The Heart of Self and Other Acceptance

 Albert Ellis, the famous psychotherapist, has this to say about self-acceptance: "You rate and evaluate your thoughts, feelings, and actions in relation to your main Goals of remaining alive and reasonably happy to see whether they aid these Goals. When they aid them, you ate that as "good" or "effective", and when they sabotage your Goals you rate that as "bad" or "ineffective". But you always--yes, always--accept and respect yourself, your person, your being , whether or not you perform well and whether or not other people approve of you and your behaviors" (xiii)

I think the most important element of Ellis's approach is not to globally rate ourselves based on what we have already done, are doing, and will do in the future. The difference between being reasonably discerning and unreasonably harsh or judgmental seems to lie in not tying our identity to anything that we do. I may perform a task poorly, but that doesn't make me a "poor worker" or a "poor person in general". The point of this exercise is that we don't reify any action we engage in as something that we "are". Nothing ever has to boil down to a sense of fixed self. In fact, we know from life experiences that there is hardly anything about the self that is fixed. We are always learning new things and taking in new experiences all of the time, so which of these experiences completely defines or encapsulates who we are?

 What's interesting about this approach is how we can turn it into a mindfulness practice. How often, in the course of doing work, do we think, there is a "me" who is doing this work and taking the credit or blame for it? Most often yes. And then a person might start to think, "because I did this so badly, that must make me a bad worker" or even "a bad person". This process where we imagine there to be a self that is embodying these so-called good and bad qualities is actually a delusion based on the notion of a fixed sense of self. To know that there are only good and bad actions, not "good and bad persons" behind it, is one way of relating to faults without attaching them to a sense of selfhood.

Secondly, we can become more aware of how we often attach to the approval of others. This creates a dynamic of wanting to be approved, or to feel that sense of being "ok" in others eyes, which can lead to a sense of withdrawal or deprivation when we don't get the validation we feel we need for completing a task. Again, I think it comes down to not being attached to the outcome of things, and learning to let go of praise or blame as the main motivations for performing a task.

Ellis, A, How to Stubbornly Refuse to Make Yourself Miserable about Anything, Yes Anything! Citadel Press