	Finishing things, you start.
Self-control	Controlling what you say and do.
Sociability	Being aware of the feelings of others.
Spirituality	Believing in a higher purpose.
Teamwork	Working well as a member of a team.

2. Admire Your Multiple Intelligence

Directions: Select your top two or three multiple intelligence strengths in the list below.

Name of Intelligence	Description
Linguistic intelligence	The capacity to use language, your native language, and, perhaps, other languages, to express what’s on your mind and to understand other people. Poets, writers, orators, speakers and lawyers specialise in linguistic intelligence.
Logical-mathematical intelligence	Not being afraid to give hard things a go, being willing to stand up and say what you believe.
Visual-spatial intelligence	The ability to represent the world internally in your mind – how a sailor or an aeroplane pilot navigates the large spatial world. You have a good sense of geography and do not get lost easily.
Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence	The capacity to use your whole body or parts of your body – your hands, fingers, arms – to solve a problem, make something, or put on a production. The most evident examples are people who are good at sports, athletics, or performing arts such as dance and theatre.
Musical intelligence	The capacity to think in music, to be able to hear patterns, recognise them, remember them, and perhaps manipulate them. People with strong musical intelligence don’t just remember music easily – they can’t get it out of their minds, particularly dance or acting.
Interpersonal intelligence	Understanding other people in terms of how they feel and what they need.
Intrapersonal intelligence	Understanding yourself and your feelings, knowing who you are, what you can do to be calm, and what to avoid.
Naturalistic intelligence	The human ability to notice differences between living things (plants, animals) and be aware of other natural world features (clouds, rock configurations).

3. Family and Cultural Heritage Count

Directions: Many of us have things about our family we are proud of. We might be proud of one or more of our family members for who they are and what they have done. And many of us have things about the culture we come from that we are proud of. We might be proud of a cultural tradition we celebrate or something our culture values, such as being warm and welcoming to visitors. Write down some things about your family and your home culture that you are proud of.

	Things About My Family I Am Proud Of

	Things About My Culture I Am Proud Of

4. What Is There to Be Proud of?

Directions: Write down five of your intrinsic characteristics you are most proud of. Select from your list of character strengths, multiple intelligences, differences, family and culture that all form a part of who you are. Then, write a sentence or two about how you display this characteristic. Don’t be overly modest! Be truthful and honest with yourself. You are the only one who is going to look at this.

An example:

Kindness “I would say I am generally a kind person. I go out of my way to say something nice to someone who needs a pat on the back. I am pleased and proud of this trait.“

Rational Self-Acceptance

Being proud of who you are is one side of the self-acceptance coin. The other side is the process of how you go about accepting yourself no matter what and refusing to put yourself down.

Rational self-acceptance means that you carry a stable sense of positive self-worth based on things about yourself you are proud of in situations that might be negative and stressful. You fully understand that your self-worth remains unchanged throughout.

Rational self-acceptance means an end to self-rating and self-downing. It means an end to looking to others and your achievements as ‘necessities’ to feel good about yourself. Sure, achieving well and receiving recognition feels good, but that doesn’t mean you need achievement and approval to value yourself. The valuing of yourself needs to come from within, from a sense of who you are and an acceptance of your value because of who you are and because you are alive.

Disputing 'Self-depreciating' Attitudes: Cognitive Restructuring

Albert Ellis is also known for a technique called cognitive restructuring, which is a self-reflective process where you catch yourself engaging in thinking that is leading to high levels of negative emotional stress and asking yourself two disputing questions:

Is what I am thinking true? Where is the evidence?
Is what I am thinking logical and sensible?

If your answers to any of these questions are negative, you can correct your thinking so that it is true and sensible by understanding how your thinking is in error.

When you catch yourself getting down in the dumps about an event, you will often be able to detect self-downing in your thinking. You can dispute and change this way of thinking. Self-depreciation is based on faulty reasoning; it doesn’t follow that because one or more things at work have not gone well, everything about you (and your work) is bad – this is called a non-sequitur. Sure, you may have goofed up, but does that make you a total goof-up? Your work in the previous section provides you with ample evidence to dispute the idea that you are a 100% loser when bad events occur.

Self-Accepting Self-Talk

Select from the following list those self-accepting thoughts you can use when faced with criticism or lack of achievement. Practice

“I am not a bad person when I act badly. I am a person who has acted badly.”
“I am not a good person when I act well and accomplish things; I am someone who has acted well and accomplished things.”
“I can accept myself whether I win, lose or draw.”
“I can be myself without trying to prove myself.”
“I am not a fool for acting foolishly. If I were a fool, I could never learn from my mistakes.”
“I have faults and can work at correcting them without blaming, condemning or damning myself for having them.”
“I can neither prove myself to be good nor bad. The wisest thing I can do is simply to accept myself.”
“Accepting myself as human is better than trying to prove myself superhuman.”
“I can reprimand my behaviour without reprimanding myself.

Personal Study

If you would like to read more about self-acceptance in the fields of religion, philosophy and the theory and practice of psychology, I refer you to my edited book, The Strength of Self-Acceptance (2013; Springer Press).

*Featured blog image credit: Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash