Change and Acceptance

I mentioned acceptance a while back at the end of my blog What It Means to Change, and I hope I’ll do a good job here explaining how those two—acceptance and change—can co-exist, and how they’ve both helped me grow.

The themes I’m touching on are complex, because multiple truths can exist at the same time.

You can accept who you are right now and still want to change the parts you don’t like.
Or—you can fully accept yourself, and still feel a pull to grow into who you're meant to be.

Do you see the difference?

No? Yes?

Take a minute. Whatever answer you lean toward… just sit with it for a moment.

And just to clarify what I meant earlier—I’m not talking about physical change here. I’m talking about inner change. Don’t get me wrong—physical change can absolutely influence the inner, sometimes by a huge margin. And inner change can reshape the outer. Well… I guess that brings it full circle, doesn’t it?
But anyway—back to the point: this is about the inner stuff.

The inner is your starting point.

You want to lose weight? Be in better shape?
It often begins with reflection—a moment where you realize something needs to shift. So you commit to physical change. But if you keep at it and don’t give up, something else starts to build beneath the surface: discipline. That’s inner change.

That’s the loop—how inner and outer change feed into each other.

Let me try to make more sense of it.

Sometimes in life, even after all the thinking and reflecting (and beyond physical change), we realize we’re not happy with who we are inside.

Maybe we’re too intense. Maybe we’ve lost friends because of it. And we want to be more likeable. That’s okay. That’s valid.

Some of us go to therapy to help with that.
We want to be less angry. Or we want to solve our anger issues. Or we’re working on other traits we’ve come to see as unhealthy over time.

That’s what I meant earlier: you can accept who you are now and still want to change.

But it’s not just about flaws.

Sometimes, we’re too mellow. Too accommodating. We want so badly to be liked that we start shaping ourselves into someone we’re not—and it drains us. We become depressed because we’re living as someone else.

What we really need sometimes is to become a little more selfish—and I don’t mean that in a toxic way. I mean balanced. Balanced between who we are and the outside world.

For me, part of that balance was accepting that I’m introverted.

I need time alone to recharge. I need silence to think—sometimes even full isolation, like I did recently—to find peace and figure out what’s next.

If you’re extroverted, this might not fully resonate.
Maybe isolation sounds strange, even uncomfortable. But for us introverts, silence is where we reset.

So if you’re extroverted—go do what recharges you.
Go dance in a crowd. Go out with friends. Be around people if that’s what brings you peace. That’s your clarity. That’s your reset button.

I won’t pretend to know exactly how extroverts cope—but I’ll say this:

For introverts like me, alone time isn’t optional.
It’s not something we can change.
But we can learn to respect it—and stop feeling guilty for needing it.

Sure, you can cultivate some extroverted habits. I’ve done that too.
But even now, I still need to recharge by myself—sometimes for long stretches. That’s something I’ve had to accept about myself.

I feel most at peace when I’m alone.
And honestly, in some friendships, I realized that too late.
I didn’t know how to ask for space and frankly i didn’t know i needed either.
I regret that.

So—acceptance of who you are right now is the first step toward change.
Then you define what you want to change.
How you want to grow.

For me, that meant accepting that I’m introverted.
That I value depth in people.
That there’s nothing wrong with that—it’s just part of who I am.

What I needed to change was how I expressed it in a healthy way:
— Learning not to cling.
— Learning not to overwhelm the people I love.
— Learning to let go of what I can’t control.

Final Reflection

So yes—accepting who you are is the first step.
From there, you get to decide:
Do you let go of what’s holding you back?
Do you answer the quiet pull toward the person you were always meant to become?
Sometimes… it’s both.
And that’s where the magic begins.

For me, that meant learning to let go of what I can’t control.
Loving deeply, but not clinging.
Honoring my need for solitude—without guilt or apology.

I accepted that I’m introverted. That I crave depth in others.
There’s nothing wrong with that.
It just means I had to learn how to carry it with grace—
To stop overexplaining. To stop shrinking.
To stop trying to be something I’m not, just to be understood.

There’s so much more I could say… but I think you feel it by now.

I’m still figuring it out—what to keep, what to release, and how to meet myself with softness along the way.

But if there’s one thing I know now, it’s this:

Change and acceptance aren’t opposites.
They walk side by side—hand in hand.
And somewhere between the two… that’s where you’ll find your authentic self.

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