Episode 13: Self-Acceptance Comes Before the Change

Have you ever caught yourself thinking, "I'll love myself once I [fill in the blank]"?

It’s common to think you’ll learn to love and accept yourself after successfully achieving a goal, but evidence shows us that's actually backwards.Self-acceptance is foundational for making sustainable change happen. Today’s episode has 3 practical tips to increase your self-acceptance.

Episode Transcript:

INTRO MUSIC: Welcome to The Compassionate Wellness Podcast. I'm Alex Treanor. I'm a Nationally Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach, and I am so excited you're here. The wellness industry is full of do's and do not's, should's and should not's. But I like to take a different approach. I'll be sharing all things health and wellness from a joyful, real-life compassionate perspective. If you're ready to drop the cookie-cutter approach and create a life you truly love, while eating a cookie or two along the way, let's dive in.

Hey, Friend! Welcome to The Compassionate Wellness Podcast. I'm so excited to be in your ears today. I have a topic that I am really looking forward to talking about. I'm hoping we can have a little bit of a heart to heart this week, a little health coaching heart to heart, if you will.

Recently, I'm noticing this dichotomy, and this is probably obvious, but there's this dichotomy between the diet culture world and this body positivity space, where people feel like they need to be in one or the other, or that they are at odds. Like you either have to diet and be concerned about your weight, or you have to accept yourself for how you are and have no concerns about weight, and there's not really room in the middle. In several conversations that I've had recently, I'm hearing people really wrestling with this decision of trying to decide which world they want to live in, which space fits them best.

As a health coach, I really believe that there is space in between. I don't think (I hope we all know this by now), but I'm not into diet culture. I don't think that is the answer. For most of us, it doesn't seem very sustainable from what the research shows, and from just anecdotally, and working with clients, and my own experience, I don't feel that's very sustainable.

However, if you want to be in this body positivity space, there's still room to make changes and to want more for your health and wellness. What I want to talk about today is the idea of acceptance, because the vibe that I get when I speak about acceptance with other people, is that acceptance is complacency. Acceptance is viewed as laziness, that you always want to be striving for more. "If if I'm too accepting, then what's the motivation to change?" If I accept myself, there's no reason for me to want more.

The other vibe I get is that people will say, "I will love and accept myself and my body when I'm a size six, or when I've lost 10 pounds". There's an idea that acceptance comes after we make a change. What I think is really interesting, is that the science and the research paints a completely different story. We actually have it backwards. The acceptance piece is foundational to be able to create long lasting change something that you can stick with.

In order to do that we have to first be accepting of ourselves. When we approach change, we have all these different perspectives, we all have different experiences, different challenges. We aren't a blank slate when we are coming into the change process. If something has historically been very challenging for you, and you attempt it again, you're coming in with the expectation that this probably isn't going to be very easy, right? These past experiences, the thoughts that we have, they're all important. We have this operating system of sorts, that's built up through all of our thoughts, our experiences, our perspectives, how we think about things, how we feel about how we think about things, all of that will influence our actions.

What we know is that starting from a place of acceptance and positivity is helpful to making lasting and meaningful change. That's what I want to dive into today; what acceptance looks like, and how we can start increasing our acceptance in order to make those changes that we are wanting to work on.

There's two forms of acceptance that I want to discuss. One being internal acceptance, of internal experiences, and one of external experiences.

Internal acceptance would be looking at your thoughts, your feelings, your emotions, your beliefs about yourself. Becoming accepting of them all those things important to internal acceptance. I know this is so cliche, but I did look up the definition of acceptance just to get a feel for what what exactly are we talking about here. The definition is the action or process of being received as adequate or suitable, which to me is like the bare minimum, right?

When we're saying this is adequate, it's, it's fine. It's enough. Internal acceptance is just that belief that you're enough. It sounds so basic, but man, can that be challenging? Let's look at how our beliefs about ourselves might influence the choices, or the decisions that we make.

If I'm looking for a car, for example, let's say I want to buy a car. I personally don't view myself as someone who would drive a Ferrari. I love Ferrari. But am I going to go buy a Ferrari? I don't believe so. I don't believe I make enough money, rirst of all, to buy a Ferrari (currently, maybe that will change in the future, that'd be great), but currently, I don't feel that. I don't feel like I have the driving style of someone who would drive a Ferrari. So when I'm thinking about, "okay, hey, I need a new car, I'm gonna go car shopping", I don't even consider going to look at a Ferrari. It's just not in my scope to even think about.

When we are thinking of changes, we opt for things that reflect our thoughts about ourself.

So if you don't feel like you are enough, how are you supposed to feel deserving of the changes that you want to accomplish? If you don't feel you're deserving, what effort will you put into that change? We're talking real-talk here. I know, I said that the beginning, this is a heart to heart, right? For real, if we don't feel like we are important, if we don't feel like we're worth carving out that time, if we don't feel like we are valuable enough, then what effort will we put into making our dreams a reality? It's gonna look a lot different than if you felt like, "this is me, I am worth it. I am enough. I accept myself, I love myself". It's a completely different perspective.

I think sometimes we have this fear, too, that if we do say "I'm enough", then we don't push for more. But that's just not reality. That's not what the research shows us. That's not what experience teaches us. It's not an either or situation.

If we love ourselves so much that you never have to change. There's no accountability in that perspective. But if we hate ourselves so much, that we feel like everything needs to change, that doesn't get us in the right headspace to make a lasting change.

Internal acceptance is also being accepting of our thoughts, our feelings, our emotions. Isn't this mindfulness?! It seems like that comes up every week! But I feel like that is mindfulness. It's being able to observe our thoughts and our feelings and the way that we're thinking and the emotions that we have, without over identifying with them, which is one of the core components of being self-compassionate.

If this is something that you're having a hard time with, I would encourage you just to think about thoughts like emails. You can't stop them from coming in, you're gonna get emails, they exist. But you don't need to open all of them. Some of them are junk emails, some of them are spam, who knows where they came from, we can just filter those right out, they just pop in. And it is what it is. We don't have to dwell on them. And some of them, you can unsubscribe from. That newsletter that you signed up for to get 10% off your first purchase three years ago, and you've never bought anything since, you can unsubscribe to that! We don't need that email anymore. But we can't say, I'm going to stop all emails or my emails will only look like this from now on. I's just not reality. They come in, we can't always control them. But we choose how we respond to them and how we filter them, or how we unsubscribe to them.

Let's look a little bit at acceptance of the external things: the situations, the hardships, the challenges. Those are more external cues or experiences. And we're going to have a little bit more real talk here. I think (myself included) I think instead of accepting the hard, we often run from the things that feel complicated that feel hard or scary, the everyday challenges that pop up in life, things that we don't expect, but we are presented with challenges. This can also be cravings, those feel hard sometimes. Emotions feel hard sometimes. Some of these things that happen to us, we avoid or we pivot or we choose to numb them out instead of accepting them, and being able to navigate through it. We try to avoid it, we shut that down completely. What we do, and I know I've done this for sure, is jump straight to problem solving. A challenge pops up, ope I don't like that, let's figure out what we can do different, let's pivot, and we just avoid it. And I think that's a good skill to have. Problem solving is important. Where it becomes more challenging is when we don't hold this space, to accept the challenge first, to feel it, to understand it, to come to this point of recognizing that this is a hard thing and that's okay. It's okay to be uncomfortable. It's okay to feel like you're being challenged. Most of us don't like that so we just would rather skip that part.

Acceptance for these external things really makes us look the challenge in the face, it makes us cope with it, it makes us hold space for it. And so instead of avoiding it, or looking the other direction, we can actually navigate through it in a non judgmental way. Accepting these external difficulties also helps us to let go of the need for control, and really changes how we relate to and how we think about these challenges. When we're able to think about it differently, because we're accepting that it's hard (and that it's normal for it to be hard), we can be more flexible in our response because it's not this big looming thing. We are feeling it, we understand it. And we can see more options.

One thing my mom told me growing up, we used to hear this all the time, if you take a pebble, and you hold it up to your eye, that pebble is really big, and it's looming, and that's all you can see. But if you put that pebble down, let's say you are standing in a river, you put it in the river, it's so small, and you can see so many different things. And that's what we're doing with acceptance. We're putting that difficulty down, putting it into perspective, accepting that it's hard. Living through hard things is what makes us human. And when we can recognize that, we can see the options, we can see different ways to navigate it and different ways to respond. And we can choose the thing that fits best what we are looking for.

As a summary of all of this, when we are changing how we relate to both these internal and external experiences, we're changing the whole game. We're coming into it with a completely different perspective, a different foundation. And that's huge. Acceptance really is part of common humanity, which is part of self-compassion. In that way, an important component to be able to be self-compassionate, is to recognize that we all have hard times, we all have things we don't like about ourselves, we all have parts of our bodies we wish look differently. And situations we wish were different and experiences that we wish we didn't have to go through. We all struggle and that struggle is what brings us together, that struggle makes you human.

One topic area where acceptance comes up a lot in my coaching, is working around emotional eating. One of the first things we do is just learn to accept it. You emotionally eat. Every other human that I've talked to has emotionally eaten at some point in their life. Nearly every client I've had, has wanted to work on emotional eating, it is so common. And when we think about it, the ones who manage it well, the ones who have found ways to overcome that is because they're not freaking out about it. It's not all-consuming. They're accepting that "balls, this was a hard day, I need a cookie", and they can eat the cookie and they can move on. Because it's just it is what it is. It's acceptance. The ones who struggle with it are the people who say, "balls, I had a hard day I need a cookie", and then they eat the cookie. And then they beat themselves up for eating the cookie. So they eat more cookies. And then it spirals because if I've had two cookies, I might as well eat the rest of these. And what else do I have in this cabinet? And that's where it becomes problematic. Emotional eating in itself is not a problem. When we can do it mindfully. When we can accept that it's human to want comfort when we are having a hard time. I feel like I got on a little soapbox there. So that's something I'm very passionate about. That probably comes through.

Acceptance is one of these things too that sounds nice and it's hard to know where to start. "Okay, I want to be more accepting of myself, of my body, of my thoughts, of my experiences. Where...what do I do? What do I do with that?"

So I want to give you three practical ways that you can start to increase your acceptance of yourself and of your internal and external circumstances. And keeping in mind my disclaimer that I always say, it's not an overnight change, this will take practice, and it comes over time. So the more you can practice these things, the more you can try them out. Sometimes they may feel like, "dang, that felt so good". And sometimes you may try it and be like, "that was a flop". But the more that you practice with it, the easier it becomes, and the more natural it becomes. So here's three, three ways you can get started.

The first one, notice your self talk. Pay attention to the things that you say to yourself. And more than paying attention to it, I would recommend writing it down, keeping a journal. When we write things down, it's something we can work with; it's not this ethereal thought that's floating around and kind of exists. Write it down, so you can look at it and then analyze it and be like, "is that true? Is this important? What would I say differently?"

As you're noticing your self-talk, look for opportunities to speak positively about yourself. We're so used to looking at the negatives because our brain needs to know when we're in danger, when we're doing something that's harmful for self protection. Your brain doesn't need to know "Hey, I did a good job of drinking my water today". It's just not on the priority list for your brain unless you are making it a priority by looking for something positive to say about yourself. So that's the first one notice your self talk.

Number two, of course, self compassion, practice self compassion. You can use my favorite question. I've said it before, I will probably say it a million times. Ask yourself, "what do I need right now?" Self-compassion is soothing yourself, because you are worthy of being soothed. Because you deserve comfort. It's not comfort, because I hope to change the situation and it will make me feel better. You may feel better. But the point is to soothe yourself. In order to practice self-compassion, and get more acceptance, stop fighting yourself, and focus on how you can soothe yourself instead. What would that look like? What do you need in this moment?

And number three, is to remember that your thoughts are just thoughts. Use this as a mantra. I want to do an exercise to illustrate this. Something that you can do in the moment, if you are starting to feel overwhelmed by your thoughts. Wherever you are, I want you to take five seconds and think to yourself, I can't blink my eyes and say it several times. "I can't blink my eyes, I can't blink my eyes, I can't blink my eyes". Now I want you to blink your eyes. This is an example that thoughts are just thoughts. Just because you think something doesn't mean it's true. Your thoughts absolutely can influence your behavior, the way we think about something matters. But your thoughts can't control it. Just because you think you can't blink doesn't mean that you can't blink.

If you're struggling with automatic thoughts, other things that you can do is to say them out loud in a goofy voice, or sing them. That's something that I will do sometimes is just sing whatever random thought that doesn't fit what I really would want to think, what's more aligned with my values. When I have just a random thought, I just sing it and it sounds goofy. And it's very clear that that is not a true or accurate statement. It's just a random thought. It's not something I need to dwell on. You can also use some kind of imagery, so maybe the thought pops in your mind, you recognize it and you imagine a box that thought getting delivered to you in a box where you can slap a label on it that says automatic thought this is just an automatic thought and then you can send that box out.

To summarize those three things. One, notice yourself talk. Two, practice self-compassion. And three, remember that your thoughts are just thoughts.

I always like to wrap up by giving you something to consider for the week or some kind of question to ponder on. So I want you to imagine that you feel great in your body, that you are loving your body. You are accepting of your body and your whole self. You're accepting of yourself as you are right now. And then I want you to think about how you act when you feel that way. How would you act? What activities would you participate in that maybe you're holding yourself back from? How would you talk to yourself? How would you treat yourself?

Whatever comes to your mind, I would encourage you to try to do that thing this week, to build the acceptance, so that you can make that change and feel the way that you want to feel.

It is possible and it's actually recommended to accept yourself before starting a change journey, it's going to be much easier for you. We all have permission to stop being afraid of loving and accepting ourselves. You are not a problem to be solved, your life is not a problem to be solved. You are a whole individual, whole as you are. You're allowed to love yourself just as you are right now. You are allowed to accept yourself, just as you are right now. You're allowed to believe that you're enough. And you're allowed to want more for yourself. You can feel great, and feel deserving of improved health and wellness. All of these things can go coexist. There's no need to feel like you have to be in one world or the other. We can combine them, where you can feel good, and feel positive and accepting and to be working on lifestyle changes. That's what I have for you today. I hope this was helpful. Feel free to send me any feedback or messages that you have. I always love hearing your perspectives and your thoughts. So thank you for sharing with me, and I'm looking forward to talking with you again next week.

OUTRO MUSIC: Thanks for joining me on this episode of the compassionate wellness podcast. If this message resonated with you, please share it with someone you care about. I'd love to connect with you as well follow me on Instagram @alextreanor.coaching, or visit my website alextreanorcoaching.com. And as a reminder, Treanor spelled kind of goofy, it's T-R-E-A-N-O-R. For any references mentioned in this episode, be sure to check out the show notes. I hope you have a wonderful day and don't forget to make time for something you enjoy.