Life and Afterlife Coaching: "How to Find Self-Acceptance"
“We can never obtain peace in the outer world until we make peace with ourselves.”
We spoke with supermodel and anti-bullying activist Brittany Mason on tonight’s show. Brittany opened up to us about her own experiences of having been bullied in school and how that inspired her to educate young students through a widespread awareness and prevention programme.
But bullying isn’t just in schools. Have you ever felt like you were being bullied by the person you’re dating? There are many couples who experience power plays in their relationships, where one person manipulates or intimidates another through fear and control. This goes for men, too, for they are some of the victims of abuse. Bullying doesn’t always involve physical confrontation, but sometimes verbal or emotional mistreatment can lead to physical abuse when the perpetrator feels that their victim is comfortable or scared enough not to leave. No one deserves to be bullied, harassed or abused. If you feel you’re being belittled, exploited or oppressed by a partner, even in word alone, there are many options for you to get help. You can seek counseling, call a domestic violence hotline, or call 211 for information on how to seek out programmes that can keep you safe. If the abuse escalates even slightly to physical violence, you do have the option of contacting your local police station. Although that can seem like a scary option, particularly if you live with your partner, you don’t have to call intending to file a report. You can just ask the police about what your options are both now and in the future, and if they have any advice should it happen again.
You deserve to be happy, healthy, loved, and to live a peaceful life. It’s not easy to leave or even take some temporary space from the person we are emotionally involved with, but it’s more important to be safe than to be loved and those who threaten your safety are not truly acting with love anyway. Someone who loves you will be concerned about your safety and wouldn't hope for you to encounter any harm.
“Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. Your really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.”
Ultimately, the best way to attract true love into our lives is by being loving toward ourselves, and that includes looking after our own best interests. Sometimes if we’ve been mistreated severely or for a long period of time, it’s hard to act out of self-love because we’ve been criticised and our self-esteem has subsequently suffered. If that is the case, there are a few things you can do to feel better about yourself. Even if you are not being mistreated yet you would like to feel better about yourself, the exercises below can be useful.
“The worst loneliness is to not be comfortable with yourself.”
First, call on the Universe through prayer to help you find the strength by saying or thinking something like “Universe (or Great Spirit, or whatever you believe in), please help me to accept myself as I am. ” Next, you can act as if you feel confident, pretend you have the strength when you encounter someone who bullies you, and do what you would if you were someone who loved themselves completely. In time, you’ll find that this practise becomes a reality. A third technique is to let go of outcomes in relationships by asking the Universe to take away your expectations of results. If you find yourself worrying about what other people think of you, remind yourself that what other people think of you is none of your business. When you are free from other people's opinions, you have the opportunity to celebrate your unique, authentic self, which is not only fun but also draws people into your life with a similar attitude of self-acceptance, and by extension, acceptance of others.
Stand up for yourself, and you will attract people into your life who believe in you and support you. Treat yourself the way that you would want to be treated by others, and you will find that there are those in life who will want to match the same positive attitude you have toward yourself. Love yourself, accept yourself as you are, show that you care about your safety and comfort, and you will bring safe, comforting people into your life who love, adore and appreciate you as you are. The more self-acceptance you have, the more love you’ll attract into your life, and the more you can accept and ultimately be able to love others. For example, if you were born with a defect like hypospadias, you may want to look into something like hypospadias repair if this is something you want to correct as you get older, which is usually recommended. This does not mean you love yourself any less. You’ll also be an inspiring example to those who still struggle with being in an abusive relationship or who are traumatised and continue to suffer from painful past experiences. Accept who you are, and even if you lead just one person to do the same by example, you’ve made a pretty important impact on the world because that same person could go on to inspire thousands with their own healing and inner strength, all because you cared enough to ask for help and do the work. “You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.” ? Gautama Buddha