Self-esteem is about your feeling about yourself, what you believe you’re good at or capable of doing.
On the other hand, self-acceptance is more of an action. You accept your strengths, use them wisely and stay behind your faults, your weak sides and practice self-love every day.
Self-acceptance might mean different things and it depends on what the person went or is currently going through. On the next slides you can find some examples of different perspectives on self-acceptance.
Self-acceptance can be…
- A man going through a divorce who feels like a failure because of it. He might experience self-acceptance as acknowledging that he made some mistakes and that his marriage failed, but that does not make him a failure.
- A woman struggling with anorexia may accept herself as a human being with an imperfect body. She may acknowledge that she approaches her imperfection from a harmful perspective, and commit to working on this perspective.
- A student who works hard only to receive Cs and the occasional B in college could reach a point of self-acceptance in which he realises that studying and taking tests is not his strong suit. And that this is okay because he has other strengths.
Self-acceptance can also be…
- A girl with low self-esteem who actively ignores facing her self-doubt and self-defeating beliefs. She might experience self-acceptance through acknowledging and confronting her negative beliefs and cognitive distortions, and realising that not everything she thinks is true.
- An employee who struggles to meet the goals set by a demanding boss may accept herself by accepting that sometimes she will fail to deliver. But she can still be a good person even when she fails.
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