Radical self-acceptance is the key to unlocking a more fulfilling life and embracing your authentic self. Join Rosie Zilinskas as she sits down with Dr. Laura Gallaher. Dr. Laura explains radical self-acceptance, why it’s crucial for personal growth, and how to cultivate it in your own life. They explore the surprising link between self-acceptance and self-improvement, the role of self-compassion, and how to overcome self-judgment. Dr. Laura also shares practical strategies for managing stress and embracing your authentic self, flaws, and all. Tune in to discover why radical self-acceptance is the missing link to your success!

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Radical Self-Acceptance: Dr. Laura Gallaher On Why It’s The Missing Link To Your Success

Have you ever wondered how embracing who you are right now could actually skyrocket your success? My guest is here to prove that radical self-acceptance isn’t just a catchword. It’s the key to unlocking your full potential. We’re diving into a topic that could completely transform the way you approach your career and life. If you have ever felt like you’re juggling too much or you’re holding yourself back, this episode is for you. We are going to explore why self-acceptance doesn’t mean settling. How high achievers can finally break free from that constant stress and the simple shifts that can make advocating for yourself at work feel natural and empowering. We’re all about self-advocacy here at No Woman Left Behind.

Joining us is Dr. Laura Gallaher. She is a Leadership and Culture Specialist who helps individuals and teams transform from the inside out. Dr. Laura has helped transform organizations such as Disney and NASA, so she is extremely well-versed in change management. With that, get ready because this conversation will leave you with fresh insights and practical tips that you can apply right away. Let’s dive in.

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Dr. Laura, how are you doing?

Excellent. How are you?

I’m great. I’m so happy to have you here. We’re going to have a great conversation. I do have a question for you. I use this as an icebreaker. If you were to be an appliance, what appliance would you be and why?

I’m going to share the first thought that came up, even if it’s terrible. I think I would say that I’m a blender, and I think that’s because the work that I get to do often really shakes things up for people, breaks down a lot of what they have previously thought about themselves or about the world, but then puts it into a form that’s that much more digestible and hopefully, delicious.

I love that response. I was actually thinking that you were going to say blender for that very reason, because as a coach. It’s so funny because you almost mirrored my exact answer, because when you’re a coach, you have all different things going on and a lot of times, you have to figure out what to pick out from all the tumultuous conversations that’s going down to someone’s head.

So much unwinding.

We’re going to talk about a variety of things, but the very first thing that I want to talk to you about is that pesky radical self-acceptance. As you well know, we cater to women in the corporate space that are maybe feeling stuck or, I know we’re going to talk about high achievers as well, but Dr. Laura, it is so hard in this day and age to know what to pay attention to externally. I think all of the noise externally, almost like the blender, there’s so much information coming in that sometimes I have to sit there and think about, “What do I think about that one topic? How do I feel about that?”

Radical Self-Acceptance: What It Is & Why It Matters

If it does impact me personally, then how am I going to weave in that into my life? As far as like myself in the world, how can I do that radical self-acceptance and not put myself in either harm’s way, which is emotionally with my integrity? Why don’t we start talking about what is radical self-acceptance, and then we can dive in after that.

Most simply, self-acceptance is being okay with who you are right now, which includes being okay with your flaws and imperfections, and it also includes being okay with your talents and your strengths. Radical self-acceptance, the reason that I include the word radical is because, sadly, it is fairly radical for people to actually have self-acceptance. I think especially high achievers or women in corporate are feeling a little bit stuck. We are so hard on ourselves. We are so consumed with self-judgment that the idea of accepting ourselves feels way too radical.

“Self-acceptance most simply is being okay with who you are right now, including your flaws and imperfections, as well as your talents and strengths.” – Dr. Laura Gallaher Share on X

We have a million reasons we give ourselves as to why we can’t accept ourselves, and we don’t want to accept ourselves. I think it’s one of the most misunderstood ideas in psychology, but it’s one of the most powerful. I am extremely passionate about helping people and women understand what is it and how can they change their understanding of it so that they want to cultivate a self-acceptance practice.

Teaching Clients To Embrace Themselves In Corporate Spaces

Accepting us ourselves as who we are, like you said, our flaws but also our strengths because we all have flaws. Nobody’s perfect. We’re all human beings. Let’s just say you were working with a client that didn’t like their flaws or were struggling with their flaws. I’m not necessarily saying any disability or anything like that. Follow through, for example. Sometimes I am terrible at following through on whatever. How do you teach your clients to embrace ourselves just as we are? In the corporate space, sometimes your strengths may not be the things that you need for the job that you want. There’s a lot of dichotomy there. Let’s talk about that.

The first thing that I often do is help my clients understand that self-acceptance and self-improvement are not on opposite ends of a single continuum. I think this is probably the biggest misunderstanding that people have. The fear is, if I accept myself, I’m just going to become complacent. That’s a fallacy because the opposite of self-acceptance isn’t self-improvement. The opposite of self-acceptance is self-judgment.

The first thing to unwind is this recognition that there’s no part of me that has to stop growing or improving who I am as a human being, just because I am practicing self-acceptance. The question is, I know I’m going to keep improving myself. I know your clients and your readers are going to keep improving themselves. Do they want to do that from the lens of judging themselves and beating themselves up or do they want to do that from a place of feeling good enough and just moving toward even better?

The research is super clear that when people can focus on self-improvement from the self-acceptance lens, they grow faster. It’s a much more enjoyable journey. They experience less stress. It’s literally the key to making everything in your life easier, practicing more self-acceptance. We have to unwind that first, this idea that accepting myself means I’m going to stop growing and improving.

I think that was a huge light bulb moment for me. Of course, I know a lot about neuroplasticity and neuroplasticity is becoming more and more of a word that’s out in social media, and people are talking about it. We know that our brains are not static, that we can actually create or build neurons based on that self-improvement. I love that definition because you’re absolutely right. Just because I accept the way that I am doesn’t mean that I’m not going to try to continue to improve.

The one thing that I’m like, “Why do I not follow through on, again, X, Y, or Z? I think that’s one of the biggest things that, especially being an entrepreneur, we have the shiny object syndrome of entrepreneurs. I talked to a lot of other entrepreneurs and they’re like, “I didn’t complete that course.” That was the first thing that came to mind. You buy all these courses and then you don’t complete them.

Getting people to recognize that, okay, self-acceptance can coexist with self-improvement. In fact, one of my favorite quotes, Rosie, is there is no amount of self-improvement that will ever make up for a lack of self-acceptance. This is the lie we tell ourselves. “All I have to do is follow through and finish that course, and then I’ll be good enough to accept myself as I am.” As soon as you do that, as soon as you hit that milestone, and probably honestly, before, you uncover, “Here’s this gap. Now here’s this thing about myself that I want to change.”

Once again, you’re like, “I can’t accept myself now because look at this gap that exists.” Pragmatically, we’re all always going to want to continue growing. We’re always going to have more goals that we want to achieve. That becomes a really terrible reason to not accept yourself right now. Getting to that place, it’s like, okay, hopefully now your readers are at least bought into, “I’m listening. What is this self-acceptance thing? Maybe I do want more of this for myself. How do I do that? What does that actually look like?”

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How We Can Accept Ourselves

I started doing some energy work meditation. It’s interesting because the energy work that I’m doing is you do a lot of deep breathing, and you take the time to feel the emotions that you are experiencing. The way the body works or this program specifically, the more you breathe into it and you allow your body to feel those emotions, that’s when the release comes. You’re able to heal that particular hurt or wound. The way the brain is, and emotionally, when you think you’ve healed something, another act happens, or another situation happens, it pops up again. You have to heal it again. It’s just a constant evolution. I think, to your point with self-acceptance, you’re always going to have to choose that self-acceptance in spite of the things that happen. Let’s talk a little bit about what can someone do. How do you work with your clients in order to get them to self or to accept themselves?

I’m going to come back to that and I just wanted to let you know, my experience mirrored what you said so closely, Rosie. This idea that I can be present with what is, I can feel through the emotion, and that is the healing. There’s going to be something else that bubbles up. It’s the constant evolution as your language. I literally have the word journey tattooed on my wrist as a reminder to myself that there is no destination in this work. The journey is all we have, and that I am always going to be uncovering the next thing within me, that I would like to heal the next thing within me. I want to accept. I just want to let you know how much that resonated with me. Are you familiar with the concept of self-compassion?

Absolutely. Yes.

I figured that she would be. Kristin Neff is a wonderful expert in that area. I know Tara Brach also does some wonderful work in this area. Self-compassion is a really key practice in building up self-acceptance. If we take your example of, “I didn’t follow through, I didn’t finish that course,” I would invite you to look at what is the compassion that you would like to offer yourself. How can you look at what was going on for you, what you were struggling with, even some of what you were struggling with, maybe subconsciously that wasn’t even fully in your awareness that led you to make the decisions that you did? A self-compassion practice is really inviting some of that same softness into ourselves that we often will give to other people around us that we love so much, but we fail to turn it inward.

“Self-compassion is inviting some of that same softness into ourselves that we often will give to other people around us that we love so much, but we fail to turn it inward.” – Dr. Laura Gallaher Share on X

This can feel very foreign for people. It brings up a lot of like, “But I don’t deserve compassion,” or, “But this isn’t okay. I have to be able to follow through.” Once again, it’s that recognition, that self-acceptance and self-improvement coexist. Just because you’re offering yourself compassion for something that you want to change about yourself, you’re offering yourself compassion for not following through to the degree that you want.

It doesn’t mean that you’re not going to set a standard for yourself about what’s okay for yourself in the future and what you want to do differently. These things, once again, coexist. There’s a lot of paradox theory that we get into to really invite people to want to have that self-acceptance practice and that self-compassion. Talking to yourself like you would speak to a best friend is one of the simplest ways that I work to ease into a self-acceptance practice.

Yes, because sometimes we’re so mean to ourselves. It’s like you’re cursing yourself, and you would never do that to your best friend or to your child or to your parent. Why is it that we allow that mean girl talk to ourselves? It’s just craziness sometimes.

I know. It’s so pervasive, it’s so common. There’s so much that’s coming up for me around this. I mean, I know that I even said like, “How would you speak to a best friend?” One of the hard truths about self-acceptance is if I am struggling to speak kindly to myself or speak gently to myself, I’m going to convince myself that I’m really kind and compassionate toward other people, but there’s actually a deeper aspect of that. That’s I’m people pleasing, and I am actually simply trying to manage this person’s impression of me, because we really cannot be truly kinder to other people than we are to ourselves.

That’s usually a painful thing for people to sit with and recognize that there’s this, “Okay, so there’s maybe some part of me that’s judging this person.” I’m offering them compassion, but I am thinking the same harsh thoughts toward them that I direct toward myself. I may not hang out in my subconscious, but it’s there. To really increase our genuine, authentic kindness and connection with other people, once again, we want to start with offering compassion inwardly.

That obviously applies to anything, but when you’re at work and say you don’t like a coworker or whatever, sometimes your brain will react. That thought will pop into your head without even wanting to think those things. “I hate her dress,” for example. Before you know it, you’re thinking. You’re like, “Why? Where did that thought come from?” Obviously, thoughts just pop into your head all day long. For me, when something like that pops up, I’m like, “Why did I think that?” I try to at least recognize that I’m thinking about it, that it popped into my head, and I’m like, “I don’t want to think that way.” I just let it go. Even if I’m walking through the airport, what’s one good thing that I can think about that one person?

Choosing the inner monologue. That’s powerful. A lot of the work that I do too, actually invites this. This is the essence of self-acceptance. Am I willing to look at the things about myself that I don’t really like? I’m with you, Rosie. I also still notice judging other people, I will have judgmental thoughts in my mind. There’s part of me that just wants to go, “That’s not good. I shouldn’t judge them and just try to suppress it or push it out, or just change how I’m thinking.” I see a lot of merit in that. The self-acceptance work actually says, “Hold on. Let’s pull that judgment back in here for a second.” Dr. Brené Brown talks about we judge others where we have the greatest capacity for shame.

Let myself look at that. Let myself look at this. “I’m judging this person for what they’re wearing or for their behavior, because I would never do that.” That’s one of those like red flags of I’m sitting in judgment, which means I have a huge capacity for shame here. That means that I am not willing to accept the parts of myself that either have done that same thing, have engaged in that way, or has the capacity to, and I’m unwilling to look at it. If I’m not willing to look at something, I have no shot at changing it. That’s part of why higher self-acceptance actually increases self-improvement, because I let myself better know what my full experience is in order to actually accept it and move through it.

“If I'm not willing to look at something, I have no shot at changing it. That’s part of why higher self-acceptance increases self-improvement.” – Dr. Laura Gallaher Share on X

It goes even one level deep with Brené Brown, then you’re being vulnerable. Even if you’re vulnerable to yourself, you still feel all those feelings. Sometimes, it’s a lot to feel those feelings. That’s why I think meditation has been so incredible for me because I’m allowing myself to feel all those feelings and release the emotions. This work is always going to be there. Even the people that I work with that are experienced meditators for a long time, they’re like, “This work never stops because we’re human beings,” until we move on to wherever it is that we whatever next want to, whatever’s next.

Helping Women In Corporate Struggle With Self-Advocacy

How would you suggest a female in the corporate world, let’s just say they’re struggling with trying to self-advocate for themselves because women come to me and they’re like, “Can you please help me with my career?” Yes, it’s a lot of the tactical and strategies, but a lot of it is the confidence because they’re not able to articulate what it is that they want, or they’re afraid or they don’t think they’re good communicators, whatever it is. What is one thing that you think we can talk about where a corporate female can start working on when they’re struggling with that?

Struggling to advocate for themselves in terms of, are you speaking about letting people know the wonderful things that they’re accomplishing at work? Are you speaking about, “This is my opinion on this subject and I really think it’s valuable?” All of the above?

I think communication. More than anything, it’s like, “I have this idea and I want to talk about it, but I’m afraid,” or, “I did these accomplishments and I don’t know exactly how to communicate them to the leadership team with confidence.”

So much of this is going to be recognizing what is the story in their head. At any point in time, if I’m thinking to myself that I’ve accomplished these things and I would really like to make sure people understand that I’m getting these things done, and I’m having this impact, if they’re not just doing it, then there is at least one, maybe multiple stories in their head that are telling them not to. It’s telling them why they shouldn’t. They’re judging the part of them that even wants to do it. Surface the narrative. What is the narrative? Let it bubble up. Maybe it’s multiple. Those stories are almost always rooted in distorted ideas that we picked up in our upbringing,

It’s like, where did this story come from? Maybe it wasn’t upbringing. Some people, for example, maybe did work in a job and they advocated for themselves once, and they had maybe a jerk of a boss who squashed them or said, “You seem really arrogant, or, “How dare you?” Maybe they had a traumatizing incident, even as an adult, that they’re now carrying forward. Either way, what is the story in my head? What is the story in my head about somebody who advocates for themselves? What do I think about somebody who does this? There’s some level of identity threat that’s stopping them from doing what seems like a simple behavior. You talk about the fear that holds them back and it’s always going to come back to that self-concept level, that identity level.

They probably have some narrative of like, “You’re not supposed to. Don’t brag. Nobody likes to bragger.” If that’s something that you heard growing up and now you’re in the workplace and you’re rigidly opposed to ever advocating for yourself, but you look around and you see other people doing it, and then they get promoted for it, “okay. There is some distortion here in the narrative that’s running in your mind. You want to let yourself surface all the stories, even the ones that you judge. Especially the ones that you judge. What is that story?

That is so incredible because, again, in the work that I’ve been doing, it’s like, “Rosie, where did you learn that behavior? Who told you that you should continue to push forward and not feel your emotions?” I’m not going to name any names, but it’s like, while I was growing up. It’s just so interesting that how you develop as a child, how you follow the examples of parents and teachers. Whatever that translates into your adult life.

You’re trying to not fix anything because we’re all perfect as we are. That constant self-improvement and like you said, that discovery, that conversation, that judgment, the vulnerability, it all comes into play. Sometimes, when you sit there and you’re like, “Why can I not schedule the conversation with my manager to talk about my career aspirations?” That’s when we need to start following the thread and figure out where that conversation is coming from.

Whose voice is that? When my clients are ready, because they’re often not ready at first, and that’s fine. I was not either. When they’re ready, the source of that voice the source that perhaps led you, Rosie, to believe that you should push emotions down, don’t feel those. Just keep going. Can you offer compassion to that human who was also raised by humans? I love how you say like, “We’re all perfect as we are.” I often will say like, “We’re all imperfect,” and we know that intellectually, but they were all raised by imperfect or imperfectly perfect humans. There’s a lot of cascading that can happen. Instead of me shifting into a blame and a, “How dare they? It’s their fault.”

By the way, some of us don’t want to do that, which means we don’t look at it at all. “I love my parents. My parents were great.” Absolutely. I love my parents and how they raised me, brought a lot of great, and also brought some not so great. That’s just the nature of it. Am I willing to look at that without vilifying them? If I can look at the source of where this narrative came from, and I can offer compassion to that source, that is magic at that point.

That’s part of the meditation and the energy healing work, too. It’s so interesting to me how it all weaves into the person and then the things that you end up doing and then you career. You cannot get away from it. There’s no escape. A lot of times people are like, “If I start working with someone,” because I’m a certified high-performance coach, and that’s more of leadership versus career, and they’re like, “No, I just want to talk about business stuff,” but the personal always comes into play.

We are whole humans and we’re humans everywhere. I love that you’ve been focusing so much on meditation and I love your focus on the emotion because self-acceptance has a really close tie to self-awareness. Letting ourselves actually know the emotions that we’re feeling and feeling through them is actually the fastest way for people to grow their self-awareness. I talk a lot about the narrative and the story in my head, “What is that?” What you’re talking about that focus on what is the emotion? Letting myself sit with that and feel through it. That is the key to changing anything in your behavior that you want to change. You can’t make meaningful, lasting change in your behavior if you don’t let yourself feel the things you’ve been working so hard not to feel.

I think that’s just so ironic. I don’t want to feel it. It never leaves you.

It’s going to keep bubbling up. I talk sometimes about suppressing emotions, like holding a beach ball underwater. I don’t know if you ever did that as a kid. It’s fun when you’re a kid. That can get hard to control. At some point, your arms are going to get tired and give out. When that beach ball splashes up, it’s unpredictable. That’s what happens to us as human beings. These feelings that we work so hard to suppress will find a way out. I snap at my husband when it’s not about him at all. It’s something that I was suppressing from earlier in the day, or it can also come out in physical illness, pain in my body. Our willingness to feel through all the stuff we’ve worked so hard not to feel is really magic.

Is it all fun in the moment? No, but I will tell you, I have also, at times, been sitting with myself in deep tears feeling all the visceral moving through my body. I’m actually pleased in that moment because I know that this is taking me to a breakthrough. I know that I am letting go of something and raising my awareness in that moment through all that feeling. If you can change your relationship with feeling, if you can change your relationship with emotions, all of that is part of a self-acceptance practice. It is so valuable for changing literally anything that you want to change, no matter how business focused it is.

Managing Stress For High Achievers

We also have high achievers. The high achievers are the ones that are already pushing through. They’ve accomplished a lot, but they can never turn off that motivation. I’m largely like that. I’m learning to turn it off. When I was growing up coming home, I would talk to my dad and I’m like, “Dad, I got an A on,” whatever. He’d be like, “Why didn’t you get an A-plus?” If I said, “Dad, I got a job.” “Did you ask for a raise?” He was meaning it to be motivational.

By the way, my dad’s 84 years old and he’s still like that. He’s like, “You can do more, you can do better,” but it trains you. It trained me to more, better, faster. It’s very hard for me to sit down and enjoy a success or an achievement because it’s like, “More, better, faster.” How do you work with those high achievers that are stressed out because they can’t relax? I’ve learned, and I’m learning through my meditation and things like that to turn it off and chill and relax. How much stress do high achievers feel because they’re constantly more, better, faster. Let’s talk a little bit about your perspective on that stress that high achievers feel, and what can we do about that?

I think that stress for high achievers most of the time is like water to a fish. I’m sure you’ve heard that cute little story about an older fish that swims by a couple younger fish and says, “Good morning, boys. How’s the water?” They keep swimming and the young fish looks at the other young fish and says, “What the hell is water?”

Why would they even know what that is? They’re just in it so constantly. I can speak from my own experience as a self-described high achiever, and I had other people tell me that too, I would be in chronic states of stress. It was such the norm for me that I wouldn’t even be aware of how much I was stressed out. I might be aware of the extra high peaks, but it was just constant. When I’m working with high achievers, that’s what I hear from them. It just feels constant. There’s no light at the end of the tunnel. Even when they lie to themselves and say, “If I just work through the weekend, then.” Lies. This is the part of the interview where I’m glad that your readers can’t directly throw anything at me because I want to drop a harsh truth, which is stress is a choice.

I was super triggered when I was first told that because I didn’t want to believe that stress was a choice. I wanted to believe that the things in my life that were stressing me out would stress anybody out. I didn’t want to think that I was responsible or accountable until I realized, “Wouldn’t it be nice though if I could unchoose stress? Unchoose stress without un choosing this life, I still identify as a high achiever. I’m not going to pretend I never experienced stress, but I experience a lot less stress now than I did years ago because of my understanding of how choice lays into it.

“Stress is a choice. Wouldn't it be nice if I could unchoose stress without unchoosing this life?” – Dr. Laura Gallaher Share on X

Obviously, at the surface, there are choices that people make to create the stressors in their lives, the jobs that they choose how hard they choose to work, if they choose to bring children into the world and take on that huge responsibility, if they choose to be engaged in community organizations, if they choose to cook a huge Thanksgiving dinner. There are all kinds of conscious choice that we can look at and say, “I can see that I’m choosing this.” It gets deeper than that because it’s never the actual situation that’s stressing out people. It’s the meaning that you’re putting on the situation. That’s what’s stressful.

Even more than that, it’s how are you putting the meaning on the situation that threatens how you want to see yourself? The easiest example of stress for high achievers is, “I have too much on my plate and I don’t know how to meet all my obligations without letting people down.” We want to go deeper and say, “The meaning that you’re putting on this is if you don’t complete project A, you’re going to let people down.” Right there. That story may or may not be true. I have options that I can explore right there in terms of can we renegotiate the timeline? Can I see if I can get support from people? I’m already telling myself a story, I’m choosing a story and the meaning that I’m putting on it to say I’m going to let them down.

Deeper than that, what if I do let somebody down? What do I think that says about me? I am choosing that, too. This is a very subconscious choice. This is the distortion that I’ve been talking about, that it comes from the upbringing where it’s like, “We don’t let people down. We meet our commitments.” What do I think about myself if I let somebody down or if I don’t follow through on a commitment? What does that mean about me? Normally, it’s some really dark, harsh judgment that I have toward myself if I would dare not meet a commitment. That is what causes stress.

Once again, can I surface that story? Can I get to the root of it and can I let myself look at the judgment that I place on myself? I tell myself I’m afraid of how other people are going to feel, or I’m worried about letting them down. That’s true. The deeper level always behind stress is how am I actually judging myself here?

It always goes to what you’re thinking, what you’re feeling, your emotions. One of the things I think is so interesting is it’s almost like as we’re growing up in the educational system, we should be talking about finances and psychology throughout every single year.

Life skills. How do we not learn this stuff? Crazy.

When I talk to people like yourself, obviously you’re a psychologist. You’re Dr. Laura, you’re a psychologist, you study all this. When I talk to you, it’s like, how do we not train or educate people on how critical it is to do the work, to feel all the feelings and the emotions? As Brené Brown says, that shame and that vulnerability, it can take over your life if you let it.

Absolutely true.

It’s so important for us to have these kinds of conversations so that when you are working in the corporate space or in a business and you start feeling stress, all the examples that you provided are so telling of everything is a choice, and life is a choice. Obviously, we live in the United States, so we’re very fortunate that we still have choice regardless of what’s happening politically or in the world. We’re very fortunate that we still have choices, but we need to activate the choices and we need to be self-aware enough so that we can improve our lives and continue to improve those lives around us, specifically our children.

When we think about choice and everything being a choice, which I tend to agree with, sometimes, if I can just let myself see that whatever I’m doing is a choice, “Yes, I am choosing to cook a huge extravagant Thanksgiving dinner, and I acknowledge that’s putting a huge stressor on my time, having eighteen people at the house.” I’m just picking an example. I can look at that. If I’m telling myself a story that this is something that I have to do, like if my language is I have to, I need to, I should, I am lacking accountability in that moment.

If I can say, “I am choosing to do this,” even if I still make the choice that is leading to me feeling stress, I’m actually going to feel less stressed simply by recognizing that I’m choosing it. When we tell ourselves a story that we’re stuck or that we have to, that, in and of itself, can be a huge stressor because it triggers our fears around being powerless and helpless. Just even recognizing, “I recognize this is a choice and it’s a choice I’m going to keep making,” will actually already reduce the stress that you feel.

Teaching Self-Acceptance To Reduce Judgment In Society

I think that’s so telling on stress reduction, even just acknowledging what you’re doing and that you’re choosing to do it in spite of all the extra stress or the to-dos for that particular item. I think that’s absolutely incredible. Dr. Laura, I did not expect to talk so much about how critically important that radical self-acceptance is, and then everything that goes underneath. I know you’re a speaker yourself, and you have talks about radical self-acceptance. If there’s anybody in the corporate world that’s reading, you might want to reach out to Dr. Laura because this conversation is so important. If we start teaching this in the corporations, in schools, we would do so much better as human beings just to, again, not be as judgmental and critical.

One of the things that I always think about is like, “Why are people so critical of other people?” For example, I did an episode with a trans woman over a year ago, and someone made it a point to put a nasty comment on the episode, and I’m like, “Why do you take time out of your life to listen to something that you don’t agree with and then put a nasty comment about the guest? I just don’t understand that. I’m always like, live and let live, take what is good for you, and then let everybody else do whatever it is that they want to do in their lives.

The answer there is there’s a huge self-acceptance gap. Just in the same way that when I am sometimes judgmental and critical of the people, even in my own head, that shows me a self-acceptance gap. If I am going to seek somebody out on a show and then leave a nasty comment, that person is actually in so much pain about how much they’re judging themselves. They probably don’t let themselves feel it, to your point, about feeling, but they make these choices to put other people down or attack other people as a temporary way to try to make themselves feel better.

I feel like we learned that maybe in kindergarten. They’re just clicking on you to feel better about themselves. It’s so true, and it continues into adulthood. That magic of compassion plays in here, too, which is like, “How can I let somebody know what’s okay or not, set a boundary and still have compassion for whatever battle they are fighting internally that I have no idea about, but I know it’s there? They’re choosing to be so critical and attack somebody in this way.

One Tip For Starting Self-Acceptance Today

All of the topics that we’ve talked about are just pure magic. If there was one tip that you wanted to leave somebody with as far as an action that they can start implementing now, what would that be for you?

I would love for your readers to practice taking credit. It speaks to what you spoke about earlier, Rosie, not letting yourself celebrate. Most people who feel stuck or people who identify as high achievers tend to gloss over all of the things that they do well, all of the ways that they’re making progress because they’re so focused on the gap ahead of them that they fail to the gain behind. Taking credit is a practice of allowing yourself to feel good, even for a brief moment about progress that you’ve made. I grew up in Phoenix, Arizona and I would enjoy hiking in the foothills and the mountains near my house. I would sometimes be hiking and it’s a lovely day. Maybe it’s extremely hot because it’s Phoenix and it’s a desert. I’m still looking at how much further I have to go, but if I stop and I look around and I turn behind me, look how far I’ve come.

“Taking credit is a practice of allowing yourself to feel good, even for a brief moment about the progress you've made.” – Dr. Laura Gallaher Share on X

That’s a step that too many of us gloss over all the time. Taking credit is that practice to say, “Even if I’m not yet at my goal, I’m going to allow myself to feel good about where I’m at.” There’s nothing too small to take credit for. It might feel like a foreign and unfamiliar and weird practice to people who’ve never done it before. That’s not a good reason not to do it. Practice taking credit. You can get an accountability partner. If you want, do it via text. If you can do it even once a day, that will have compounding effects and you will grow your self-awareness pretty dramatically over the course of even one year.

Take The Self-Acceptance Quiz

Last thing. Tell me a little bit about yourself and how you work with your clients. I know you have a quiz, so tell us a little bit about that.

The quiz is to really help you get a feel for, “Where is my self-acceptance?” We’re looking at that paradox theory I mentioned of self-acceptance and self-improvement. If you go to SelfAcceptanceQuiz.com, hopefully, it’s nice and easy, just selfacceptancequiz.com, it only takes about 3 minutes, maybe 4 to complete it. You’re going to get a report immediately that lets in this two-by-two matrix, self-acceptance and self-improvement, where do you fall right now? This is a point in time. It’s absolutely something that can and will change, especially if you want it to. Where do you fall right now? You’re going to get several coaching emails to follow up based on your results to help you really think through, “What’s contributed to me being where I am and what are some specific things that I can work to do now to shift myself more where I want to go?”

I do tend to assume that people want to be where I want to be and where I’ve worked to be, which is high self-acceptance and high self-improvement. It’s a journey so I can keep doing both. I would love for your readers to check that out if this resonates with them and they’re curious. I actually do a lot of work in the organizational setting, which I’m really grateful for. When leaders bring me in and I get to work with groups of people who would not otherwise get to know these ideas and these concepts, it’s powerful. It transforms the team in terms of how they communicate with each other. It grows trust. We create psychologically safe environments for teams, and it’s so rewarding work. I love it.

I love that you do that psychological safety because that’s so important. I think a lot of corporations in this day and age are really trying to see the person, the employee as a human being, and not just as a number, not just as an employee. I know that a lot of companies are doing that, but I’m so excited that you’re working with them because this work needs to get out there in the world along with Brené Brown. She does so much work around these types of concepts as well. For you to actually come and teach this and make that change management in corporations, it’s just wonderful. Thank you so much, Dr. Laura, for your time. This has been a fascinating conversation, so I really appreciate it.

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I absolutely love it when there’s a lot of synergy between the guest and myself about the topics that we’re passionate about. Dr. Laura provided us with such amazing brilliance that I want to just take a few minutes to talk about the key items that she brought up. First of all, self-acceptance fuels growth. She says that accepting yourself doesn’t mean settling. It actually accelerates your personal and professional growth.

The second key item is that stress is a choice. Who knew? High achievers often live in constant stress, but recognizing it as a choice gives you the power to unchoose it, which I think is absolutely phenomenal. The last thing that she said was to celebrate your wins. To take time to acknowledge how far you’ve come. It’s definitely a practice and it builds confidence and clarity. I personally have done that the last couple of years at the insistence of one of my coaches. It really makes a difference when you go back and you make a list of all of your accomplishments and you see how many things you actually got done. I highly recommend that.

She actually leaves us with one amazing tip, which is start a taking credit practice. At the end of each day, jot down one thing that you did well, no matter how small it is, and take credit for that. She says it is a game changer. Also, Dr. Laura leaves us with a gift, which is her self-acceptance quiz. I believe it’s an absolute must try. Head over to SelfAcceptanceQuiz.com to discover where you stand and get personalized coaching tips.

Speaking of quizzes, I also want to encourage you to take the Promotion Readiness Quiz. This is your first step to figure out where you are in your career and what you need to do to move forward to the next step. Finally, don’t forget to check out the Unlock the Leader Within Membership. It is the ultimate resource for women to get ready to advance in their careers. This episode, I believe, was packed with actionable tips to show you how to show up confidently and take control in your growth journey. If you are waiting for assigned to invest in yourself. This is it. Thank you for tuning in. As always, remember to be brave, be bold, and take action.

Important Links

• Dr. Laura Gallaher
• Promotion Readiness Quiz
• Unlock The Leader Within
• Self Acceptance Quiz
• Dr. Laura Gallaher LinkedIn

About Dr. Laura Gallaher

Dr. Laura Gallaher is a professional speaker and organizational psychologist who inspires driven self-starters to transform their relationship with themselves and accomplish more than ever. She combines insights on radical self-acceptance with humor to create a unique connection with her audience.

Despite being a USA Today and Wall Street Journal best-selling author, Dr. Laura stands out from the typical “academic” personality of her PhD peers. Her notable achievements include being hired by NASA to reshape organizational culture after the Columbia accident, leading significant changes in performance management at Disney, and inspiring Yahoo’s global teams to pursue transformation from within.