Self-Acceptance >>> Emotional Intelligence

“Let go of what you think life should be so you can experience the life you have.”

~Rhonda Britten.

The world has been abuzz with Emotional Intelligence and Positive Psychology for decades now, and still yet millions miss out on the fundamental step-change anyone could make toward it. It’s so simple we stumble over it, blind in the dark.

If we know anything about these ‘new creations’ of mental, emotional and spiritual maturity we know that they provide for the purveyor, power, freedom, peace, relational harmony and depth of life experience.

And at the very centre of these concepts of maturity is the issue of self-acceptance.

Where we’ve come from, who our families are, what we’ve achieved and what we haven’t, self-forgiveness in those shameful and guilty things we’ve done... these, and much more, are part of the journey inherent to self-acceptance.

It’s actually the journey to God, for God is within us as much as he is everywhere. (His being everywhere necessitates his being within us.)

Self-acceptance is the foundation stone of not only maturity and Emotional Intelligence, but also wisdom, faith and truth—as they’re personally known—as we’re connected to them. It is the critical journey we need to make whilst we’re here on this earth in these bodies of ours. This cannot be overstated.

What is this “self-acceptance?”

It’s the Rhonda Britten quote above, and a whole lot more. Here’s another quote that makes sense at this juncture:

“Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events.”

~Ralph Waldo Emerson.

We’re found here in this place we’re in for a reason of divine providence i.e. we’re here for a purpose; most of the time this is beyond us—the entirety of the purpose. Because of this we struggle so much to accept many of the basic things—like ourselves, for instance.

But, life (i.e. the best of it) at its most basic requires self-acceptance at a most basic level.

Practiced self-acceptance is the instinctual rejection of self-condemnation. No one or nothing can any longer bring us to a position of harm—least of all ourselves—when we’ve reached this place. We can get there, certainly for moments, and longer. Then we practice it until it’s a regular reality.

And then freedom at last is truly being realised.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.