Self-acceptance is the first step towards a healthy life and psychological balance and to stop judging yourself helps a lot.

We often hear that society dictates how we should be and how we should act. I disagree! Society is nothing more than the opinion of the majority but it cannot, in any way, define who we really are. When we feel anxious or sad it is because we value the opinion of the majority too much and try to level up to it even if we don’t feel the same way.

The problem is that while we grow up, we are told to listen to others instead of listening to ourselves, to our own desires and needs. When we are children, we listen to our parents and our teachers, when we grow up, we listen to our bosses and the authorities, and we feel inadequate when we know we have completely different thoughts. We are raised to think that other people are always right and that we are constantly mistaking.

One of my biggest struggles in my 20’s was to unlearn most of the things I’ve been told in my previous years and learn and listen to what I want and how I feel. When you are constantly repeating the same things over the years, it can sometimes be hard to just leave those teachings behind. Moreover, what you feel and think might be the complete opposite of the values society promotes, and therefore it can be harder to be yourself.

From the way we look to the way we think, we, women, were always told what is best for us as if we were never able to figure it out on our own. Most of the heartache that we are feeling while we grow up, and even as adults, comes from the separation between the status quo and our own truth. It is very important to understand that we must not go with the flow when it comes to how we want to live.

Self-acceptance should be an ongoing practice, something to be taught from a very early age. As children, we should be guided into understanding that society is a concept that’s needed for everybody to live as much as possible in harmony. But it is equally important to stick to our own values and truth. We, the people, are so different and that is what makes us special and unique. No society should be allowed to make us feel we are not good enough.

If there is something wrong, then society is the one that should be updating its beliefs to 2021. Sticking to your own truth is not easy, but it’s rewarding. We must educate ourselves to listen to our hearts, to listen to the needs of people around us, to understand the struggles we are all going through, to stop judging ourselves and others so much. Living is an ongoing journey to learn from as long as we are breathing. It’s not a lesson to learn until a certain age and then play it by heart, over and over again, like robots, until the day we die.

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