Strop searching for external appreciation - you have it all in you
Every single one of us desired it – appreciation. The interesting thing is, that many of us want it from the people around us, rather than trying to look within themselves and exercising a regime of self-appreciation and self-valuation. However, it is much easier to want to find it in our external environment, as to find it within us required us to love ourselves -which is probably one of the hardest things to do.
When we talk about appreciation, we mean the experience of people around us valuing us and telling us we are amazing. The fact of the matter is this barely happens. If we asked ourselves, when has our manager at work last told us we did an amazing job? When has our partner last told us they really appreciate us as people? The clear answer is not very often and by far not as often as we wish. The reason why this is relevant is because each of us, some more than others, has a deep inner desire to fit in, be valued and feel like we are having a positive impact on the people around us. We think that appreciation is key for us to build up self confidence and to be happy in life.
Once we realize that our environment in many cases is far away from given us enough of that appreciation we need, a level of frustration settles in. We don’t feel appreciated in our work, we feel undervalued, and we even start thinking our inner relationships are not worthwhile as our environment takes all our efforts and hard work for granted. The good news is, there is an easy way out – we need to learn to appreciate ourselves from within, rather than searching it from our external environment.
Learning to appreciate ourselves means going into a self-dialogue with our inner ego and telling ourselves when we did something well at work, when we had an achievement. We cannot take it for granted that our external environment will see those achievements or even that they have any relevance to people around us. It does not mean people don’t see them; it just means for different reasons they don’t want to comment on them. This is human and should not be seen as offensive by us.
Learning to appreciate ourselves is hard and should not be exchanged with arrogance. Those are two very different things. The reason why it is so hard, is because as a foundation it requires us to love ourselves. Only when we fully accept and love ourselves, with all our strengths and weaknesses, are we able to be fully in balance with ourselves and less dependent on external sources telling us how great we are. Very often we cannot love ourselves due to a lack of self-confidence or bad past experiences. However, there are ways we can learn it.
It is very important that we learn it by accepting ourselves as we are, as the more we become confident with ourselves, the less dependent we are on external people telling us we are great and external appreciation becomes much less significant to us. We will learn to tell ourselves we are awesome every day, which will make us handle situations better and live a happier and more balanced life overall. We have to appreciate ourselves from within, rather than keep searching for external sources. This will lead us to find true happiness and self-acceptance, as well as allow us to be our true self, without the need for fitting in somewhere juts to be appreciated by others. Learn to love yourself is the fundamental task here.
