This is an episode of Crush It Mondays.  Each week, I’ll bring to you an inspiring message, habit, or contemplation to get your week off to a powerful start.  In this week’s episode, I want to talk about confidence and how it relates to self-acceptance.

Be honest, how often do you beat yourself up?  Are you hard on yourself and critical?  While self-criticism can be productive (similar to receiving constructive criticism from someone), most of us overdo it and it becomes detrimental.  We reject ourselves. Psychology research says that one reason some individuals are more self-critical than others is due to how criticized they were by their parents. We actually have no self-regard before the age of 8, and if we were criticized a lot growing up then we tend to be more critical of ourselves as adults. While understanding your past and tendencies is important, I don't believe in blaming the past or blaming our parents because as adults, we are able to take responsibility for ourselves and have the power to work on personal issues. The past might have created those issues, but it's our choice whether we become a victim to them.  It's not easy, and everyone has some degree of self-judgment but learning when you're doing it and learning to practice self-compassion is massively important. As a side note, I recorded a podcast with Dr. Kristin Neff- a pioneer and PhD in Self Compassion research if you want to listen. I'll link it up in the show notes.  Self-acceptance is about accepting who you are, not trying to fix who you are although I love personal development too!

What does this have to do with confidence? I was doing research on where confidence comes from. While I think there are a few elements contributing to someone feeling confident, self-acceptance is one that really made sense. If you accept yourself unconditionally, then you don't rely on the opinions of others to validate you. Of course, this is not black and white and all of us look for approval and want to demonstrate our worth to others, but there are varying degrees of it.  Think about it.  We'll use an easy example- racing.  A lot of times, race nerves come from something potentially going wrong or not finishing high enough to meet expectations.  If you worry that people will think you aren't any good or you aren't worthy if you don't achieve a certain result or certain time, you are looking to them to accept you. But if you already accept yourself as a good human before the gun goes off, you'll feel less worried about the end result and care less about what people think.  This also applies to the image of how much money or success someone has by brand names, houses, cars, etc aka keeping up with the joneses.  If you accept yourself, you don't need to outwardly prove that you are successful.  Lack of confidence also comes from fear of failure.  Have you ever thought, "I don't feel confident enough to try that because I don't know how!"  The best way is to just to get started and know that you'll grow and get smarter and more experienced in that area, but the real fear in that statement is "I don't know how and I'm afraid I'll look stupid in front of someone."  And that includes worrying about your internal expectations or looking stupid in front of yourself. If you fail and then start beating yourself up, that is not self-acceptance. It's the opposite- it's your internal jerk carrying on.

Another amazing side effect of being less judgemental and more accepting of yourself is that you'll end up being more accepting of others.  Ever notice that your harshest criticisms about other people tend to be similar to your own issues and things you don't like about yourself?

One caveat- self-esteem and sel

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The Grow the Good Podcast is produced by Palm Tree Pod Co.