Know yourself. Watch for the things that most heavily lift or sink your heart. These are the markers of who you are. Look at your qualities objectively, especially when they are less than appealing, these are just as important as the great things about you are. Don’t work on accepting the person you project to other people.

Be ready to be vulnerable and imperfect. You don’t have to like your imperfections, but you do have to be able to sit with them, acknowledge them and embrace that they are present in you for one reason or another. Dig and find the root of what cultivated them. Work on undoing what needs to be undone; work on being better.

This self-acceptance business is not an excuse to be a terrible person. If being yourself means this, you will deal with the consequences of your actions in due time. Don’t think that because you are “being yourself” you are excused from anything that is derogatory toward or detrimental to someone else.

Know that you are or will be loved for the things you find unlovable. Some things I’ve loved most about people are the things they’ve later said to be most self-conscious of. The ways in which you don’t fit into the mold of a socially-generated-perfect-human are the ways in which you are unique and they are the things about you that the right people will be most enamored by.

Baby steps. Don’t expect anything immediately and be good to yourself for trying. Overhauling your entire life in a day will not end well, go ahead and try if you don’t believe me.

Understand that a large element of this is choice. While I don’t believe you can change who you innately are, I do believe that you can choose to take life from the perspective of your best self. Choose to do that. Choose to keep going even when challenges arise. Choose to forgive yourself for your moments of indiscretion.

Realize you are not the summation of your past. It is part of you, it is your story, and it has helped craft you, but it is not who you innately are. You can always choose differently. You are a beautiful person for admitting that you are only human and you’ve done wrong, but you’re working on it.