Self-acceptance means acknowledging that you are as you are and being comfortable with it. It doesn’t necessarily mean liking every aspect of yourself. Some attributes can’t be changed, and you may as well accept them right now. Take your age. You can disguise it, lie about it, try to hide it, but you can’t change it. Similarly, you can do little about your gender (without going to drastic lengths), your race, height, eye colour etc. You also have little chance of transforming the way the world works, society in general and other people. But you can find a way of making the best of yourself, by: becoming better informed acquiring new skills changing unwanted habits handling relationships and problems more effectively. But bear in mind, self-acceptance does not mean giving up on yourself . If some disliked aspect of yourself is important and can be changed, do something about it. There’s no point in feeling bad about something you can change, just as there’s no point in feeling bad about something you can’t! “Never grow old in your mind. Your true age is how you feel inside. Valerie J. Hayward” “You must learn to accept yourself before you can expectothers to accept you. David Baird”
‘a Different Kind Of Hearing.’
At the age of 11 Evelyn Glennie was told that she would have to attend a special school for the deaf. It was a moment that changed her life. She became determined to go to the local secondary school attended by her brothers.
‘It didn’t make sense that simply because a chart says you can’t hear such and such, you therefore can’t do certain things,’ she said in a recent interview. With her parents’ support she ignored the audiologist and went to the mainstream school anyway.
Now, despite being completely deaf since the age of 11, Evelyn is one of the world’s top classical percussionists, feted all over the world, performing barefoot to help her feel vibrations from the other instruments. When asked how she copes with her hearing problem she replies that she doesn’t ‘see’ herself as deaf – just someone with a different kind of hearing. Her other senses are enhanced and her concentration heightened: she simply ‘listens’ harder.
‘I never asked, “Why me?”’, she says. ‘We’ve all got something that needs sorting. You meet people really handicapped who appear to be the happiest people in the world. That puts life in perspective.’