Accept things which we can't change

There's nothing can do about your long arms or your elbow knees. You can't fix your big ears or your even bigger feet, but you can change how you feel about them. There’s nothing you can do about what's happening to you here and now or your living situation but you can change how you respond to it. Believing in it would be easy as long as you believe in the beauty of your fate but change the journey, believe in a genuine life situation but change the outlook, believe in a unique past mistake but change the next ones, believe in challenging people who hurts you but change who you surround yourself with, believe in imperfection that you can’t change but change the idea of things that you can’t accept and work on what you can change.

To accept the fact that you can’t change is like you accepting the fact you can’t do anything in your life. You are on the track of changing and you are growing, that’s why you feel so anxious every time you enter the place or look at things you can’t change yet. Let go of things you can’t change, focus on things you can change.” To change is to accept but you have to be aware of what things you should accept. Accept the idea that you are in control of your progress, your plan and your life until you hit the goals you wanted to achieve (ex. moving out from your current place).

Accept the idea that to control your life, you have to learn to understand the situation you are in and start doing something you can change from today (ex. tidy up your room or change your art wall print/photos). The idea of self-acceptance will keep growing by changing the meaning of your life perspective into positive outlook and be grateful! Why hate when you can love. No matter what, the sooner you start accepting the things you cannot change, the happier you will be. The more you focus on the things you can change, the greater person you will become.

From now on to the next six months, I hope you want to start a one-line-a-day/week gratitude journal about your room. You don’t need a journal, you can even write it on your wall calendar or sticky notes on your fridge about what you love from your place and it might help recognizing what you want to change from it. You also can try to make your home a gallery of positive memories and I want you always remember if you can't get out of it, get into it.

Recognize your living situation is merely temporary, and step into your home everyday knowing that you actually are doing your best to get out of your current situation. If it’s not within your control, let it be. What you can control is how you react to the given situation. You hold the power to determine how you feel about everything. What can you do about your situation today? How can you make yourself feel better? If you were at your new place, what would you be doing? 6 months will pass by in a blink of an eye, even faster when you’re trying to live your life to the fullest.

For years, years and more years, I struggled with almost nonexistent self-confidence, skyrocketing levels of self-doubt, insecurity, and a catastrophic level of self-consciousness.At a time, I was even afraid to leave my own home because of the various sights, sounds, people, or situations that were sure to trigger my deep-rooted insecurities and make me feel horrible. I thought, at that time, that the best ‘solution’ to my problems was to avoid them altogether, or more precisely, pretending that they didn’t exist.

I skipped outings, family gatherings, and pretty much each and every social event possible. By continually doing this, i.e.: escaping from all my fears, I unknowingly locked myself into a closed vicious cycle. Because, according to psychology, humans are creatures of habit, and to put it simply, our nervous system is pretty good at habituating or constantly adapting to its surroundings, which is the total opposite of what I used to do.

By constantly escaping and avoiding all my fears altogether, I was indirectly preventing myself from even the tiniest chance that I could overcome my fears. In other words, I was repeatedly rewiring my brain and nervous system to always escape my fears, which in turn, made them sound far more horrifying and intimidating than I used to believe they were. In a very thought-provoking article published in Psychology Today, the author touches on a critical concept many of us are not aware of, the concept of "Negative reinforcement".

In the article, Professor Edward explains how every time you avoid your fears, you’re essentially “Negatively reinforcing” your avoidant behavior. In Layman terms, Reinforcement is a psychological concept that refers to training your brain on a certain pattern of thought or action.; and here, the word ‘negative’ refers to the elimination of the source of anxiety. For example: If you feel very anxious by just thinking about going to the gym, every time you actually do avoid going there you’re ‘negatively reinforcing’ this behavior, which means that you’re rewarding your brain for eliminating that source of anxiety or tension (The Gym in that case).

The problem with this approach is that over time, a serious of negative reinforcements will only be detrimental to your mental health and it will, paradoxically, increase and feed your fears, which in turn makes you continue avoiding those fears, and then you’ll be again negatively reinforcing those behaviors, and so on. So, what does all of that have to do with self-acceptance? There is a slightly amusing anecdote here; when I was a teenager, I used to believe that wherever I go, everyone will immediately stare at this freak of a human being (that’s what my anxiety used to tell me), and as a result of that belief, I would avoid most of the social events or situations.

Later on, I discovered that ironically, people did stare at me, but you know why? Because I was so insecure and self-conscious, I would automatically start looking at everyone in the face whenever I enter any public place, and naturally, what happens when you look a stranger in the eyes? He looks back at you! I’m telling you this story as an example of how your mind can play brilliantly dirty tricks on you, making you believe in completely unrealistic beliefs or scenarios. My self-consciousness continued for a good while until I started learning about just one truth that could change your life for good.

"Nobody gives a damn (or at least most of them don't!)" This was an absurdly simple fact that many people somehow often forget. We tend to be too caught up in our own brains and the beliefs they feed us on a daily basis, thus forgetting this very simple concept: We’re living in an enormous world, the odds of someone looking at you only to think “My God this man/woman is horrifying” is close to nonexistent. I once read an amusing story about a man who dressed in a clown outfit and went on to dance on the streets. At first, and instinctively, people did actually stare at the man, after all, how often do we see a dancing clown on the streets?

But guess what happened after a few minutes? The clown kept dancing and people began minding their own business and going about their normal lives. This tells you a lot, nobody truly cares about anyone else, at least not to the extent you think they do, and even if they do, it’s nowhere near what your brain would like you to believe. This brutally honest fact about human nature was one of the key factors in helping me begin my path to self-acceptance. "If you’re depressed, you’re living in the past. If you’re anxious, you’re living in the future, and if you’re at peace, you’re living in the present…" Lao Tzu

For long, I hated myself; my appearance, my hair, my physique and pretty much everything related to me. The core reason behind that raging self-hatred was a past of traumatic experiences, including bullying. Once I identified these core past roots of my then self-hatred, I was able to think clearly on how to get rid of that debilitating emotion. So, if you refuse to fully and completely accept yourself, you’ll forever be locked in a never-ending loop of negative reinforcement and fears which will eventually rob you of all opportunities, achievements, and pleasures of life because you’ll be living in denial, fear, insecurities, self-hatred, and self-consciousness. Cheers!