Locus of Acceptance: Who gets to decide if you matter?

“Locus of acceptance.”

I used this phrase with a patient the other day, and I kind of love it. I think I made it up. It refers to where our acceptability as a person lives. Is our locus of acceptance within us, meaning that only we have control over our acceptability, or is it outside of us, meaning that whether or not we are acceptable is in other people’s hands?

Clearly, it is best practice to have an internal locus of acceptance. We can’t be giving our power away to anyone else. And we don’t need to. Our acceptability never depends on whether anyone else believes we are acceptable – but most of us don’t know this.

Did you know that we are each unconditionally and fully acceptable, good enough, and worthy as people? That is part of the deal of being human. No one else gets to decide that we don’t matter (or that we do). No one else has that power. Ever.

Too often, we give people that power; we let other people decide whether or not we’re good enough. That’s how I lived for most of my life. For decades, my locus of acceptance was outside of myself. I had no idea that I was acceptable. I spent most of my time and energy trying to be acceptable and trying to convince everyone else that I was acceptable by being as impressive and perfect as possible. I thought “impressive” and “perfect” were the qualities that could make me acceptable, and I thought other people had the right to tell me whether or not I had met the standard.

Because my locus of acceptance was outside of myself, I was very focused on what everyone else wanted and felt and thought. I had no idea what I wanted and felt and thought. I didn’t believe I was important. The people who held my acceptability in their hands – they were the important ones.

You can see why I was a people-pleaser for so much of my life. I desperately wanted to be acceptable. I desperately wanted to matter, unconditionally. Who doesn’t want to matter?!

Regardless of how much I achieved, I was never perfect enough. I was never perfect.

Eventually, I realized that I had it all wrong. I practiced moving my locus of acceptance inside of myself. I practiced feeling good enough, all the time. It’s a slow, long process.

When I find myself trying to impress someone or feeling shame for making a mistake in front of someone, I still have to remind myself that my acceptability is not at stake. I remind myself that I’m unnecessarily giving away my power.

Then I try to connect to my acceptability. I remind myself that it is there, whether I can feel it or not. I’m starting to feel it more often. There are times when I fully believe that I matter. At least I know now that it’s only me I have to convince (and even if I don’t ever fully get there, I still matter). That makes the ground under my feet feel a lot more solid.

Where’s your locus of acceptance?