Acceptance

This is week 5 in the 6 week series about our 5 Emotional Needs. The goal for the series is to look at each of these needs and find out what it looks like to fulfill them with an Empowering perspective and what it looks like when we fulfill them with a Limiting Belief perspective.

This week the focus is on the need of acceptance.

There is a difference between trying to fit in and being accepted.

Brene Brown does a great job of explaining how trying to fit in sounds like – you like to dance like that, I like to dance like that – you like that style, I like that style – you like to listen to that music, I like to listen to that music.

That’s not being you.

That is just trying to fit in.

Being accepted means you have to be willing to be vulnerable. You have to put yourself out there authentically with your own likes and dislikes, your own beliefs and opinions, knowing that people are either going to accept you or they aren’t.

In order to be authentic, we need to know and accept our own strengths and weaknesses. We are not perfect and that’s ok. God tells us that in our weakness, He is strong.

But when we get in our head and start thinking about our weaknesses and differences as obstacles, then we convince ourselves that we are not acceptable and something must be wrong with us.

Our feelings, our opinions and our ideas are not valuable.

If we aren’t able to accept ourselves for who God has made us to be, then we are not able accept others for who they were made to be.

Accepting ourselves with love and grace allows us to accept others the in same way.

<>< KC