Do you feel uneasy focusing your accomplishments? If you do, you are not alone. Like many people, you may shy away from thinking about or sharing the positive aspects of yourself. Instead, you focus on your flaws, mistakes, or anything in yourself that you believe needs to be fixed. As a result, you feel bad about yourself, which also keeps you from fully enjoying your relationships. So, while there is a place for acknowledging and learning from your weaknesses or errors, there is also a place for appreciating the good in yourself.

If you are concerned about being vain or conceited, it is important to know that even people with great humility can feel positively about themselves. Those who are humble and self-assured appreciate their strengths while not over-blowing them or having to announce them to the world. You can do this, too, by keeping your strengths or accomplishments in perspective – as experiences to feel good about, but also as part of a humanly imperfect package.

By feeling free to embrace your positives, you will share them more with other people; enabling you both to enjoy the good feelings and other benefits. For instance, if you are open about how you enjoy – and have a flair for – decorating, a friend might ask you to help her decorate her new apartment. Then you can enjoy planning and shopping together, which can also be personally rewarding.

Three steps to appreciating the ‘good stuff’ in you:

Remember the good stuff. Think back on times when you were at your best in some way. You may have been kind to someone who needed it, or achieved some hard-won accomplishment.

Remind yourself that you embody that good stuff. Rather than dismissing the good you see in yourself as unimportant or an anomaly, embrace it. Remind yourself that this is part of what makes up the “real” you. 

Carry the good stuff into your current life. Once you are aware of positives in yourself, reflect on them regularly. You can do this simply by thinking, I am good at that or I am a good friend. Also, look for ways to live your values and positive traits every day.

By following these steps, you can live up to your “good” self – the one that you carry within. You will find that you feel more fulfilled when you do this. Also, as your inner self flourishes, your relationships with other people will bloom.