Improving social anxiety begin with acceptance

1. Improving Social Anxiety: Begin With
Acceptance
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Jon Mercer - About the Author: Improving social anxiety doesn't have to be difficult.
Discover the breakthrough social anxiety self help program everyone is talking about.
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2. Improving Social Anxiety: Begin With
Acceptance - Jon Mercer
There are many ways of improving social anxiety, but as a personal development coach and a
former social anxiety sufferer, I have learned that one of the easiest and most productive ways
to increase feelings of well-being in social situations is to practice the art of self-acceptance.
A very common scenario that I hear from coaching clients is this: they desperately want to feel
better about themselves in social situations, but the fact that they DON'T feel good in social
situations right now causes them to judge themselves very harshly.
This produces a "catch 22" situation, because by not feeling good about yourself right now --
just as you are -- you unknowingly make it much more difficult to feel good about yourself
when you're with other people. By withholding self acceptance, it is easy to fall into a vicious
circle of nervousness and self criticism, which can make social interaction even more difficult.
But the way to stop this "Loop" once and for all is to decide today -- right now -- to accept,
love and appreciate yourself exactly as you are. This means that if you should feel
uncomfortable in a social situation, you must understand that it is okay, and refuse to judge
yourself harshly because of it.
When I explain this "acceptance first" strategy to clients dealing with social anxiety, some of
them will ask, "but if I simply accept my social anxiety, won't that just make it worse?" The
simple answer is "no." The thing that makes social anxiety problems worse is non-acceptance.
In my experience, people do not get over problems like these by being disgusted with
themselves because they have the problem to begin with.
Improving social anxiety requires self acceptance. Too often we look at these problems
backwards. For example, a client once told me, "Fine, I'll start accepting myself as soon as I
don't have social anxiety." The problem with this thinking is, without accepting yourself
FIRST, you will never get to the point where you are comfortable in social situations.
So to begin improving social anxiety you have to do something which I call, "putting the cart
ahead of the horse." This means you must decide to accept yourself, your strengths, your
weaknesses -- everything about you, and practice self acceptance on a daily basis.
Don't make the mistake of thinking you'll feel better about yourself once the social anxiety
goes away. That's backwards thinking. Feel better about yourself now, and you will see an
almost immediate improvement in your social anxiety.
Now here's the tricky part for some people: they may have built up very strong habits of
judging themselves unfairly, and withholding self acceptance. I won't kid you: if you have been
thinking this way for many years, you will have certainly built up very strong habits around
these self-destructive thoughts, and they are unlikely to simply go away overnight.
But here's the good news; you can begin accepting yourself today. Maybe not 100%, but a lot
more than you have in the past. Making an effort is important -- every little bit counts! So if
you try to begin accepting yourself as you are right now and find it difficult, don't give up.
Practice going through the motions of self-acceptance if you have to -- even if you don't really
"feel" that way deep down.
AmAre Way: living joyfully - www.AmAreWay.org

3. If you do this on a daily basis it will certainly have an effect on your self-esteem, and improve
your social anxiety. Consistency is the key. I recommend that clients take a little "timeout"
twice daily to practice self acceptance. And remember, it's easy to accept our strengths and
successes; the real test of acceptance is whether or not we accept our weaknesses and failures.
Improving social anxiety begins with accepting every aspect of our self, including those areas
where we still need a lot of work.
Keywords
Improving social anxiety requires us to practice self-acceptance. By gradually learning to
accept both our strengths and weaknesses, we naturally become more comfortable in social
situations.
Appendix: What is AmAre?
In Italian, AmAre means "to love"; in English, interconnectedness: (I)Am (we) Are. AmAre
stands for being:
* A – Aware and Accepting
* M – Meaningful and Motivated
* A – Active and Attentive
* R – Resilient and Respectful
* E – Eating properly and Exercising
Being Aware: aware of context, aware of feelings, intentions. Aware of how we see things, our
strengths, values and biases. Aware that, happiness and meaning are not only an end result
which shines from far in the future; it is also within us, here and now, and it is about the way
we live. Happiness is the way. Through our awareness and actions, we gain the courage to
change the things we can change, the serenity to accept the things we can't change. And the
wisdom to know the difference.
Being Accepting: of things we cannot change, which are inevitable. Of how other people are,
and especially how we perceive them.
Being Meaningful, by doing what matters, when it matters.
AmAre Way: living joyfully - www.AmAreWay.org

4. Being Motivated means we cultivate our motivation on a daily basis. Some motivations may
be common to all, like to live peacefully and be kind to others. Some are more peculiar. When
we pursue a specific goal in our daily life, being motivated means to know what we want to do,
by leveraging our strengths and grow the energies necessary to move into Being Active.
Being Active is important, because actions bring tangible results. We also need to be
Attentive, so we can be receptive of the feedback and reactions to what we do in any given
context, and adapt. Being active and being attentive are a self-reinforcing loop which brings
happiness and other positive results to us and to the people, beings and environment we listen
to.
We also need to be Resilient. Life is not always a big smiling adventure, sometimes external
situations can be tough, so it is important for us to bounce back on our feet. Sometimes, there
are factors which do not facilitate our peaceful living, so we need to be persistent.
Being Respectful is important, because resilience is about persistence and not growing a hard-
skin. Respectful of us, other people (who are, too, trying to be happy, and likely also trying to
live peacefully, sometimes in ways which look different from ours), beings and environment.
Eating properly, in terms of quality, quantity and company, is important. For us, and for the
impact it has on the environment.
Exercising is also important, both for our body and mind.
Please visit http://www.amareway.org/ for more step-by-step information and tools to put this
formula to work for your goals.
AmAre Way: living joyfully - www.AmAreWay.org