Nathaniel Branden Acceptance Quotations

The first step toward change is awareness. The second step is acceptance.

Self-acceptance is my refusal to be in an adversarial relationship to myself.

The more you surrender to the fear of someone's disapproval, the more you lose face in your own eyes, and the more desperate you become for someone's approval. Within you is a void that should have been filled by self-esteem. When you attempt to fill it with the approval of others instead, the void grows deeper and the hunger for acceptance and approval grows stronger. The only solution is to summon the courage to honor your own judgment, frightening though that may be in the beginning.

When people are not accepting toward themselves they are often obsessed with acceptance by others.

Suppose you feel you cannot accept some fact about yourself. Then own your refusal to accept. Own the block. Embrace it fully. And watch it begin to disappear. The principal is this: Begin where you are-accept that. Then change and growth become possible.

Where we see self esteem, we see self acceptance. High self esteem individual tend to avoid falling into an adversarial relationship with themselves.

Accepting does not necessarily mean liking, enjoying, condoning. I can accept what is-and be determined to evolve from there. It is not acceptance but denial that leaves me stuck.