The Happiness Equation: Want Nothing + Do Anything = Have Everything

8

3 simple steps to self-acceptance

How do we get to that dream place?

How do we accept ourselves and think highly of others at the same time?

How can we separate those two opinions in our mind so we can allow both?

There are three steps to achieving a high opinion of yourself. It is a torturous path! But we go through this journey with every part of ourselves that we eventually learn to accept.

The three steps are:

Hide

Apologize

Accept

And here’s what it looks like.

Hide

For years after I graduated from Harvard I answered the question the same way most of my classmates did.

THEM: So where did you go to school, anyway?

ME: Boston.

THEM: Cool.

Eventually, I started realizing that masking is a form of self-judgment. I wasn’t confident about having attended Harvard. I was afraid to mention Harvard because I was afraid of people’s perceptions. Elite, nerdy, trust-fund kids with silver spoons, shady bankers corrupting society—whatever they were going to think, I was going to avoid. Rather than identify with this part of my identity, I hid it. I didn’t mention it in my biography, in my blog or any of my books, in any radio lead-ins, any newspaper interviews. I didn’t list my degree in my email signature at work like my coworkers.

I called this humility.

But it was fear.

After a couple years, I figured this out and decided that from then on I would tell anybody exactly where I went to school if they asked. Of course, I did this in a tentative way. An awkward way. Like dipping my toe in freezing cold water off the dock. Not really sure. How did I do it?

Apologize

THEM: So where did you go to school, anyway?

ME: (grimacing) Uh . . . Harvard?

THEM: Oh, uh, okay, haha . . . yeah, I heard of the place! Haha, uh . . .

By acting awkward, I made things awkward for others. By apologizing for myself, I forced others to apologize, too.

Eventually, I started realizing that apologizing was a form of self-judgment, too. Great, another one!

Apologizing was communicating a part of myself, then immediately sounding a bright red Family Feud triple-X buzzer through it.

“We surveyed a hundred people and the top five answers are on the board. Name a school you attended.”

“Uh . . . Harvard?”

NNNNNNN!

Apologizing avoids ownership.

Apologizing creates distance.

Apologizing suggests a mistake.

Apologizing is what you do when your dog craps on the neighbor’s lawn and then you look up and notice your neighbor watching from the window. (Sorry!)

Well, eventually I realized this, and after a couple years of apologizing I finally moved on to the third and final step.

Accept

THEM: So where did you go to school, anyway?

ME: Harvard.

THEM: Cool.

Gone went the tendency to hide the truth from others . . . which reflected my desire to hide it from myself.

Gone went the tentativeness and questioning . . . which reflected my tentativeness and questioning part of myself.

Replacing both came a clear and simple truth. Replacing both came a solid, grounded fact. By being clear and simple, without pretension, without assumptions, I consciously remove myself from any possible judgment that comes from any given statement.

This allows whatever judgment that comes to be wholly owned by the other person.

Physicist Richard Feynman said, “You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It’s their mistake, not my failing.”

Accepting yourself communicates confidence.

Accepting yourself insulates you from the washing machine of emotions that comes from other people’s views swaying your own. Swishing your thoughts. Bending your beliefs. Until they’re muddy in even your own head.

What do you do with their views? How do you stop judging yourself?

Laugh at it.

A big laugh helps you look deep, notice your self-judgments, and push through the steps to accepting part of yourself.

H—Hide

A—Apologize

A—Accept

We’re all full of self-judgments.

We’re fat, lazy, don’t exercise enough, aren’t worthy of a raise, aren’t worthy of her love, wouldn’t find another job if we were fired, wouldn’t find a new boyfriend if we were dumped. Sometimes we forget that we are all trying, trying, trying. We are all trying. We are all trying. We are all getting better.

You are what you are what you are.

Find what’s hidden, stop apologizing, and accept yourself.