Love Yourself As You Are

Once upon a time, there was a rich and famous kingdom that many foreigners came to every day. One fine day, two crooks showed up posing as tailors who knew how to weave the most wonderful fabrics in the world. They said that the clothes they sold had the virtue of being invisible to fools. When the news reached the emperor, he immediately thought:

“They must be magnificent dresses!” If he did, he could find out which kingdom officials are unfit for the position they hold – and he ordered one of those expensive suits to the visitors.

On the day of the delivery of the dress, the charlatans appeared at court with nothing in their hands. Yet they said with conviction:

“These are the pants.” And there is the jacket … The garments are light as a cobweb; one would believe not to wear anything, but precisely that is the good thing about the fabric.

-Yes! -All the courtiers attended almost in unison, even though they saw nothing, as there was nothing.

No one allowed others to realize that he was not seeing anything so as not to be considered incapable or stupid.

No monarch costume had been as successful or praised as this one.

The king, also to hide his inability to see the garments, put on the supposed suit and went out to the royal balcony with him. The people gathered there, warned of the magical properties of those fabrics, also began to praise them, until a child shouted:

“But he’s not wearing anything!”

“It is true, listen to the voice of innocence!” –Said her father.

“The king is naked!” –The entire town shouted, discovering the scam and the vanity of the king and all his court.

Love yourself as you are, with your own personality

Surely, one of the reasons that this story – The Emperor’s New Clothes , by Hans Christian Andersen – has so deeply penetrated the popular imagination is that it describes a very common phenomenon among the human race, the denial of parts of our personality.

In the story, the crooks take advantage of the fact that no one wants to admit that they may possess a negative quality such as stupidity or ignorance.

In reality, not accepting what we consider weaknesses leaves us even weaker, at the mercy of the constant approval of others.

All people have a set of opposing qualities – which we call polarities – that interact with each other. I am happy and sometimes sad, I am clever and I am clumsy, I am brave and I am also afraid. But, frequently, of each of those polarities that make up our authentic personality, we reject some parts, precisely those that we dislike the most.

Cognitive biases to feel comfortable

We accept more easily those that produce us well-being; and those that cause us pain, we reject. And so we tend to think of ourselves that we are intelligent and not stupid, that we are pleasant and not surly, that we are strong and not weak.

But the only certainty is that the healthy person is one who recognizes that they have thousands of polarities that interact with each other.

The healthy person accepts even those qualities of his that others disapprove and society does not accept. Therefore, it is not pending the approval of others, since it already knows that it has accepted aspects and aspects that do not give a good image. This person is able to say to himself: “In some situations I am funny, but in others I am unfriendly, like when someone pushes me because they want to sneak into the supermarket.”

It is difficult for us to recognize ourselves as heavy, intransigent, jealous, insensitive … and we look for others to confirm that we do not have those qualities. However, it is an impossible undertaking because, deep down, we know that we are like that – even if only in part – and by denying reality we will never be able to transform it.

This is how, somewhat unconsciously, we stop approving ourselves and, by doing so, we let our self-esteem depend only on the approval of others.

The work to move from the support of others to internal support is to become aware of the polarities that we do not like, even if we do not come to fully accept them. The more we will depend on the approval of others the more dark areas we hide within ourselves, that is, to the extent that we do not accept our own negative polarities.

The healthy person accepts even those qualities of his that others disapprove and society does not accept

Denying our polarity makes us vulnerable

When we deny our polarities we become rigid people, we lose the fluidity and breadth of the concept we have of ourselves and, therefore, we become very vulnerable to the attacks of others. So, we are too aware of the other and what they will say, and it is very difficult for us to maintain our own values ​​and vision of the world.

But is there a way to reverse this trend and support ourselves? The answer is to unify the two faces of our self-concept. One, which we could call light, formed by the polarities that we accept and the other, which we could call dark, formed by the qualities that we do not accept.

It is as if there are two people within us. One tells us: “How is it possible that you left the party so soon? You are going to look bad with friends; they will think you are boring ”. And the other, who wanted to leave, feels bad about the criticism of the first.

Learn to feel our internal contradictions

In order to broaden the awareness of what we really are, it is important to be able to differentiate both parties and that they can see each other, shed light on the conflict between the two and understand that both can coexist and dialogue with each other.

When we see that there is nothing wrong with being “weak” or “flawed” – or whatever we consider about our rejected polarity – we will understand that it is not other people who were threatening not to accept us, but ourselves.

And then, we will love each other more and open our lives to a harmonious and respectful change with the totality of our being.