Human Hour: The Subtle Art of Self-Acceptance
Self-rejection is subtler than we think, so self-acceptance is subtler than we can imagine, too.
How do we dismiss ourselves in daily life?
The topics nominated for the March Human Hour community call included boundaries with family, getting rest, how to leave relationships in a healthy way, and telling others about our growth without sounding “like a preachy zealot.” However, the question paid subscribers most want to answer this month is: How do we dismiss ourselves in daily life?
It's the wonderful wording of the question that makes it such a powerful prompt—the subtlety of the word “dismiss” and the constancy connoted by the phrase “daily life.” These words suggest we are continuously rejecting ourselves in nearly unnoticeable ways and it begs the question:
What would happen if we saw our self-rejection for what it is, owned the process of transforming it, and simplified the experience of self-acceptance?
As always, I’ll begin our Human Hour call with a brief teaching, before we open it up to discussion and workshopping your specific situations. I’m guessing I’ll start by exploring another essential truth embedded in the question:
If we are dismissing ourselves, that means there is a part we are dismissing and a part doing the dismissing.
When it comes to personal growth, our greatest gains tend to happen when we realize none of us are whole people, but rather we’re made up of parts. This is not a condition exclusive to exceptionally wounded people; it is the ordinary state of every human being. Indeed, “parts work” is the term for a loose conglomeration of therapeutic approaches that strive for health and healing through an active coordination of our different inner parts. Internal Family Systems (IFS) is the most well-known of these therapies.
Our deepest wellness isn’t determined by achieving wholeness, it’s determined by awareness of our “part-ness.”
For instance, just the other day, I was entering the last hour of a four-hour writing session, and I had an hour until my monthly spiritual direction appointment. At the periphery of my awareness, I heard a still, small voice say, “I don’t want to write anymore. I want to eat lunch. Slowly. So I can taste it. So I can get centered before the appointment.” I dismissed it. I pushed on, the ambitious writer trying to squeeze as much productivity from the time as possible, even though the writing was starting to feel forced and clunky. Ten minutes later: “Seriously, I don’t want to be doing this anymore. Let’s stop for today.” I dismissed it again. The writing became even more arduous, and I went on dismissing that voice for another thirty minutes, until I was forced to wolf down a sandwich and spend the first half of my appointment getting my internal bearings.
What part of me was dismissing what part of me?
Answering that question is sort of important when you ask it about a silly little writing session, but it is of ultimate importance when we’re dismissing our intuition about our most important relationships, say, or what direction we want to go in a career or with our craft. It’s of great importance when you start to realize that you have a part of you in need of nurturance, and a part of you that is able to nurture—a part of you in need of protection, and a part designed to do the protecting—a part of you that needs some wisdom and a part of you that is wise.
So, when we say we reject ourselves, it reveals this: we have a part we are rejecting and a part doing the rejecting—and humaning is not about eliminating either of those parts but getting to know both of them, and loving them equally.
I know we’re all going to walk away from this month’s call better equipped to welcome every part of ourselves and to live in the power that comes with that awareness.
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