Self-Acceptance = True Happiness

“If I knew how good it felt, 
I would have done it a long time ago.

It really felt amazing ... 
It's about self-esteem and dignity at the end of the day.”

Ricky Martin

Pop singer Ricky Martin came out of the closet as a gay man a year or two ago. He chose to stop pretending he was someone he wasn’t. It didn’t make him any less of a man, or any less of a talented human being. It may or may not have affected his personal relationships and his career. But none of that is near as important as how it affected him in his own relationship with himself. And on a personal level he says “It really felt amazing.” He got his own self-respect back and that’s irreplaceable because no amount of success could make him happy if he wasn’t happy with himself.

It makes no difference what we have been hiding from others. Maybe we’ve been keeping a secret about our sexual orientation, or our addictive habits, or a past mistake, or a personal disability. But no matter what it is we are still shamefully hiding, we will never be happy until we face it and own it. We have to face it to take our power back from it. If we don’t we will wander through life living a lie and being miserable.

Sexual orientation, like gender and ethnicity, is inherent. People are born with their sexual orientation, gender or ethniciy already in place. No one can change it. If we are ashamed of something inherent about ourselves, of something that we cannot change, and if we stay locked in that shame, we will never be healthy happy people. So we need to face and embrace with love the inherent things we cannot change about ourselves. We may have been told we are bad or should be ashamed about something we cannot change. If so, we need to release the shame and replace it with pride. We are who we are. We are exactly as God created us and so how can that be bad or shameful? It cannot be.

If we are shamefully hiding a past mistake or something that happened to us as a child, then we need to work at that from a different perspective. We can’t erase the fact that we may have done something harmful or shameful to ourselves or others, but we can take responsibility for that behavior and make amends. After we have made amends, we no longer have anything to feel guilty or shameful about. And so we need to face the fact that we’ve done the best we could do to rectify the situation and we need to let go of it. In doing so, we will get our lives and our dignity back.

The same is true if we were once the victim of someone else’s bad behavior as a child. If we were abused as children in any way, and made to feel that we were the guilty ones, we need to accept that we were NOT the perpetrators or the guilty ones. Next we need to work on forgiving those who abused us so that we can take our personal power back from them. Once we acknowledge that “yes,” we were abused but “no” we are not damaged goods, we will be on the right path. Nothing that happened in the past has the power to eliminate our dignity as worthy human beings unless we continue to feel ashamed and we choose to give our dignity away.

Living a life filled with self-respect, self-esteem and dignity is impossible as long as we are steeped in shame. This is especially true if we feel like we must live a lie to be acceptable to others. Like Ricky Martin, we need to realize all of life’s magic is totally diminished when we can’t be true to ourselves and truthful with others. We live in fear as long as we live trapped in a lie.

I don’t care who knows that I grew-up in an alcoholic household. I decided years ago that shame was the enemy and that I wasn’t going to feel any shame about being a recovering codependent; a person who is working hard to help himself. What shame is there in owning who I am or the fact that I am helping myself have a better life? NONE.

If people choose not to like me, or if old friends decide they don’t want to be friends anymore, well that’s OK with me. I don’t need anyone in my life who can’t accept me just the way I am. And I have no doubt that I will always meet plenty of people who will accept me—the real me—just as I am.

Of course the first person who has to accept the real me is me. And this is true for all of us. Self-acceptance is the key to self-love, self-respect and ultimate happiness. And what’s better than having your own approval and having your own dignity intact at the end of the day? Nothing! Absolutely nothing is better!