ACCEPT THYSELF!

By Tal Ben Shahar

“I am a human being: nothing human is foreign to me.”
-Terentius

It was when I welcomed unhappiness, that I became happier. My most significant psychological breakthrough came when I realised, truly internalised the notion, that it was OK for me to be sad, that there was nothing wrong with feeling dispirited, stressed, lonely, or anxious—that it was just fine to be human. Allowing myself to freely experience negative emotions did not only weaken these sentiments, it also intensified the positive ones.

Acceptance

Acceptance is a prerequisite for a healthy emotional life. When we accept ourselves, when we welcome everything that is human about us, we open up a space within which we can act, and feel. If we repress an emotional reaction and refuse to accept it - whether anger or disappointment or joy - we create a knot in the channels that make up our emotional system.

The same system is used for the flow of all emotions - positive and negative - and if we block the flow of one emotion it affects our ability to experience other emotions. For example, if I do not accept my agitation after having made a mistake I will hinder my ability to experience joy when something good happens to me.

Negative emotions...

At the onset of negative emotions we have a choice - to stifle and reject or to accept and experience. What we choose to do at that moment affects our emotional life in general because the emotional system as a whole is affected. Closing off the emotional valve to the flow of negative emotions inevitably restricts future flow of positive emotions. We cannot eat the cake (deny the free flow of negative emotions) and leave it whole (enjoy the free flow of positive emotions). Pain and joy are two sides of the same coin and there is a symmetry between our capacity to experience one and the other. In the words of psychologist Abraham Maslow: “By protecting himself against the hell within himself, he also cuts himself off from the heaven within.”

We can’t have it both ways - stifling negative emotions while expecting a free flow of positive ones. We have to choose whether or not to allow ourselves to fully experience our humanity - its sorrows, at times, but also its joys.

To accept is to forgive

To accept ourselves is not necessarily to like what we did or to approve of it, but rather to forgive ourselves. To forgive, in Sanskrit, is to untie - when we forgive we untie an emotional knot and unclog the emotional system. And it is when we allow our emotions to flow freely - when we experience the lows and the highs, the pain and the pleasure, the sorrows and joys - that we are, as we can and ought to be, fully human.

HAPPIER – Finding Pleasure, Meaning and Life’s Ultimate Currency (McGraw-Hill, £12.99) by Tal Ben-Shahar, Ph.D