People About To Enter Their Best Era Yet Usually Notice These 5 Small Shifts First
Nayla Bernardes | Pexels Self-esteem is the hardest thing to work on. Even when you spend years building it up, all it can take is a moment of self-doubt, one instance of bad luck, for it all to come crashing down. That's what happened to me. Everyone has their own struggles in life. Something that can shake the very foundation of who they are and who they believe themselves to be. For me, the moment came when I failed out of college. Twice.
It shook me to my core. I never had a great sense of self-esteem. And now, adding a failure not once but twice, I couldn't see myself as anything more than a failure. I know that's irrational because I'm definitely NOT the only one who has failed out of college. But then again, when are emotions ever really rational?
I felt the disappointment in myself, in my failure, leak into everything I had worked hard to build. My self-confidence was gone. I couldn't see myself as anything but a failure. And even when I managed to accept that I was going to have to do college differently, I was ashamed of it and of what it said about me. Then I tried the Radical Acceptance challenge.
Yourtango CEO Andrea Miller lays out the concept of "radical acceptance" in her book Radical Acceptance: The Secret to Happy, Lasting Love. And it's pretty much what it sounds like — radically changing the way you think about yourself, love, and those you love to enter your best era yet.
People who are about to enter their best years usually notice these 5 shifts first:
1. They start choosing love over fear
I spent my first week just loving myself. I didn't think about my flaws or my strengths. All I did was work on accepting that I am who I am — I can't change that — so I need to embrace it. Of course, there will be some things I will want to change in my life, and that's OK. But as a whole, I am me, and I need to make myself the best me I can be and, more importantly, stay true to myself.
A huge analysis looking at 79 studies with over 16,000 people found that self-compassion has a really strong link to feeling good about life. Even more amazing, another 20-year study showed people who accepted themselves lived three years longer and cut their risk of dying early by 19%.
2. They find themselves pausing to reflect more often
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The first thing I did after accepting that I had to be honest with myself was actually being honest with myself. That meant sitting down and writing a list of all the good things about myself. I put aside any weird feelings I had about being vain and complimenting myself, and thought about what made me who I am.
Was I loyal? Caring? Kind? Intelligent? Creative? Well, you get the idea. This wasn't a list I just sat and did in one sitting. Every day I started with three things I loved about myself and, by the end of the week, I had 21 positive things! 21 parts of me that I could now go back and prove to myself that I was a pretty awesome person. YAY!
3. They notice they're creating spaces where they can be authentic
Now that I knew who I was, at least the things I stood for, I promised myself not to compromise on at least those 21 things. What that meant practically was being honest with how things made me feel. If something bothered me, I wouldn't keep it buried inside.
I also started to keep a diary, something I hadn't done regularly since high school. Every day, I would talk about some "big" moment that happened recently and get out all of the feelings I had been keeping inside.
People who bottle up their emotions feel way less authentic than folks who let themselves express what they're really feeling. Studies on journaling found that writing about your deepest thoughts and feelings actually reduces mental health symptoms and helps you work through stuff you've been holding inside.
A fight I'd had with my sister, or how I really felt about this guy I knew, or how work was going. It didn't matter what the topic was, as long as I was honest about how I felt. It wasn't easy, but at the end of the week, thanks to the diary I had started, I was feeling better about myself. I felt more confident. I felt heard.
4. They begin accepting all parts of themselves, not just the good ones
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I won't lie, this was the hardest week. As someone with little self-esteem before this started, sitting down and writing a list of my faults wasn't hard to do. What was hard was accepting them as positives, as pieces that were part of the whole of Estee and loving them.
Yes, I am a shy and loud person all at once. And yes, I can be a complete child at times. And why, thank you, I do know that I can be quite stubborn in my beliefs. Every day I would take one of the 7 faults — I limited myself to 7 — and I would work on telling myself how it's OK that it's a part of me.
Now, I'm sure I'll want to work on changing them at some point, and I may even succeed with some of them. But now I wear it like armor, to quote Tyrion Lannister, so it cannot be used to hurt me. Because it is a part of who I am, and I've started to grow rather fond of who that is.
5. They finally put themselves first
Very often, I do everything I can to help everyone I can— friends, family, neighbors. And very often that meant I was left with stress and frustration and no identity. So the first thing I did was treat myself to my first-ever massage, something that both helped ease my stress and allowed me to have a moment that was just about me.
Researchers wanted to know if self-care makes you healthier or if being healthy makes you do more self-care, and turns out self-care wins by a lot. Taking care of yourself decreases stress, helps you cope better, and improves your mental health way more than just trying to tough things out without actually treating yourself well.
And you know what? It felt good (no, not just because the massage felt heavenly). But it felt good to have an hour where it was just me and peaceful music. Now, I'm not saying you should go get a massage every week. I'm not doing that either!
But what I realized is that I spent so much time helping and doing that, I never really had time to be with myself or appreciate myself. And since I'd never been with just me, I hadn't had a moment to realize, hey, I kind of like who you are! It's something we all need reminding of every now and again. None of it was easy. Drastically changing how you see someone is hard, but totally worth it. Because now, I feel freer. I feel a sense of calm that I didn't even know I was lacking. And after spending some time implementing radical acceptance into my life, the world seems just a little bit more hopeful. It's time to make yours brighter, too.
Estee Kahn is a writer, amateur photographer, and former YourTango contributor who writes all about dating, relationships, friendships, lifestyle, and family.
