statement of acceptance is

What Is Self-Acceptance? 25 Exercises + Definition & Quotes

It might sound like an odd question; after all, what does it even mean to accept yourself?

Don’t we all accept ourselves as a regular part of living our day-to-day lives?

As it turns out, self-acceptance is not an automatic or default state. Many of us have trouble accepting ourselves exactly as we are. It’s not so hard to accept the good parts of ourselves, but what about the rest? Surely we shouldn’t accept our flaws and failures?

In fact, that’s exactly what we should do! Read on to learn why we need to accept ourselves, the good and the bad, and to get some practical suggestions on how to do it.

Before you read on, we thought you might like to download our three Self-Compassion Exercises for free . These detailed, science-based exercises will not only help you increase the compassion and kindness you show yourself but will also give you the tools to help your clients, students or employees show more compassion to and acceptance of themselves.

This Article Contains:

What is the meaning of self-acceptance, self-acceptance theory in psychology, using self-acceptance in therapy, 5 examples of self-acceptance in practice, using self-acceptance in addiction recovery.

• 6 Worksheets to Help Build Self-Acceptance (PDF)

25 Exercises to Increase Self-Acceptance

Self-acceptance activities for adults and groups, measuring self-acceptance with scales, tests, and questionnaires, the self-acceptance project and summit, recommended books on self-acceptance, 29 quotes and affirmations on self-acceptance.

• A Take-Home Message: It’s a Process

Self-acceptance is exactly what its name suggests: the state of complete acceptance of oneself. True self-acceptance is embracing who you are, without any qualifications, conditions, or exceptions (Seltzer, 2008).

For an academic definition, we can turn to Morgado and colleagues’ (2014) working definition:

“[Self-acceptance is] an individual’s acceptance of all of his/her attributes, positive or negative.”

This definition emphasizes the importance of accepting all facets of the self. It’s not enough to simply embrace the good, valuable, or positive about yourself; to embody true self-acceptance, you must also embrace the less desirable, the negative, and the ugly parts of yourself.

If you’re thinking that accepting all the negative aspects of yourself sounds difficult—you’re not wrong! It’s not easy to accept the things that we desperately want to change about ourselves; however—counterintuitively—it is only by truly accepting ourselves that we can even begin the process of meaningful self-improvement.

In other words, we must first acknowledge that we have undesirable traits and habits before we start off on our journey to improvement.

Unconditional Self-Acceptance

To begin working on yourself, the first step is not just self-acceptance, but unconditional self-acceptance. It’s relatively easy to accept ourselves when we just did something great—won an award, fell in love, or started a fantastic new job—but accepting ourselves at our lowest and with our faults and flaws in stark relief is the real mark of unconditional self-acceptance.

According to therapist Russell Grieger (2013), unconditional self-acceptance is understanding that you are separate from your actions and your qualities. You accept that you have made mistakes and that you have flaws, but you do not let them define you.

“You accept that, as a fallible human being, you are less than perfect. You will often perform well, but you will also err at times… You always and unconditionally accept yourself without judgment”

(Grieger, 2013).

When you practice unconditional self-acceptance, you can begin to love yourself, embrace your authentic self, and work on improving your less-than-desirable traits and qualities.

Self-Acceptance vs. Self-Esteem

Although self-acceptance is closely related to other “self” concepts, it is a distinct construct.

Its close cousin, self-esteem, is also centered on your relationship to yourself, but they differ in an important way. Self-esteem refers to how you feel about yourself—whether you feel you are generally good, worthwhile, and valuable—while self-acceptance is simply acknowledging and accepting that you are who you are.

As Seltzer (2008) puts it:

“Whereas self-esteem refers specifically to how valuable, or worthwhile, we see ourselves, self-acceptance alludes to a far more global affirmation of self. When we’re self-accepting, we’re able to embrace all facets of ourselves—not just the positive, more ‘esteem-able’ parts.”

Full self-acceptance can lay the foundations for positive self-esteem , and the two frequently go hand-in-hand, but they concern two different aspects of how we think and feel about ourselves.

Although the ideas behind self-acceptance have existed for hundreds—if not thousands—of years, there is no unifying theory of self-acceptance in psychology.

We have studied self-acceptance and its relation to constructs like wellbeing, self-esteem, and mental health, but it is almost as if no field or sub-field has come forth to claim self-acceptance as its own.

As a result, we have a scattering of findings on self-acceptance and encouragement to build self-acceptance, and we can find self-acceptance in “pop psychology” and non-academic arenas, but we, unfortunately, know little about how it develops and the larger role it plays in our personality development and throughout the course of our lives.

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However, what we do know is that a lack of self-acceptance is related to lower levels of wellbeing, and perhaps even mental illness (Vasile, 2013).

If low self-acceptance causes (or results from) mental illness and low levels of wellbeing, it stands to reason that higher self-acceptance can act as a protective factor or a buffer against these negative experiences. This idea that self-acceptance can lay the foundations for positive mental health is what drives the inclusion of self-acceptance in therapy.

If you have ever visited a therapist, you may have discussed the importance of accepting yourself and your reality. Even if you didn’t use those exact terms, it’s likely that you and your therapist worked on your ability to acknowledge the good and the bad within you, to accept all aspects of yourself, and to learn to separate what you do from who you are.

This is a good place to pause and point out one very important thing to understand about self-acceptance: to fully accept yourself and all of your flaws and mistakes does not mean that you condone any bad behavior or accept and embrace unhealthy or harmful actions.

You do not need to condone or approve of your actions, traits, and characteristics to accept that you did engage in those actions and that those undesirable traits and characteristics are a real part of who you are.

This is an important distinction to make, as some clients in therapy have trouble with the idea that they must accept themselves when they have done terrible things (or feel that they have done terrible things, even if they haven’t). Accepting reality for what it is, does not necessarily mean you like that reality.

In the same way, accepting yourself for who you are and acknowledging what you have done does not mean you must like, appreciate, or celebrate every aspect of yourself. In fact, accepting those less savory aspects of yourself is the first and most important step in removing, adapting, or improving that which you don’t like about yourself.

A good therapist can help you learn how to accept yourself and give you a framework you can use to build up your self-acceptance and begin to focus on improving yourself. If you’re specifically interested in working on your self-acceptance, there is a type of therapy that may be perfect for you: self-acceptance training.

Zatzick and Johnson (1997) describe it as an educational, alternative approach to traditional therapy provided through group workshop trainings. In these trainings, workshop leaders facilitate a “hypnotic trance” in participants to help them set aside their self-doubt, self-criticism, and negative self-talk. This state is believed to make it easier for participants to enhance their own awareness and accept all aspects of themselves.

This is an alternative approach and there is little evidence to determine whether it is as effective as other forms of therapy, but if it’s something that interests you there is no harm in trying it!

Now that we know what self-acceptance is and how it can benefit us, we can move on to another important question: What does self-acceptance look like? How do we know when we have “reached” self-acceptance?

Marquita Herald (2015) from the Emotionally Resilient Living website puts it this way:

“Can you look in the mirror and truly accept the unique, wonderful work-in-progress person staring back at you?”

You will know that you have achieved your goal of self-acceptance when you can look at yourself in the mirror and accept every last bit of what makes you who you are, and when you no longer try to mitigate, ignore, or explain away any perceived faults or flaws—physical or otherwise.

Self-acceptance can look different for each of us, depending on what we have struggled with and which pieces of ourselves we’d rather not think about. Here are some examples of what self-acceptance might look like for a variety of people:

• A man going through a divorce who feels like a failure because of it might experience self-acceptance as acknowledging that he made some mistakes and that his marriage failed, but that does not make him a failure.
• A woman struggling with anorexia may accept herself as a human being with an imperfect body , acknowledge that she approaches her imperfection from a harmful perspective, and commit to working on this perspective.
• A student who works hard only to receive Cs and the occasional B in college could reach a point of self-acceptance in which he realizes that studying and taking tests is not his strong suit and that this is okay because he has other strengths.
• A girl with low self-esteem who actively ignores facing her self-doubt and self-defeating beliefs might experience self-acceptance through acknowledging and confronting her negative beliefs and cognitive distortions, and realizing that not everything she thinks is true.
• An employee who struggles to meet the goals set by a demanding boss may accept herself by accepting that sometimes she will fail to deliver, but that she can still be a good person even when she fails.

If you have ever found yourself in a group, therapy session, or even an institution focused on recovering from an addiction of any kind, the concept of self-acceptance is probably not new to you.

Acceptance of oneself and one’s reality is an essential building block of many recovery programs.

Acceptance is so important because those who abuse alcohol or other substances (or struggle with any other kind of addiction, like gambling or sex) are often prone to using denial as a coping mechanism to avoid facing their problems.

They may minimize, rationalize, forget, deceive themselves, or even repress the memories of their behavior. While this coping mechanism can be helpful in some situations, it’s never a good idea when you are trying to overcome and heal from substance abuse (Lancer, 2016).

Even when an addict recognizes that he or she has a problem, they may believe that they can control every aspect of their lives through simply wanting to change. This is a dangerous place to be since there is much that we do not have control over in our lives.

This is why acceptance is so vital to the recovery process; before they can make meaningful changes to their lives, those struggling with addiction must first accept (Lancer, 2016):

• That they have a problem.
• That they do not have complete control over every aspect of their life.
• That they have limitations and flaws.
• The reality of their circumstances.

Then, once the individual has learned to accept reality and themselves as they are in this moment, they can begin to work on changing the things they can change.

The aim is not to encourage self-blame and guilt; instead, the aim is to move from the perspective that says “I don’t like who I am” to “I’m going to be on my own side while I create change” (Rosenthal, 2015). This is the power of self-acceptance; you allow yourself to change for the better when you plant yourself firmly in your present reality and decide to help yourself instead of bury yourself under doubt, criticism, and blame.

Addiction expert Michele Rosenthal hits this point home when she says, “ In recovery, when you accept who and where you are in the recovery process you appreciate the truth of what that means today while at the same time admitting that change needs to occur ” (2015).

NA (Narcotics Anonymous) and Self-Acceptance

Although most people are probably more familiar with Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), there is another addiction recovery program that uses self-acceptance as its cornerstone: Narcotics Anonymous (NA).

According to the NA program, self-acceptance lies at the heart of an addict’s disease. Narcotics offer them a way to escape from the critical evaluation of themselves and allow them to remain in denial about their problem.

When an addict begins their journey to recovery, they are encouraged to focus first on self-acceptance:

“Self-acceptance permits balance in our recovery. We no longer have to look for the approval of others because we are satisfied with being ourselves. We are free to gratefully emphasize our assets, to humbly move away from our defects, and to become the best recovering addicts we can be. Accepting ourselves as we are means that we are all right, that we are not perfect, but we can improve”

(Narcotics Anonymous World Services, Inc., 1985).

To learn more about how self-acceptance is the key to addiction recovery, check out this PDF .

5 Worksheets to Help Build Self-Acceptance (PDF)

If you’d like to give self-acceptance a shot, there are several worksheets and handouts that you might find useful. Listed below are 6 of the most popular resources available to help you build your self-acceptance. For more worksheets, have a look at our selection of ACT Worksheets .

Building Self-Acceptance through Positive Self-Talk (Handout)

Although not technically a worksheet, this handout is a valuable resource for teaching, understanding, and embracing self-acceptance. Plus, you can always take notes on it—that makes it a sort of worksheet, right?

This handout will walk the reader through a description of self-acceptance, a discussion of what sets self-acceptance apart from self-esteem, and—most important of all—how to build your self-acceptance.

Some positive self-talk examples are listed, including:

• “I am a good and caring person and deserve to be treated with respect.”
• “I am capable of achieving success in my life.”
• “There are people who love me and will be there for me when I need them.”
• “I deserve to be happy.”
•  “I am allowed to make mistakes and learn from them.”

Repeat these statements to yourself, acknowledge them, and absorb them, and you will be well on your way to self-acceptance and self-love.

Click here to download the handout.

The Radical SELF Forgiveness/Acceptance Worksheet

This worksheet comes from Colin Tipping at RadicalForgiveness.com and offers a comprehensive and insightful way to work on forgiving and accepting yourself. There are 22 sections to this worksheet, making it one of the most info- and activity-packed worksheets I’ve ever encountered, but every bit of it can be implemented to set you on a path towards greater self-acceptance.

Note that this worksheet frequently refers to a Higher Power, Divine Order, and other spiritual concepts; this makes it an excellent choice for those in recovery, as it mirrors the most common recovery programs. However, if you are not religious or spiritual, you can still benefit from the worksheet—try filling in the blanks with things like “Nature”, “Reason”, or “Reality.”

The worksheet starts off with the vital first step of identifying the action you need to forgive yourself for: “What I am blaming myself for and what I hear my judging self saying to me about it is…”

Next, you are instructed to describe how you feel about yourself in this context and rate your current self-esteem.

In the third and fourth sections, you will acknowledge and accept your feelings, commit to refraining from judgment of yourself, and rate the guilt and shame you are feeling.

In the next section, you will determine whether your guilt is appropriate or inappropriate and explain why.

The sixth section helps you realize that some of your beliefs and self-judgments are simply not true:

“ As I really examine how I feel about myself, I realize that underlying my feelings of shame, there is a belief or a set of beliefs that I hold about myself that are not true. My self-judgments have been based in what others, particularly my parents, saw in me and taught me about myself. For example: ”

Once you have listed an example of the beliefs you hold that you recognize as untrue, you will move into the next set of sections. For sections 7 through 15, you will read a statement about your current thoughts and feelings and rate how open you are to each one on this scale:

After rating your current state, section 16 will give you an opportunity to release yourself from worry, anxiety, or guilt over the problematic issues you identified at the beginning. Section 17 allows you to forgive those who implanted the faulty idea or untrue belief in you and identify them by name.

In the 19th section, you will encounter a loving statement of self-forgiveness that is ready for you to embrace—all you need to do is add your name and read it to yourself.

In the 20th section, you will affirm that you surrender to whatever higher power you believe in and embrace the healing power of love.

Section 21 gives you space to write a note to anyone that, upon completing this worksheet, you realize you have hurt or negatively affected in any way.

Finally, the 22nd section gives you the opportunity to write yourself a final note of forgiveness , and/or use the ready-made statement:

“ I completely forgive  __________________ for I now realize that you did nothing wrong and that everything is in Divine order. I acknowledge, accept and love you unconditionally just the way you are. I recognize that I am a spiritual being having a human experience, and I love and support myself in every aspect of my humanness. ”

At the bottom of this section, you are instructed to rate your current level of self-esteem again. If you compare it to your earlier rating, you will likely see at least a small boost to how you feel about yourself.

To see this worksheet or download it for your own use or for your clients, click here .

Improving Self-Esteem: Accepting Yourself Workbook

This resource is a workbook with several self-compassion exercises , activities, and important pieces of information that can help you to become more self-accepting, improve your self-esteem, and enhance your self-compassion .

The workbook includes activities like:

• Focusing on the Positive You (listing a couple of your positive qualities)
• Positive Qualities Record (making a more comprehensive list of your positive qualities)
• Positive You Journal (jotting down past and present examples of your positive qualities)
• Acting Like the Positive You (committing to engaging in and using your positive qualities, as well as engaging in pleasurable activities, and recording what you did)
• Fun & Achievement Activities Scheduling (treating yourself to some fun and acknowledging your achievements)

Along with some helpful information, tips, and suggestions, these activities and worksheets can help you build a solid foundation and start to improve your self-acceptance and feel good about yourself.

This workbook is also available for download  here .

What I Believe Worksheet

This worksheet from the Self-Esteem Experts (Susyn Reeve and Joan Breiner) will help you identify your core beliefs and realize where they came from, an important step in getting to know and accepting yourself. Once you have completed this first part, the worksheet can also help you evaluate the truth of these beliefs, determine how much they influence you, and decide which ones to elevate in your mind and which to scrap.

This worksheet lists six questions to guide you through this process:

• Write the beliefs you learned about yourself when you were young from your… a. Mother: b. Father: c. Siblings: d. Friends: e. Teachers: f. Others:
• Which of these messages continue to dominate your thoughts today?
• Which messages support and which messages detract from your confidence , happiness, and satisfaction?
• Are these messages truth or simply a belief (a thought that has been thought so often that you believe it is the truth)?
• Which messages do you want to change to improve your self-esteem?
• Write the new thoughts you choose to believe to support your positive self-esteem, confidence, and happiness?

Use this worksheet to get to know your true self, identify any positive or potentially problematic core beliefs, and commit to challenging those that are unhealthy and unhelpful.

Click here to download the worksheet.

Love & Admire Me Worksheet

Another great worksheet from the Self-Esteem Experts is the Love & Admire Me Worksheet.

There are two parts to this worksheet: one that you complete right away, and one that you implement daily for seven days.

Part 1 is to choose the characteristics, qualities, talents, skills, or abilities you admire in yourself and list specific situations in which you embodied them. (Remember: When you focus on the specific details using all your sense you automatically reinforce self-esteem building brain pathways).

There is space for you to list several positive aspects of yourself with examples. It might be hard to think of them at first, but give it a shot—you will likely find that it gets easier as you go.

In Part 2 , the focus is on current ways you are using or applying the positive aspects of yourself. The instructions are:

“ Each day, preferably in the evening before you go to sleep, make a list of the actions you took that demonstrate the qualities, gifts, and talents you admire in yourself. The more you practice seeing yourself through the eyes of admiration, the more you strengthen your self-confidence muscle .”

This worksheet is a great way to not only identify and start paying attention to the positive aspects of yourself (something that can be extremely difficult for those with low self-esteem and low self-acceptance) but to actually train your brain to notice your positive qualities and actions as you go.

You can download this worksheet by clicking here .

How to Love Yourself Worksheet

Finally, this third worksheet from the Self-Esteem Experts is the How to Love to Yourself Worksheet.

The point of the worksheet is to focus on the good things about yourself: the things you like, appreciate and implement in your life.

The instructions note that this is not just a list of things you like doing—although you will probably enjoy applying your strengths and talents in most cases—but a list of what you honor and appreciate about yourself.

Here is how the worksheet guides you into identifying and leaning in on the good aspects of yourself:

• List what you honor and appreciate about yourself—your gifts, talents, skills, and abilities. Here are some questions to consider while making your list: a. What do I appreciate about who I am? b. What are my strengths? c. What do my friends appreciate about me? d. What do I like about others? Which of these characteristics do I have? e. How would people who love me describe me?
• When you have completed your list, read it aloud while looking in a mirror. a. Begin each statement with the words, “[Your name], I love your…” (e.g., “Joan, I love your sense of humor! Joan, I love your willingness to help others!”). b. Begin each statement with the words, “I love my…” (e.g., “I love my commitment to feeling good about myself! I love my openness to learn new things!”).

Completing this worksheet can help you start to open yourself up to the good aspects of yourself instead of focusing solely on the bad; self-acceptance requires acknowledging and accepting both the positive and the negative and maintaining a healthy balance in your attention to them.

If you’d like to see this worksheet for yourself or download it for your own use or use with your clients, click here .

If you’re more of a “hands-on” learner and less interested in reading and writing to boost your self-acceptance, there are many other exercises, activities, and techniques that you can implement to start accepting yourself. A few of the best and most popular of these are listed below.

Self-Acceptance Exercise

Follow these instructions to try the Self-Acceptance Exercise:

• To overcome your irrational thinking leading to low self-acceptance, complete the top half of the circle by filling in the appropriate spaces with pluses (+ ‘s) for the things you do well at work or school and with minuses (-‘s) for the things you don’t do so well. Then complete the bottom half of the circle by writing in things you do well and things you like about yourself, as well as things you don’t do well or don’t like about yourself.
• Rest of Life To counter the tendency to put yourself down when things aren’t going so well, ask yourself the following questions: ● Does this bad situation (mistake, failure, rejection, criticism) take away my good qualities? ● Does it make sense to conclude that “I am totally hopeless” because of one or more negative things that have happened?
• Thoughts to Help Increase Self-Acceptance ● I’m not a bad person when I act badly; I am a person who has acted badly. ● I’m not a good person when I act well and accomplish things; I am a person who has acted well and accomplished things. ● I can accept myself whether I win, lose, or draw. ● I would better not define myself entirely by my behavior, by others’ opinions, or by anything else under the sun. ● I can be myself without trying to prove myself. ● I am not a fool for acting foolishly. If I were a fool, I could never learn from my mistakes. ● I am not an ass for acting asininely. ● I have many faults and can work on correcting them without blaming, condemning, or damning myself for having them. ● Correction, yes! Condemnation, no! ● I can neither prove myself to be a good nor a bad person. The wisest thing I can do is simply to accept myself. ● I am not a worm for acting wormily. ● I cannot “prove” human worth or worthlessness; it’s better that I do not try to do the impossible. ● Accepting myself as being human is better than trying to prove myself superhuman or rating myself as subhuman. ● I can itemize my weaknesses, disadvantages, and failures without judging or defining myself ● by them. ● Seeking self-esteem or self-worth leads to self-judgments and eventually to self-blame. Self- acceptance avoids these self-ratings. ● I am not stupid for acting stupidly. Rather, I am a non-stupid person who sometimes produces stupid behavior. ● I can reprimand my behavior without reprimanding myself. ● I can praise my behavior without praising myself. ● Get after your behavior! Don’t get after yourself. ● I can acknowledge my mistakes and hold myself accountable for making them -but without berating myself for creating them. ● It’s silly to favorably judge myself by how well I’m able to impress others, gain their approval, perform, or achieve. ● It’s equally silly to unfavorably judge myself by how well I’m able to impress others, gain their approval, perform, or achieve. ● I am not an ignoramus for acting ignorantly. ● When I foolishly put myself down, I don’t have to put myself down for putting myself down. ● I do not have to let my acceptance of myself be at the mercy of my circumstances. ● I am not the plaything of others’ reviews and can accept myself apart from others’ evaluations of me. ● I may at times need to depend on others to do practical things for me, but I don’t have to emotionally depend on anyone in order to accept myself. Practical dependence is a fact! Emotional dependence is a fiction! ● I am beholden to nothing or no one in order to accept myself. ● It may be better to succeed, but success does not make me a better person. ● It may be worse to fail, but failure does not make me a worse person.

Click here to see this exercise on the SMART Recovery website.

If you’re looking for practical, everyday things you can do to enhance your sense of self-acceptance, take a leaf from the book of several different psychologists and therapists in building your self-acceptance by following these 12 suggestions:

• Set an intention for yourself to “shift paradigms from a world of blame, doubt, and shame to a world of allowance, tolerance, acceptance, and trust.”
• Identify, acknowledge, and celebrate your strengths.
• Consider the people around you, and ask yourself these four questions: (1) Who speaks negatively to me? (2) Who reinforces negative self-talk? (3) Why do I allow such people to hurt me? (4) Are they just doing my own dirty work because I’m not willing to choose a different reality?
• Create a support system by distancing yourself from those people you identified in suggestion #3 and surrounding yourself with people who accept and believe in you.
• Forgive yourself, put your regrets in the past, and move on.
• Shush your inner critic with a realistic mantra like “I am only human, I am doing the best that I can and that is all I can do.”
• Grieve the loss of unrealized dreams; accept and mourn for the hopes you had that will never come to fruition, then get back to being the best “you” possible.
• Perform charitable acts and do good for others.
• Realize that acceptance is not resignation; accepting that there are some things you cannot control allows you to focus on the things you can control, facilitating positive change.
• Visualize and speak to your highest self to learn how to accept, empathize with, and love yourself.
• Be kind to yourself in order to enhance your self-compassion .
• Fake it ‘til you make it; act like you believe you are a worthy person, and eventually, you will come to believe it (Tartakovsky, 2016).

Leo Babauta (n.d.) from Zen Habits lists 7 other techniques you can implement to enhance your self-acceptance:

Practice relaxed awareness

What is relaxed awareness? As opposed to constant distraction, or concentrated focus, relaxed awareness is a soft consciousness of our thoughts, feelings, pain, self-rating, and judgment, etc. It’s an awareness of our existence, and the stream of phenomena that is occurring at this moment, including thoughts and emotions and outside stimuli.

To practice: close your eyes for a minute, and instead of pushing thoughts away or trying to focus on your breath, just softly notice your thoughts and feelings and body. You might see negative thoughts or emotions — that’s OK. Just notice them, watch them. Don’t try to turn them into positive thoughts or push them away.

You can do this practice for 5 minutes a day, or up to 30 minutes if you find it useful.

Welcome what you notice

When you practice relaxed awareness, you’ll notice things — negative thoughts, fears, happy thoughts, self-judgments, etc. We tend to want to stop the negative thoughts and feelings, but this is just a suppression, an avoidance, a negating of the negative.

Instead, welcome these phenomena, invite them in for a cup of tea, give them a hug. They are a part of your life, and they are OK. If you feel bad about how you’ve been doing with exercise, that’s OK. Hug the bad feeling, comfort it, let it hang around for a while. They are not bad but are opportunities to learn things about ourselves.

When we run from these “bad” feelings, we create more pain. Instead, see the good in them, and find the opportunity. Be OK with them.

Let go of rating yourself

Another thing you’ll notice, once you start to pay attention, is self-rating. We rate ourselves compared to others, or rate ourselves as “good” or “bad” at different things, or rate ourselves as flabby or too skinny or ugly.

This is not a very useful activity. That doesn’t mean to let it go, but just to notice it, and see what results from it. After realizing that self-rating repeatedly causes you pain, you’ll be happy to let it go, in time.

Gratitude sessions

Wake up in the morning and think about what you’re grateful for. Include things about yourself. If you failed at something, what about that failure are you grateful for?

If you aren’t perfect, what about your imperfection can you be grateful for? Feel free to journal about these things each day, or once a week if that helps.

Compassion & forgiveness for yourself

As you notice judgments and self-rating, see if you can turn them into forgiveness and compassion. If you judge yourself for not doing well at something, or not being good enough at something, can you forgive yourself for this, just as you might forgive someone else?

Can you learn to understand why you did it, and see that ultimately you don’t even need forgiveness? If we really seek to understand, we realize that we did the best we could, given our human-ness, environment, what we’ve learned and practiced, etc. And so we don’t need to forgive, but instead to understand, and seek to do things that might relieve the pain.

Learn from all parts

We tend to try to see our successes as good, and the failures as bad, but what if we see that everything is something to learn from? Even the dark parts — they are parts of us, and we can find interesting and useful things in them too.

Separate from your emotions

When you are feeling negative emotions , see them as a separate event, not a part of you, and watch them. Remove their power over you by thinking of them, not as commandments you must follow or believe in, but rather passing objects, like a leaf floating past you in the wind. The leaf doesn’t control you, and neither do negative emotions.

Talk to someone

This is one of my favorite techniques. We get so in our heads that it’s difficult to separate our thoughts and emotions, to see things clearly. Talking through these issues with another person — a friend, spouse, co-worker — can help you to understand yourself better. Use the talking technique together with one of the above techniques.

Finally, psychologist Russell Grieger (2013) takes a slightly different tack than Babauta with these five great suggestions for working on building your self-acceptance:

• Give yourself a letter grade with regard to the degree to which you live by the principle of unconditional self-acceptance. Are you satisfied with your grade? What grade would you prefer?
• Name two situations in which you tend to judge your whole self. What could you tell yourself in these two situations to help you unconditionally accept yourself, despite any mistakes you may make or flaws you may possess?
• Make a commitment to spend two minutes six times a day (breakfast, mid-morning, lunch, mid-afternoon, supper, and bedtime) drawing the distinction between your self and your performances. Remind yourself at these times to not judge yourself – as either all good or all bad – from that time till the next rehearsal.
• Practice applying unconditional self-acceptance to others. That is, practice only rating their behaviors and traits as good or bad, but never them as a whole person. This is Unconditional Other Acceptance.
• Identify one person you know that could benefit from learning about unconditional self-acceptance. Plan where and when you could meet this person to explain it. Teaching others a truth helps us to learn it ourselves.

If you’re interested in activities and exercises you can do in a group instead of on our own, there are a few options you can consider. Check out a couple of sample activities listed below.

Developing Self-Acceptance/Examining Self-Measurement

This exercise from the Australian Department of Education and Training is a good one for older students, adults, and anyone else who is interested in building their self-acceptance. It’s part-lesson, part-exercise, making it an excellent fit for the classroom.

Follow these instructions to try it:

Setting the Stage:

To introduce the lesson, have the students find a space in the room away from others and have them do some stretching (standing up, legs slightly apart and stretching arms to the ceiling then gradually bringing them down by their sides and bending forward to finally release and shake the hands).

Do this 3 or 4 times, encouraging them to breathe fully and deeply whilst stretching. Students then return to seats. Explain that stretching is an excellent way to re-energise the body and to facilitate the release of endorphins (“the feel good” chemicals released from the brain during exercise) – which will always help in generally “feeling good” about yourself.

The Activity:

To see this activity for yourself or download it for use in your classroom or group, click here .

Positive Focus Group

This is a great activity for you to try with friends, family, and other loved ones. It will not only help you realize the positive aspects of yourself, which can help you get a balanced perspective, it can also help the other participants come to the same realizations!

To give it a shot, follow these instructions from Zdravko Lukovski (2015) at Enlightenment Portal:

Bring together the group—whether that’s family members, friends, classmates, coworkers, support group members, or anyone else who you think could contribute to and benefit from the experience.

Break the group into pairs, then set a time limit. If there are only three or four people attending the positive focus group, there is no need to break into pairs.

Focusing on one person at a time, the rest of the group talks about all of the things they like about him or her. When the time is up, another person becomes the subject of the conversation – and this goes on until every person in the group has been in the positive focus.

It’s a very powerful technique, but some people are shy to do it. Don’t be, choose only the people that you feel comfortable with and explain to them why you are doing that. They will almost certainly gladly accept your invitation and be happy to help.

Self-Acceptance and Meditation

If the exercises, activities, and worksheets didn’t help, you may want to try meditation.

Meditation is an ancient art, but one with science behind it; a regular meditation practice can help you find inner peace, calm yourself when your emotions are running wild, and even lead you to greater acceptance of yourself.

Mindfulness meditation can facilitate the process of self-acceptance through its focus on observing but not judging.

This non-judgmental awareness can not only allow you to practice seeing yourself without heaping on blame, guilt, and self-doubt, it can also help you train your brain to respond differently to anxiety and stress (Pillay, 2016).

Research suggests that a regular mindfulness meditation or loving-kindness meditation (or mindful self-compassion ) practice can aid you in building self-acceptance through influencing the emotion-processing portions of your brain and perhaps through increasing the overall connectivity throughout your brain (Pillay, 2016).

To give mindfulness meditation a shot at increasing your self-acceptance, follow this guide from Rezzan Hussey (2017) at ArtofWellBeing.com:

• Begin by bringing awareness to your breath.
• Take a few very full breaths before settling into natural breathing.
• Focus on becoming aware of your breath, noticing as it flows in and out of your lungs.
• Open yourself up to awareness—of your thoughts, feelings, and sensations, and of your environment.
• When your mind attempts to drift off on tangents, gently bring it back by telling yourself “thinking, thinking” and returning your awareness to your breath.

If this exercise left you hungry for more, you might enjoy a guided meditation. Try these guided meditations to maintain or expand your meditation practice:

• Guided Meditation for Self-Acceptance from MindfulnessExercises.com ( link )
• Guided Meditation for Unconditional Self-Acceptance from Alicia Cramer ( link )

If you’re thinking that it sounds like a difficult task to measure self-acceptance, you’d be right. It’s a bit of a tricky thing to measure something so nebulous—and something that’s often buried and unacknowledged—but there are a few ways to do it.

These four scales and questionnaires are some of the most commonly used methods to measure self-acceptance.

Related reading: The Self-Compassion Scale and Test (Incl. PDF)

Generalized Expectancy for Success Scale (GESS)

The Generalized Expectancy for Success Scale, or GESS, is perhaps the most commonly used scale of self-acceptance, although it measures a specific niche of the construct: an individual’s expectations of future success and failure for themselves. It was developed by Fibel and Hale in 1978 and consists of 30 items rated on a scale from 1 (highly improbable) to 5 (highly probable).

All items begin with the same stem: “In the future I will…” and end with a statement about the respondent’s belief in some future success or failure.

Example items include:

• In the future, I will find that people don’t seem to understand what I am trying to say.
• In the future, I will deal poorly with emergency situations.
• In the future, I will carry through my responsibilities successfully.
• In the future, I will not make any significant contributions to society.
• In the future, I will succeed at most things I try.

Initial validation of the scale resulted in high test-retest reliability and expected correlations with related constructs (e.g., depression, hopelessness). Later validation provided evidence that the GESS scores correlate highly with Rosenberg’s Self-Esteem Scale , giving further support for its validity (Mearns, 1989).

Expressed Acceptance of Self and Others

One of the foundational scales of self-acceptance was created in 1952 by researcher Emanuel M. Berger. It is called the Expressed Acceptance of Self and Others scale.

This scale consists of 64 items, 36 for the self-acceptance scale and 28 for the acceptance of others scale. All items in the self-portion are rated on a scale from 1 (not at all true of myself) to 5 (true of myself).

A higher score on the scale represents greater self-acceptance.

Unconditional Self-Acceptance Questionnaire (USAQ)

The Unconditional Self-Acceptance Questionnaire, or USAQ, is the most recently developed scale on our list. It was created by researchers Chamberlain and Haaga in 2001.

This measure consists of 20 statements rated on a scale from 1 (almost always untrue) to 7 (almost always true). Sample items include:

• I avoid comparing myself to others to decide if I am a worthwhile person.
• I set goals for myself that I hope will prove my worth.
• Sometimes I find myself thinking about whether I am a good or bad person.
• When I am criticized or when I fail at something, I feel worse about myself as a person.

Some items are scored normally (1 = 1 point, 7 = 7 points), while others—like the second example item—are reverse-scored (1 = 7 points, 7 = 1 point). Higher scores on the USAQ indicate greater unconditional self-acceptance.

Scores on this measure were found to correlate negatively with depression and anxiety and positively with happiness and general wellbeing .

Click here to read about the development of this scale and to see the scale in full.

Self-Acceptance Subscale of the Scales of Psychological Wellbeing (SPWB)

Although the full scale (the Scales of Psychological Wellbeing, or SPWB; Ryff, 1989) provide a measure of overall psychological wellbeing, it is broken into six dimensions with six different subscales to measure each:

• Self-acceptance
• Positive relations with other people
• Environmental mastery
• Purpose in life
• Personal growth

The self-acceptance subscale measures an individual’s ability to accept and embrace all that makes her who she is. A high score on this subscale indicates a positive attitude toward the self and acceptance of both the good and the bad, while a low score indicates that the individual likely feels negative about herself and is troubled about or in denial of the negative aspects of herself.

The SPWB consists of either 84 (long-form version) or 54 (medium-form version) items rated on a scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 6 (strongly agree).

An example item from the self-acceptance subscale is:

• I like most aspects of my personality.

The SPWB has been validated and re-validated several times over, and remains one of the most reliable and methodologically sound measures of wellbeing, which indicates that the self-acceptance subscale is also a strong measure.

The Self-Acceptance Project is intended to teach people how to be kind and compassionate towards themselves in any situation.

Author and self-acceptance expert Tami Simon created a series of online videos for this project in which she discusses self-acceptance with experts in psychology, spirituality, and creativity in order to learn more about what self-acceptance really is, how it develops, how we can foster our own self-acceptance, and how we can silence, neutralize, or perhaps even learn to live with our inner critics.

Expert guests include some of the big names in research that you might recognize, including Kristin Neff (renowned self-compassion expert), Brené Brown (leading expert in vulnerability research), Kelly McGonigal (Stanford health psychologist and expert in stress and success), Tara Brach (prodigious writer on the topic of self-acceptance), and Steven C. Hayes (expert in Relational Frame Theory and developer of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy [ACT]).

If you’d like to learn more about self-acceptance with a smaller investment of time and money, there are several books that can help you get familiar. Some of the best books on the topic include:

• The Gift of Imperfection by Brené Brown ( Amazon )
• Radical Acceptance: Awakening the Love That Heals Fear and Shame by Tara Brach ( Amazon )
• Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha by Tara Brach ( Amazon )
• How to Be an Imperfectionist: The New Way to Self-Acceptance, Fearless Living, and Freedom from Perfectionism by Stephen Guise ( Amazon )
• Self-Acceptance: The Key to Recovery from Mental Illness by Victor Ashear and Vanessa Hastings ( Amazon )
• Beautiful You: A Daily Guide to Radical Self-Acceptance by Rosie Molinary ( Amazon )
• The Self-Acceptance Project: How to be Kind and Compassionate Toward Yourself in Any Situation by Tami Simon ( Amazon )
• 50 Mindful Steps to Self-Esteem: Everyday Practices for Cultivating Self-Acceptance and Self-Compassion by Janetti Marotta ( Amazon )

17 Exercises To Foster Self-Acceptance and Compassion

Help your clients develop a kinder, more accepting relationship with themselves using these 17 Self-Compassion Exercises [PDF] that promote self-care and self-compassion.

Created by Experts. 100% Science-based.

Sometimes all we need to keep making progress or get back on the metaphorical horse after falling off is a good quote or affirmation. A simple sentence can make a world of difference when you take it to heart!

If you’re interested in using affirmations to help you on your self-acceptance journey, you can make your own or give some example affirmations a try.

To make your own, follow these instructions:

• Make two columns on a sheet of paper; call the first column “Negative Beliefs about Myself” and second column “Affirmations.”
• Come up with somewhere between five and ten negative beliefs that you hold about yourself (e.g., I’m fat and unattractive, I am not lovable, I can’t do anything right).
• In the Affirmations column, create a positive belief that you can use to confront the negative belief and implement as an affirmation in your life (e.g., I am okay just the way that I am, I am worthy of love, I accept myself exactly as I am).
• Once you have an affirmation for each negative thought, say your affirmations out loud at least once per day to help them stick.

You can also use some sample affirmations if you’re not sure your own are on the right track. For example, you might say (Yahne, 2016):

• My uniqueness is my blessing.
• I am not my circumstances.
• My wants have worth.
• I teach others to believe in me by believing in myself.
• Fear of failure does not control me.
• Being who I truly am is my divine right.
• I act for my future not because of my past.

Although reading self-acceptance quotes doesn’t exactly constitute a regular practice, they can still be helpful when you’ve hit a rough patch or need some motivation. Check out these 15 quotes and see if any resonate with you and your feelings about self-acceptance.

I now see how owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing that we will ever do.

Brené Brown

No amount of self-improvement can make up for any lack of self-acceptance.

Robert Holden

Self-acceptance is my refusal to be in an adversarial relationship to myself.

Nathaniel Branden

The worst loneliness is to not be comfortable with yourself.

You can succeed if nobody else believes it, but you will never succeed if you don’t believe in yourself.

William J. H. Boetcker

Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are.

Marilyn Monroe

The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.

Anna Quindlen

To be nobody but yourself in a world that’s doing its best to make you somebody else, is to fight the hardest battle you are ever going to fight. Never stop fighting.

E. E. Cummings

You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.

Sharon Salzberg

Because one believes in oneself, one doesn’t try to convince others. Because one is content with oneself, one doesn’t need others’ approval. Because one accepts oneself, the whole world accepts him or her.

It’s not your job to like me – it’s mine.

Byron Katie

The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.

Joseph Campbell

Believing in our hearts that who we are is enough is the key to a more satisfying and balanced life.

Ellen Sue Stern

I found in my research that the biggest reason people aren’t more self-compassionate is that they are afraid they’ll become self-indulgent. They believe self-criticism is what keeps them in line. Most people have gotten it wrong because our culture says being hard on yourself is the way to be.

Kristen Neff

Friendship with oneself is all important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.

Eleanor Roosevelt

We can never obtain peace in the outer world until we make peace with ourselves.

Dalai Lama XIV

A Take-Home Message

I hope this piece gave you a good overview of self-acceptance and provided you with some new techniques and exercises you can use to boost your own sense of self-acceptance.

If there’s one thing you should take away from this piece, it’s that self-acceptance is at the core of so many positive states (including self-esteem, wellbeing, happiness , recovery, etc.). If you are struggling to accept who you are at a fundamental level, it’s tough to love yourself, love others, or make positive changes in your life.

Feel free to refer back to this piece if you ever find yourself in a place of denial, self-criticism, or guilt and shame. If you find any of this information helpful (and I hope you do!), please let us know in the comments section!

Thanks for reading, and I wish you nothing but the best in your journey to self-acceptance!

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don’t forget to download our three Self Compassion Exercises for free .

• Babauta, L. (n.d.). 8 techniques for self-acceptance. Zen Habits. Retrieved from https://zenhabits.net/acceptance-techniques/
• Berger, E. M. (1952). The relation between expressed acceptance of self and expressed acceptance of others.  The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology ,  47 (4), 778-782.
• Chamberlain, J. M., & Haaga, D. A. (2001). Unconditional self-acceptance and psychological health.  Journal of Rational-Emotive and Cognitive-Behavior Therapy ,  19 (3), 163-176.
• da Rocha Morgado, F. F., Campana, A. N. N. B., & Fernandes, M. D. C. G. C. (2014). Development and validation of the self-acceptance scale for persons with early blindness: The SAS-EB. PloS one ,  9 (9).
• Fibel, B., & Hale, W. D. (1978). The Generalized Expectancy for Success Scale: A new measure.  Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology ,  46 (5), 924-931.
• Grieger, R. (2013). Unconditional self-acceptance: Be impeccable with yourself. Psychology Today. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/happiness-purpose/201302/unconditional-self-acceptance
• Herald, M. (2015). What does self-acceptance mean to you? Emotionally Resilient Living. Retrieved from https://www.emotionallyresilientliving.com/what-does-self-acceptance-mean-to-you
• Hussey, R. (2017). A guide to practicing acceptance, the game-changing habit. Art of Well Being. Retrieved from http://www.artofwellbeing.com/2017/11/08/acceptance/
• Lancer, D. (2016). Substance abuse: The power of acceptance. Psych Central Library. Retrieved from https://psychcentral.com/lib/substance-abuse-the-power-of-acceptance/
• Lukovski, Z. (2015). 15 great self esteem building activities & exercises for teens and adults. Enlightenment Portal. Retrieved from http://enlightenmentportal.com/development/self-esteem-building-activities/
• Mearns, J. (1989). Measuring self‐acceptance: Expectancy for success vs. self‐esteem.  Journal of Clinical Psychology ,  45 (3), 390-397.
• Narcotics Anonymous World Services, Inc. (1985). Self-acceptance. Narcotics Anonymous. Retrieved from https://www.na.org/admin/include/spaw2/uploads/pdf/litfiles/us_english/IP/EN3119.pdf
• Pillay, S. (2016). Greater self-acceptance improves emotional well-being. Harvard Health Publishing Blog. Retrieved from https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/greater-self-acceptance-improves-emotional-well-201605169546
• Rosenthal, M. (2015). The big myth about self-acceptance in recovery. Addiction.com Expert Blogs. Retrieved from https://www.addiction.com/expert-blogs/the-big-myth-about-self-acceptance-in-recovery/
• Ryff, C. D. (1989). Happiness is everything, or is it? Explorations on the meaning of psychological well-being.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology ,  57 (6), 1069-1081.
• Seltzer, L. F. (2008). The path to unconditional self-acceptance. Psychology Today. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evolution-the-self/200809/the-path-unconditional-self-acceptance
• Tartakovsky, M. (2016). Therapists spill: 12 ways to accept yourself. Psych Central. Retrieved from https://psychcentral.com/lib/therapists-spill-12-ways-to-accept-yourself/
• Vasile, C. (2013). An evaluation of self-acceptance in adults. Procedia–Social and Behavioral Sciences, 78 , 605-609.
• Yahne, R. (2016). 8 affirmations for confidence and self acceptance. HuffPost Blog. Retrieved from https://www.huffingtonpost.com/rachael-yahne/8-affirmations-for-confid_b_10122734.html
• Zatzick, D. F., & Johnson, F. A. (1997). Alternative psychotherapeutic practice among middle class Americans: I: Case studies and follow-up.  Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry ,  21 (1), 53-88.

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What our readers think.

Thank you for this well-written, comprehensive piece on self-acceptance. I so appreciate all the resources offered in it as well. Many thanks!

this is so amazing! I’ve been practicing the unconditional self-acceptance and it’s drastically changed my life. Self-love and self-acceptance make for a happy life 🙂 Thanks a lot for sharing this.

Thanks so much for this information, it has really motivated and changed my way of thinking.

Ms Ackerman: In 1972, my first wife escorted me to consult a psychologist. After several psychotherapist over the years, one recommended, in 1987, that I practice, writing in the mornings and evenings, the following affirmation: ” I love myself; I accept myself, right now. I am intelligent; I am a worthwhile man.” This post of yours accentuates the positive! I am afraid the Truth is too good to be TRUE, though. But I like it; I like it; I like it! I accept vulnerability and shame, and my shadow. This is deep. Thank You

This article has been especially helpful to me since I have struggled greatly with low self esteem due to the drudge of dealing with Schizoaffective Disorder. I am 36 years old & just beginning to attempt to seek self-acceptance. Since accepting the fact of feeling a lot of self-doubt has been very uncomfortable & it is difficult to concede that I have self-defeating views, the parts of this article I could relate to have been most enlightening and comforting. Thank you for your expertise.

I love these resources! I’ve been finding guided meditations really helpful in bringing awareness to the voice of self judgment and criticism so that I can begin to let them go. This is a helpful one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNuHGr-znj0 . Thank you for this amazing post!

Dear Author I am deeply inspired by your Master task , it helped me a lot to encourage my students in my positive Psychology. Thank You Dear. Sr.Brigitta

This is a brilliant resource on self-acceptance and learning to apply acceptance to our lives. Thank you for this.

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5 things everyone should know about acceptance.

The first person to pose the idea of "acceptance" to me was my first therapist. We were discussing my relationship with my dad (cliché, I know), and she suggested I "accept" that I might never have the relationship with him I desired. I was appalled.

Excuse me? You're my therapist. Aren't you supposed to have the answers to how I can fix this?

As I got older, I began to understand why desiring something else—something that was, for the most part, out of my control—was causing me more pain than accepting that, at least for now, this was the way it was going to be. Here are five more things I've come to realize about acceptance that you might not have considered:

1. Acceptance does not mean liking, wanting, choosing, or supporting.

No one is suggesting you like, want, or support whatever it is that you're accepting. But by struggling against the pain—by resisting and rejecting it—we create undue suffering. It doesn't mean that you've chosen or endorse what you're accepting. It doesn't mean you like your anxiety, want your chronic pain, would choose your body, or support an injustice that's happened to you or someone else.

Rather, you're choosing to allow it to be there when you can't change it in that moment. To make space for it. To give yourself permission to be as you are, feel what you feel, or have experienced what you've experienced without creating unproductive shame or anxiety. The pain might still be there, but some of the suffering will be alleviated.

2. Acceptance is an active process. It must be practiced.

Remember that accept is a verb. It's an active process, one that must be practiced consciously. It's rare that we one day choose to accept our emotional or physical pain, our bodies, our difficult relationships, or our pasts, and never think about it again.

It can require effort at times (or most of the time, at least initially). It can be frustrating at times. But, like creating a clearing in a grass field by walking the same path many times, every time you practice acceptance toward something, you create and strengthen neural pathways in your brain, facilitating ease in the future.

It's natural to vacillate back and forth between feelings of acceptance and feelings of resistance. Make space for the spectrum of experience, and notice your internal critic get quieter.

3. Acceptance doesn't mean that you can't work on changing things.

Many people believe that acceptance is a sign of apathy. Passivity. Giving up. Relinquishing agency. However, this doesn't have to be the case. Practicing acceptance does not necessarily mean you won't be able to make a change. You can accept your body and still change it, accept your emotions and acknowledge their impermanence, and accept your behavior one day when you might change it tomorrow.

4. Acceptance doesn't mean you're accepting it's going to be that way forever.

A decade later, the relationship I now have with my dad is galaxies different from what it used to be. I wouldn't say that's due entirely to acceptance, but it does show that acceptance doesn't always mean whatever you're accepting will be that way forever.

Try to focus your acceptance on the present, alongside an open and realistic gaze at the future. Focusing too much on the present can be counterproductive, as a large part of acceptance involves letting go of the desire that things will change—detaching from hope that, in some cases, creates suffering.

But sometimes imagining practicing acceptance forever can seem daunting, overwhelming, or impossible, so try to find that sweet spot where you're accepting the current moment but not under the pretense that things will change in the future.

5. We can practice acceptance toward our experience, people, appearance, emotions, ideas, and more.

Acceptance can be practiced in all areas of your life: You can exercise it toward your current experience or reality, others' beliefs or ideas, your appearance, your emotions, your health, your past, your thoughts, or other individuals.

Again, this doesn't mean you necessarily endorse whatever it is that you're accepting in these realms; rather, you recognize that you can't change the current nature of this exact moment, and accepting manages anxiety and helps calm.

I encourage you to consider how acceptance has benefited your life in the past, and how you can practice it more in the present.

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15 Radical Acceptance Coping Statements (2024)

This guide presents the key facts about radical acceptance coping statements.

You’ll learn what they are, how and when to use them, plus why they’re so powerful. 

There’s also a list of 15 coping statements for you to use.

This is a topic that often proves very useful for my life coaching clients when they’re going through difficult times. 

I hope it helps you out in whatever situation you’re currently struggling to accept. 

Let’s dive right into it.

Radical Acceptance Meaning

Radical acceptance is the practice of accepting situations that are out of your control, rather than resisting it or letting your emotions run wild.

Its origins are based in Buddhist teachings and Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT).  

How Do You Explain Radical Acceptance?

Radical acceptance is based on the concept that suffering comes not from pain, but from your attachment to it.

When you resist – by trying to avoid the situation or deny your strong emotions – you remain attached to the pain.  

When you accept the pain, the situation loses its power over you. Before you know it, the suffering begins to ease.   

What you resist persists, what you embrace dissolves.

While grief, guilt, anger, shame and disappointment are normal emotions. At the same time, they are difficult emotions that don’t feel good. So, it’s common to try and escape from these and other painful emotions, rather than accept reality.

That’s why radical acceptance exists. It’s not passive. You’re consciously practicing radical acceptance – and this guide is packed with ideas for how to do that. 

What Radical Acceptance Is NOT

Radical acceptance doesn’t mean you agree with what’s happening to you. That would be denying your feelings.

It doesn’t necessarily mean you forgive any other person responsible for the negative situations you find yourself in. Radical acceptance is an act of kindness to yourself and no-one else.

What Are Examples Of Radical Acceptance?

It’s recommended to practice radical acceptance in situations you’re unable to change or improve. If something feels unfair or too overwhelming to be dealing with, practicing radical acceptance is likely to help.

Let’s say you woke up with a huge purple pimple on your nose on the day you’re supposed to appear on television for the first time. Then, you stepped in a huge dirty puddle on the way to your car. Then, your car wouldn’t start.

These are examples of situations that are out of your control once they’ve occurred. If you were to stay angry or frustrated, that’s likely to make the rest of the day even worse. 

But that’s what’s likely to happen if you resist your feelings or dwell on the unfortunate circumstances.

A better strategy is to radically accept the current situation. This will help you ease any intense emotions. Plus, it clears your mind to logically decide your next steps. 

By the way, if you could relate to this fictional scenario, you might appreciate my guides on the Best Ways To Embrace My Imperfections and Effective Ways How To Let Go Of Expectations .

How Do You Practice Radical Acceptance Through Tough Times?

It’s not easy to practice radical acceptance exercises when you’re going through difficult times. The process requires a wise mind, for sure. 

For these exercises to be effective, it’s important to logically understand that it’s no good resisting extreme emotions when bad things happen. This achieves nothing, except making your daily life harder. 

It’s also recommended to start practicing radical acceptance every day, even with the small things that go wrong. This will make it easier to acknowledge and accept more difficult situations in the future. 

How Do You Embrace Radical Acceptance?

A person can have a hard time accepting painful experiences because they often equate it to agreeing with what happened. Some find that it would be too tough to welcome the difficult emotions that come with accepting a traumatic event. Others simply have no control over their emotional reactions when difficult situations occur, because their distress tolerance is too low. 

Once again, an understanding of how radical acceptance helps you – and experience practicing it – can really help to see things differently.  

Radical Acceptance Mantras

Mantras – or coping statements – are a great way to shift yourself into a mindset of radical acceptance.

Here are 15 coping statements to try using to help you accept situations and reduce your suffering.

• “I can’t change what has already happened.”
• “I’ve dealt with problems before and I can deal with this.”
• “I won’t stress over the things that I can’t change.”
• “I can’t change the situation, but I can control how I respond to it.” 
• “It’s okay to feel anxious or upset. I can feel pain and still deal with this effectively.”
• “I can accept things the way they are”
• “I can only control the present moment”
• “I won’t waste my time or energy fighting the past.” 
• “I might not like it, but this is what has happened.”
• “I can feel anxious and still deal with the situation”
• “I accept myself for how I’m feeling.”
• “It’s OK to feel this way.”
• “Life has ups and downs. Downs are inevitable.”
• “If I fight my negative feelings, I fuel them.” 
• “I don’t understand why this is happening, but I can accept it.”

Radical Acceptance Exercises

Radical acceptance is internal. It’s entirely based on your thoughts and feelings. That’s why coping statements and affirmations are recommended so often.

However, there are other exercises you can do to help you embrace radical acceptance.

• Deep breathing to calm the body. Focus on your breath to remain the present moment. 
• Practice mindfulness by examing your thoughts and separating yourself from them. 
• Acknowledge and accept your emotions. Say out loud how you’re feeling and why. For example: ”I am feeling anxiety/anger because my friend tried to shame me.”
• Separate your feelings from reality. What has actually happened and what are you afraid might happen?   
• Count backwards from 10. This process helps you to calm down and get back into reality. 
• Engage in journaling to better understand your emotions. 

If you are struggling to come to terms with reality or to accept your negative emotions, consider getting professional help from a therapist or a life coach . These professionals are well trained to help you improve your distress tolerance and embrace radical acceptance of your situation.

For more exercises to help you remain in the present moment, see this list of ways to develop absolute focus .  

When Is Radical Acceptance NOT Appropriate 

Radical acceptance is not always the best way forward. There are situations where it’s better to try and change the situation, rather than accept things how they are.

These include:

• if you’re being bullied, harassed or abused;
• if someone is disrespecting you;
• if you’re in physical danger.

Essentially, if it’s possible to make a positive change to your situation, you should. Don’t use radical acceptance as a crutch, because you’re too scared or lazy to make a better life for yourself.

Related Content: Expert Insights – How To Let Go Of Shame

Any Questions About These Radical Acceptance Coping Statements?

Thanks for reading my guide. I hope it made sense and can help improve your ability to deal with whatever painful events present themselves in life. 

One final thought on non-attachment. When you resist or avoid negative emotion, you also prime yourself to avoid positive emotion too. I’m sure you’ve met someone who has a hard time accepting a positive feeling in awesome situations, in case it doesn’t turn out as great as they hoped. 

If you want to experience true joy and passion, you need to embrace the ups and downs of life. When you fail to do so, you can create more problems in the long run, such as anxiety, depression or coping mechanisms such as addictions. 

Anyway, if you have a point to make or a question to ask about accepting things the way they are, take a moment to make a post in the comments section. 

It would be great to continue the discussion below.

About The Author

Bijan Kholghi is a certified life coach with the Milton Erickson Institute Heidelberg (Germany). He helps clients and couples reach breakthroughs in their lives by changing subconscious patterns. His solution-oriented approach is based on Systemic- and Hypnotherapy.

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12 Radical Acceptance Coping Statements To Deal With Difficult Emotions

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Have you heard of “radical acceptance” before?

Most people haven’t, unless they’re actively involved in dialectical behavioral therapy, or training as a psychotherapist.

Although it might sound like an oxymoron, radical acceptance is far from passive or cowardly.

In fact, coping statements associated with this technique may help you deal with difficult emotions, as well as challenging circumstances.

Below are some of the most effective radical acceptance coping statements, as well as brief explanations of why and how they work.

Hopefully, the next time you’re dealing with difficulty, they may help you work through it with greater tolerance and grace.

Speak to an accredited and experienced therapist to help you learn how to practice radical acceptance in your life. You may want to try speaking to one via BetterHelp.com for quality care at its most convenient.

1. “This is difficult, but it is temporary.”

All the difficult situations you dealt with in the past ended, right?

Well, this too shall pass, and will become another point of experience in your book of life.

Just like weather. We might experience torrential rains or blinding blizzards, but summer sunshine always comes back around again, doesn’t it? Clouds part, snows melt.

That doesn’t mean you can’t acknowledge that what’s going on right now is awful, but it is temporary.

2. “I can’t change what has already happened.”

Words can’t be unspoken, and shattered teacups can’t be glued perfectly back together.

You might be in difficult circumstances at the moment and wish you could go back five, ten years and do things differently, but that isn’t an option.

Accepting that we can’t change what has happened brings our focus back to the present moment, and helps us think about what we can do now to get things moving in a better direction.

You can’t undo getting into a relationship with a toxic person, but you can take the lessons you learned from it for a healthier future.

Similarly, you can’t undo eating that entire cake, but you can make healthier eating choices today, and tomorrow.

3. “Thoughts are just happening in my brain, they are not THE TRUTH.”

Our thoughts and emotions can spiral away from us when we’re dealing with difficult circumstances.

That said, more often than not, what’s actually going on has nothing to do with what we think is happening.

I recently worked with a young woman who was freaking out because she was sure her boyfriend was dumping her. He had been distant that day, didn’t text her at night as usual, and she went into full-on panic mode.

It was over, and she was going to leave him before he could hurt her, and and and… complete with hyperventilating and hysterical crying.

I calmed her so she didn’t take drastic action, and when they texted the next morning, he explained that his new allergy medication made him drowsy, and he’d fallen asleep putting his kid to bed.

That emotional maelstrom could have been avoided with this radical acceptance coping statement. Nothing in her head was TRUE. Just panicked thoughts, propelled by her own fears.

4. “I won’t drive myself crazy with things I can’t change.”

You’ve probably heard the expression that desire leads to suffering, and suffering leads to anger. Thank Buddhism and Yoda for that gem, but it rings true.

One reason why people suffer is the ever-present human desire to be in control. The thing is, we’re rarely actually in control of anything . 

Accepting that there’s no control in a situation may be terrifying, but it also alleviates a lot of pressure. Instead of fighting against a current, you allow yourself to be carried along by it.

You’ll get to shore and safety, just likely not the location you originally thought you wanted.

5. “Dwelling in the past keeps me from appreciating what is in the present.”

This is an issue many people struggle with, especially if they have PTSD or borderline personality disorder from past traumas. 

Many are angry, sad, and bitter about what transpired, and spend a lot of time re-living the anger and despair those situations caused.

But they aren’t in those situations anymore, and neither are you.

All we ever have is the present moment.

Every time you find yourself regurgitating past hurts, stop yourself, and bring your attention back to the present moment.

What can you see? Smell? Touch? Taste?

Now stay here, and appreciate what is. 

6. “I have dealt with problems before and I can deal with this.”

If you’re reading this article, that means you’re alive. It also means that your track record for getting through difficult circumstances is 100%. Don’t forget it.

7. “I can accept things the way they are.”

Are you familiar with the expression “ if wishes were horses, beggars would ride “? Basically, if all the wishes people made every day were actual horses, the world would be overrun by them.

We can wish things were different until the cows (horses?) come home, but those wishes won’t change what’s actually unfolding. 

There is immense peace when we accept things the way they are, without wishing they were different. Once we accept those things, we can make plans to deal with circumstances accordingly. 

Acceptance is power, and that power provides the calm we need for forward momentum. 

8. “It’s a waste of time to fight what’s already occurred.”

How much time do you spend thinking about situations that have already happened, and envisioning how you would have reacted differently?

Every minute that you do that is a minute you’re never going to get back. What’s passed is past, and can never be revisited, nor redone. As such, there’s really no point in wasting your valuable time and energy on rehashing past events. 

You don’t get a redo, but you can take the lessons you’ve learned and apply them to new circumstances as they unfold.

9. “I can feel anxious and still deal with this situation effectively.”

Many people who deal with anxiety and panic feel shame about it. They want to hide from their feelings instead of taking action, like they can’t trust their own judgements or choices.

Furthermore, they often feel like they’ll only be able to handle circumstances when they’re no longer feeling anxious. 

You can, however, be panicky about a situation and still handle it effectively. You don’t need to wait for it to pass, or for the situation to change in order to be capable. It’s absolutely okay to feel anxious, and work around/through it to get things done.

After all, you can feel thirsty, and still answer an email. Similarly, you can feel anxious, and still do the thing. You’ll just be doing it while feeling an emotion.

Although these strong emotions may feel overwhelming at times, they don’t actually rule you. You can choose to work through them, and by doing so, lessen their hold on you.

10. “I can’t change other’s actions or words, but I can choose how I respond.”

You might be upset at a coworker who keeps dumping work on you, leaving you feeling overwhelmed and disrespected. Or triggered by something your parent or spouse says to you.

It’s up to you to set clear boundaries and say “no” when people overstep them.

Similarly, it’s up to you to decide whether you’re going to react to a trigger word or respond calmly once the initial emotional flash has subsided.

11. “I can accept myself the way I am.”

You’re perfect, exactly as you are.

Although you might wish you could be different, you’re a perfect expression of the universe experiencing itself. Every experience we have shapes us, and we are constantly changing and evolving.

If you can accept yourself the way you are, right now, without wishing you were different, that’s a huge step toward unconditional love.

And when you love yourself exactly as you are, you’re in a perfect position to love others that way too.

Be messy, emotional, quirky, and completely you. Because you’re amazing.

12. “It’s okay to feel this way.”

Whatever you’re feeling is absolutely okay. There are no such things as “bad” feelings: just feelings. A storm isn’t “bad”: it just is what it is. And it passes.

Feeling shame or anger because you’re suddenly hit with a wave of anxiety or guilt will just exacerbate the situation. Instead, try to remind yourself that this is a feeling, and feelings pass.

As we’ve touched upon, circumstances can never be changed sufficiently to suit our ideals. We can’t control the weather, random events, or other people’s actions.

When we accept what’s going on, as well as ourselves, unconditionally, then we have a firm foundation to create real change.

These coping statements can help to rein in strong emotions that are spiralling out of control. They bring us back to this moment, this breath. We accept what’s going on without condition or judgement. We don’t hold our breath until the circumstances better suit our preferences, or comfort level.

What we resist, persists.

When we radically accept what is, unconditionally, then we have the power to respond and adapt as needed. 

Those unruly emotions no longer control us.

Not sure how to practice radical acceptance, but would like to? Talking to someone can really help you to handle whatever life throws at you. It’s a great way to get your thoughts and your worries out of your head so you can work through them.

Speak to a therapist about it. Why? Because they are trained to help people in situations like yours. They can help you to develop a radical acceptance mindset and guide you through any challenging times you are facing now so that you are equipped to do it yourself in the future.

BetterHelp.com is a website where you can connect with a therapist via phone, video, or instant message.

While you may try to work through this yourself, it may be a bigger issue than self-help can address. And if it is affecting your mental well-being, relationships, or life in general, it is a significant thing that needs to be resolved.

Too many people try to muddle through and do their best to overcome issues that they never really get to grips with. If it’s at all possible in your circumstances, therapy is 100% the best way forward.

Here’s that link again if you’d like to learn more about the service BetterHelp.com provide and the process of getting started.

You’ve already taken the first step just by searching for and reading this article. The worst thing you can do right now is nothing. The best thing is to speak to a therapist. The next best thing is to implement everything you’ve learned in this article by yourself. The choice is yours.

You may also like:

• How To Live In The Present Moment: 13 No Nonsense Tips!
• The 6 Key Things You Can Do To Find Inner Peace
• How To Validate Yourself: 6 Tips For Self-Validation
• 20 Healthy Coping Skills: Strategies To Help With Negative Emotions
• How To Deal With Frustration In A Positive Way
• How To Stop Worrying About The Future: 6 Effective Tips!
• 7 Simple Steps To Not Let Things Bother You

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About The Author

Catherine Winter is an herbalist, INTJ empath, narcissistic abuse survivor, and PTSD warrior currently based in Quebec's Laurentian mountains. In an informal role as confidant and guide, Catherine has helped countless people work through difficult times in their lives and relationships, including divorce, ageing and death journeys, grief, abuse, and trauma recovery, as they navigate their individual paths towards healing and personal peace.

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How to Embrace Self-Acceptance

Sanjana is a health writer and editor. Her work spans various health-related topics, including mental health, fitness, nutrition, and wellness.

Dr. Sabrina Romanoff, PsyD, is a licensed clinical psychologist and a professor at Yeshiva University’s clinical psychology doctoral program.

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• Characteristics

Importance of Self-Acceptance

Learning self-acceptance.

Self-acceptance is the ability to accept both your strengths and your personal faults without judgment, says Meghan Marcum , PsyD, chief psychologist at AMFM Healthcare.

None of us are perfect—we all have things we would like to improve about ourselves. However, some people are able to accept their shortcomings; whereas others fixate on them and become their own worst critics.

This article explores the characteristics of self-acceptance, discusses its importance, and suggests some strategies that can help you learn to accept yourself.

Characteristics of Self-Acceptance

According to Dr. Marcum, these are some of the characteristics of self-acceptance:

• Being able to see yourself fairly accurately and recognize what you are and aren’t good at
• Embracing all the parts of yourself—even the negative ones—and being happy with who you are
• Accepting your values , preferences, resources, feelings, intuitions, and actions—both past and present
• Recognizing your strengths and accomplishments without being overly vain about them
• Learning to acknowledge your weaknesses and faults without beating yourself up over them or engaging in overly excessive negative self-talk
• Having a positive attitude toward yourself and holding yourself in high regard, without the need for others’ approval
• Seeing yourself as a whole human being, rather than defining yourself by any one characteristic, incident, ability, or weakness
• Being able to love and respect yourself

On the other hand, lack of self-acceptance can lead to a fractured sense of self deep within your subconscious , where one part of you is angry, upset, annoyed, ashamed, or disappointed with another part of you. These fragmented parts can only reconcile when you forgive and accept yourself.

Below, Dr. Marcum explains why self-acceptance is important and the negative consequences of being unable to accept oneself.

Benefits of Self-Acceptance

When you are accepting of yourself you tend to worry less about what others think . This helps you view situations with more clarity and makes you less likely to take on harsh criticism of yourself.

How you feel about yourself can also play an important role in determining your overall well-being. A 2018 study notes that self-acceptance can help instill a sense of well-being, which in turn helps you build quality relationships with others and ensures personal growth and development.

Meghan Marcum, PsyD

Self-acceptance helps you feel better about yourself and makes you feel capable of dealing with life’s challenges.

What Happens When You Don't Accept Yourself

On the other hand, Harvard Medical School notes that lack of self-acceptance can be harmful to your health and your psychological well-being.

In fact, a 2014 study found that having low self-esteem and a negative view of oneself was linked to lower levels of gray matter in parts of the brain that regulate emotions and manage stress. This can increase one’s risk of emotional disorders and stress-related health conditions.

As a result, lack of self-acceptance can lead to:

• Mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety, or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
• Low self-confidence and a fear of failure
• Avoidance of people or situations that trigger negative feelings
• Relationship issues due to a lack of firm boundaries
• Self-hatred and a tendency to engage in negative self-talk (“Why did I think I could do this? I’m not good at anything—others are much better than I am”)

Without self-acceptance, people essentially devalue themselves and this often has a negative impact on all areas of their life, including their work, friends, family, health, and well-being.

Dr. Marcum suggests some strategies that can help you learn to accept yourself:

• Embrace your values: It’s important to identify, articulate, and embrace your personal values and beliefs. Thinking and acting in line with your values can help strengthen your sense of identity , improve your self-respect, and make it easier for you to accept yourself.
• Set healthy boundaries: You may find that you need boundaries in various aspects of your life, such as your work, your relationships, your time, and your finances. Set boundaries and stick by them. Don’t let others infringe upon your boundaries or take you for granted. This can help prevent mistreatment, which you may find difficult to accept on a subconscious level.
• Forgive yourself: If you’ve made a mistake, acknowledge it and learn from it, but don’t berate yourself for it repeatedly. Learn to forgive yourself for your mistakes.
• Avoid self-blame: Recognize that you are not the cause of all the negative situations you encounter. Try to be objective and evaluate other factors that may have played a role in the circumstances.
• Don’t compare yourself to others: Try to be a better version of your previous self, instead of making comparisons to others.
• Focus on positivity: Make an effort to see the silver lining in every situation. Rather than focusing on what you did wrong, try to identify at least one thing you did right. If you have a negative thought about yourself, reframe it and replace it with a positive one instead.
• Keep a journal: Maintain a journal where you note down your strengths and accomplishments, as well as your weaknesses and disappointments. If you are having difficulty accepting something, it can be helpful to note down your thoughts about the situation and what you could have done differently. This can help you implement changes in the future and act more in accordance with your values.
• Try loving-kindness meditation: Loving-kindness meditation is a form of meditation that can help you build positivity, compassion, and equanimity. It involves thinking positive thoughts for yourself, appreciating yourself just the way you are, and saying affirmations out loud. 
• Seek help: It may be helpful to see a mental health professional, if you feel that a lack of self-acceptance is disturbing your peace of mind, causing you to experience symptoms of anxiety or depression , interfering with your ability to eat or sleep, affecting your work, or harming your relationships.

A Word From Verywell

Accepting yourself can help you be happy and peaceful, and lead to a sense of well-being. On the other hand, lack of self-acceptance and a negative view of yourself can cause you to have low self-confidence and a greater risk of conditions such as depression and anxiety. 

Fortunately, there are steps you can take to promote self-acceptance. Focus on your strengths, avoid blaming yourself for things beyond your control, and most importantly, forgive yourself for your mistakes.

Morgado FF, Campana AN, Tavares Mda C. Development and validation of the self-acceptance scale for persons with early blindness: the SAS-EB . PLoS One . 2014;9(9):e106848. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0106848

Columbia University. What does "self-acceptance" feel like?

Anderson University. Self-acceptance and self-compassion .

Virginia Department of Health. Self-acceptance .

Klussman K, Curtin N, Langer J, Nichols AL. The importance of awareness, acceptance, and alignment with the self: a framework for understanding self-connection . Eur J Psychol . 2022;18(1):120-131. doi:10.5964/ejop.3707

Su H, Wang L, Li Y, Yu H, Zhang J. The mediating and moderating roles of self-acceptance and self-reported health in the relationship between self-worth and subjective well-being among elderly Chinese rural empty-nesters: An observational study . Medicine (Baltimore) . 2019;98(28):e16149. doi:10.1097/MD.0000000000016149

Harvard Medical School. Greater self-acceptance improves emotional well-being .

Bingöl TY, Batik MV. Unconditional self-acceptance and perfectionistic cognitions as predictors of psychological well-being .

Agroskin D, Klackl J, Jonas E. The self-liking brain: a VBM study on the structural substrate of self-esteem . PLoS One . 2014;9(1):e86430. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0086430

Zeng X, Chiu CP, Wang R, Oei TP, Leung FY. The effect of loving-kindness meditation on positive emotions: a meta-analytic review . Front Psychol . 2015;6:1693. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01693

By Sanjana Gupta Sanjana is a health writer and editor. Her work spans various health-related topics, including mental health, fitness, nutrition, and wellness.

Everything You Need to Know About Acceptance Criteria

When you’re creating, building, or developing a product – whether it’s software, a marketing campaign, or something else – how do you know that what you’ve made fulfills your customer’s expectations? Enter, acceptance criteria: the conditions required for the customer, product owner, or stakeholder(s) to accept the work you’ve done.

These criteria are not inherent to the scrum framework , but many scrum and agile teams use them to organize work and deliver results that delight.

Acceptance Criteria Defined

Acceptance criteria are defined as the conditions that must be satisfied for a product, user story, or increment of work to be accepted. While not a part of the Scrum Guide, AC can be a useful tool teams may choose to use to improve the quality of product backlog items.

Also shortened to the acronym AC, these conditions are pass/fail. Acceptance criteria are either met or not met; they're never only partially fulfilled.

AC are often expressed as a set of statements. These statements should be:

• Clear, so that everyone understands them
• Concise, so that there’s no ambiguity
• Testable or verifiable 
• Focused on providing customer-delighting results

Acceptance criteria do not focus on “how” a solution is reached or “how” something is made. Instead, they illuminate the “what” of the work you are doing. For example, the criteria may be: 

Users can pay with Google Pay or Apple Pay at checkout.

The spirit of acceptance criteria is not to tell you how to do it, for example:

Install a Wordpress plugin that allows you to create a checkout page.

Write HTML that makes it possible to pay with Apple Pay or Google Pay.

These statements get at how the work will be done, not the conditions for accepting the work. It’s up to the developers on the scrum team to decide the how of fulfilling the acceptance criteria.

The agile practice of formally stated acceptance criteria started in software development, but today they are applied to a wide array of deliverables in addition to software products across diverse industries, from app development to Human Resource departments and beyond.

Acceptance Criteria vs. User Stories: What’s the Difference?

For some scrum teams, a user story is the smallest chunk of work and one way to express a product backlog item. Your team may use something other than user stories to define and describe PBIs. Many teams simply leave their PBIs as PBIs. 

Acceptance criteria are not the same thing as a user story. Instead, they complement one another. 

A user story is a brief description of your customer's needs, written from their perspective. It describes their goal or problem they’re trying to solve. The acceptance criteria are what should be done to solve their problem or achieve their goal.

In this way, the user story describes the “why” of the work, while the acceptance criteria describe the “what.” The “how” is decided by developers as they work through the sprint.

Who Should Write the Acceptance Criteria?

What does your customer want, expect, or need from the product you are making? An answer to this question will help us identify the acceptance criteria. After all, our goal is to delight the customer.

Because we all work in unique industries and jobs, acceptance criteria don’t always originate from a traditional customer. Instead, it may be your product owner’s or stakeholders’ criteria or those of another type of client or user. 

A Process You Can Use to Create Acceptance Criteria

Some of the opportunities for defining acceptance criteria include:

• Discussions with customers or clients
• Discussions with stakeholders
• During product backlog refinement
• During the scrum sprint planning event
• In team brainstorming
• After evaluating customer or end-user feedback

On a scrum team, the product owner is often responsible for writing these conditions of acceptance; however, the development team can and should be involved to offer their expertise and feedback while aligning with the product owner’s expectations. 

The scrum master on the team can support the process by looking for potential ambiguities with the criteria, helping the team understand the purpose of AC, and encouraging developers to speak up if the criteria are unclear. 

In these ways, it truly can be a team effort, even though the product owner’s proximity to the customer is often the starting point for generating the criteria.

When Should You Write Acceptance Criteria?

In scrum, we continuously talk about product backlog items as part of planning and refinement activities. Initial criteria are often identified during backlog refinement ; however, finalizing the acceptance criteria should be done right before development begins. 

Just-in-time acceptance criteria ensure you’re working with the latest information, including the customer’s goals and expectations. A good time to finalize the criteria is during the sprint planning event . The scrum team reviews the statements, discusses any issues or clarification needs, and decides whether the work can be brought into the sprint.

How to Write Acceptance Criteria

Templated approaches to writing the criteria can be found across the internet. When it comes to the Scrum Guide, there is no guidance because these criteria are separate from the lightweight framework of scrum. Try different formats – either custom or from a template – and see what works well for your team.

Use a bullet list, checklist, or verification list.

Many teams simply use a bullet list. You can easily generate the list and place it in the user story or wherever else you’re organizing the work in your sprint.

Whether you use a bullet list, a table, a numbered list, a short description, or a sticky note, a custom approach can be a great option. Consider including your acceptance criteria format as the topic of a retro so you can inspect and adapt its effectiveness for your team.

Use the scenario-based template.

Other agile teams will use a format known as scenario-based, in which you use a formula: Given that; when; then :

• Given (some given context or precondition), when (I take this action), then this will be the result

A Checklist for Writing Acceptance Criteria

• Clear to everyone involved
• Can be tested or verified 
• Either passes or fails (cannot be 50% completed, for example)
• Focus on the outcome, not how the outcome is achieved
• As specific as possible (fast page load speed vs. 3-second page load speed)

What Are Some Examples of Acceptance Criteria?

For a checkout page on a store’s website:

• PayPal, Google Pay, Apple Pay, and all major credit cards can be used to complete the transaction
• Shopping cart item(s) are displayed
• Items can be deleted from the shopping cart
• User is prompted to log in if they aren’t already

For an upcoming conference:

Given that I’m a registered attendee

When I enter the conference venue

Then branded signs will lead me to the registration table

For an emailed water bill statement:

• Displays amount due
• Displays due date
• Displays possible late fee
• Allows user to log in and pay easily 
• Lets user know how they can contact the office with questions or concerns

For a health clinic’s pre-appointment paperwork:

Given that I’m an existing health center patient,

When I schedule an appointment online,

Then I will receive the fillable pre-appointment paperwork electronically

Examples of Bad Acceptance Criteria

When applying agile practices in the real world, you should feel empowered to experiment and see what works. But generally, you can see below why writing AC in certain ways is ineffective:

Acceptance criteria:

• The online shopping cart uses checkboxes to select which items you want to delete

Explanation:

This criterion will probably go over fine with your development team and is unlikely to cause any immediate issues; however, it technically tells the development team “how” to make it possible to remove items on the checkout page: by including a checkbox. 

User story:

As an online shopper, I want to be able to remove items from my shopping cart on the checkout page so that I can easily make last-minute adjustments without clicking the back button.

• The online shopping cart allows users to remove items when they’re on the checkout page, and when you view an item detail page, you can see a “Quick Shop” option

Explanation: The criterion technically goes beyond the scope of the user story. This can lead to too much work being lumped into one user story.

Key Takeaway

As it goes with all things agile and scrum, there’s always some gray area between “good” and “bad” ways of writing acceptance criteria. The tool is yours to experiment with. Something that one team considers “bad” may work well for another team and its customers. 

Use your retrospective to inspect how the acceptance criteria are working with the approach you're using. Adapt as necessary.

Common Mistakes to Avoid When Writing Acceptance Criteria

While there are many ways to customize acceptance criteria to your team and your context, there are also common pitfalls that tend to run counter to the purpose of AC:

• Ignoring the user perspective
• Telling the developers “how” to do the work
• Writing acceptance criteria too early
• Waiting until development is underway in the sprint to write the acceptance criteria
• The criteria are broad
• The criteria are vague
• There are a cumbersome number of criteria (a large quantity may indicate you need to break up the work into smaller parts)

Most agilists find that they can get the most benefit from acceptance criteria by writing them clearly while focusing on user experience and customer expectations.

Acceptance Criteria vs. Definition of Done

You may be wondering how these conditions of satisfaction are different from the definition of done (DoD). After all, the work of the product backlog item is done once the criteria are met, right?

While it’s true that both DoD and acceptance criteria indicate a done state, they aren’t quite the same.

The definition of done is typically expressed as a list of statements that must be met in order to call the work potentially shippable or to otherwise declare that work complete. The big difference is that the same DoD applies to every product backlog item and does not change between items.

The acceptance criteria are different for each product backlog item.

Here is an example of DoD:

• Code is completed
• Live on production

Here’s another one:

• Brand compliant
• Peer reviewed
• Stakeholders have been informed

Sometimes a team will call something “done” when referring to the acceptance criteria. If the terminology causes confusion, you may want to consider calling the work “accepted” instead of “done” when referring to the acceptance criteria.

The Value of Acceptance Criteria to Agile Organizations

Acceptance criteria benefit agile teams and scrum teams because the criteria:

• Create a clear line of understanding from end user to product owner to developers
• Let the developers know exactly what they need to accomplish during the sprint
• Can be created quickly and concisely, supporting the value of working software over comprehensive documentation (while also supplying documentation if it is needed for compliance in your industry)
• Create clarity and reduces ambiguity so that a self-managing development team can do their work efficiently 
• Reduce the odds that your customer will feel their expectations were unfulfilled
• Provide criteria for testing the product

Try using them with your team if you aren’t already. You may find that acceptance criteria improve communication and collaboration, and connect you more closely with what your customer needs.

Support the Team With Clear Acceptance Criteria

If you work on a scrum or agile team and you’re interested in gaining the knowledge, credibility, and skill of an experienced scrum team member, please explore our certifications . 

As a Certified Scrum Product Owner , you can make sure your customers receive products that delight in part by helping the people who build the product understand what the client wants and needs. As a Certified ScrumMaster , you’ll coach your team to greatness by supporting their growth and understanding of scrum principles, values, and practices - including acceptance criteria.

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Table of Contents

What are project acceptance criteria, how do you document project acceptance criteria, what value does a clearly defined set of acceptance criteria bring to your projects, importance of defining project acceptance criteria in your projects.

My team and I once worked on a SharePoint-based project for the tax team of one of our clients. The last few months of the project were a roller coaster ride for the entire team. There were multiple occasions when the project was delayed due to unforeseen risks and challenges. Some of the issues included conflicts with the change management board, conflicts with the server support team, and operational issues with the networking and hardware support team.

However, despite these challenges, we were able to successfully deliver the project within the planned schedule and budget . We implemented some of the best practices in project management and software development, including a well-defined requirements document and a clearly defined set of acceptance criteria the customer approved.

During the final approval of the solution, as we marked one deliverable after another off on our checklist, we were happy we had put in a great deal of effort into defining project acceptance criteria before we started the project. In this article, we will take a look at what acceptance criteria are all about, and the importance of preparing a clearly defined set of acceptance criteria for project management.

However, despite these challenges, we were able to successfully deliver the project within the planned schedule and budget, by implementing some of the best practices in Project Management and software development. Besides other best practices, they included the preparation of a well-defined requirements document and a clearly defined set of acceptance criteria which was approved by Mandy. During the final approval of the solution, as Mandy struck off one deliverable after another on her checklist, we were happy we had put in a great deal of effort into preparing a defined set of Project acceptance criteria before commencing our project.

In this article we will cover the following topics that will give you a broader understanding of the importance of preparing a clearly defined set of acceptance criteria for your projects:

• What are project acceptance criteria?
• How do you document project acceptance criteria?
• Importance of clearly defined set of acceptance criteria

Project Acceptance criteria are criteria that include performance requirements and essential conditions, which must be met before project deliverables are accepted ( PMBOK® Guide ). They set out the specific circumstances under which the user will accept the final output of the project. They are criteria that we can measure, achieve, and prove to our clients that our work is complete.

Project Acceptance Criteria Examples

• Backup and Restore testing has been completed successfully.
• User acceptance testing (UAT) has been completed, and the Senior User/Project Executive has signed off on user acceptance testing.
• All requirements have been formally approved.
• Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is in place to be used in situations where the IT system is unavailable, for whatever reason.

According to the PMBOK® Guide, 4th edition, the acceptance criteria are documented in the requirements document and the Project scope statement . Acceptance criteria are often also considered an important part of contractual agreements on external projects. 

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1. Set the Client's Expectation Level

The success or failure of your projects depends on the team’s to meet the clients’ documented or perceived acceptance criteria. By having a clearly defined set of acceptance criteria, you will be able to set the client’s expectation level and lay the groundwork for their perception of the completed product. Inaccurate or missing acceptance criteria can lead to low customer satisfaction levels, missed delivery dates, and development cost overruns.

For instance, on the project we mentioned earlier, one of the acceptance criteria that we worked on was whether performance testing was conducted to evaluate the SharePoint application to the agreed performance criteria. This would check whether the expected response time was met or not. The response times of the SharePoint application had drastically reduced in the last few years despite a marginal increase in the number of users across the globe. 

Business users also complained of different response times in different parts of the globe, where the client had set up its business operations. Therefore, it was very important for us to include this as one of the acceptance criteria—and set the expectation level of the client regarding the application response times and provide them with a range of values in seconds, such as 1 – 2 seconds to refresh the page and so on.

2. Make the Difference Between Getting Paid or Not on Projects Where the Client Is Paying for Deliverables

Acceptance criteria are typically used for projects where the client is paying for deliverables or the completion of the project’s phases. You should ensure that the acceptance criteria developed are relevant to the deliverables, binary (either acceptable or not acceptable), measurable or tangible (whenever possible), and tied to payments (whenever appropriate). 

Clients are known to refuse to sign off on the deliverables for two legitimate reasons: either the project results have not met their needs, or they themselves were not clear about their needs. By working towards a clearly defined set of acceptance criteria before you start working on your deliverables, you will be protecting yourself, your project team, and your company.

Since the project sponsor is the person responsible for approving the final product, they are also responsible for approving the acceptance criteria. All things being equal, if the acceptance criteria are met, there should be no reason why the sponsor should not approve and accept the final product.

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3. Avoid Miscommunication on Internal Projects

If the client is internal, you will be able to avoid political maneuvering and miscommunication by developing a clearly defined set of acceptance criteria. A few years ago, I had the opportunity to manage an application development project for the testing horizontal within our organization. The web application was built to help the clients and senior management, with a lot of relevant information regarding the business of this particular horizontal. One of the biggest challenges in these projects was managing communications with a geographically dispersed team based out of development centers in different cities.

Most of the Stakeholders on this project (including myself) volunteered for this project in addition to our regular responsibilities. As a result, many stakeholders found it difficult to contribute to the project in parallel with their daily jobs. Therefore, it was difficult to gain a common, clear, and shared understanding among the stakeholders on several issues in the project, including requirements gathering. 

This was one of the reasons why it took us almost a month to gather a clear set of requirements and acceptance criteria, then and get it approved by VP who was also the project sponsor. Another issue was that all the primary stakeholders including business analysts, testing experts, and testing managers, had different perceptions of the end product.

As the application was being developed, I had to set up a lot of knowledge transfer sessions for my team with the business analysts and the testing experts. It was quite difficult for me to gain a consensus on the requirements among these stakeholders. But as a team, we persisted in our efforts to gather a clear set of requirements and the acceptance criteria and were able to get them approved. This helped us a lot in reducing the time required for coding and development, and avoid other conflicts which would have eventually ensued had this not been done.

Acceptance criteria represent a specific and defined list of conditions that need to be met before a project can be considered completed and the project deliverables are accepted by the client.

Having clearly defined acceptance criteria can help the project team in many ways, including:

• Setting client expectations regarding the end product
• Measuring, achieving, and proving to your clients that the work is complete
• Gaining formal signoffs from the client on the deliverables in the project
• Protecting yourself and your company from issues such as non-payments from clients.

Clearly defined acceptance criteria can also help you avoid miscommunication and political maneuverings on internal projects. Now you understand why they are included as a part of the contractual agreement with clients, as well as in the project scope statement and requirement documents.

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Acceptance Criteria

What is acceptance criteria.

In Agile, acceptance criteria refer to a set of predefined requirements that must be met to mark a user story complete. Acceptance criteria are also sometimes called the “definition of done” because they determine the scope and requirements that must be executed by developers to consider the user story finished.

As a product manager or product owner, you may be responsible for writing acceptance criteria for the stories in your product backlog . This article will define acceptance criteria, look at a few examples, and explore some best practices for writing it.

In agile methodologies, acceptance criteria refer to a set of predefined requirements that must be met to mark a user story complete. They are a form of agile requirements documentation . As with most things agile, there are varying definitions of acceptance criteria.

• Acceptance Criteria Definition 1 : “Conditions that a software product must satisfy to be accepted by a user, customer or other stakeholder.” ( via Microsoft Press )
• Acceptance Criteria Definition 2: “Pre-established standards or requirements a product or project must meet.” ( via Google )

Acceptance criteria are also sometimes called the “definition of done” because they define the scope and requirements of user stories. They give developers the context needed to execute on a user story. Watch our short explainer video, below.

What are a few traits of effective acceptance criteria?

• Acceptance criteria should be testable. Since these requirements help formulate the definition of done for your engineers, they need to be easy to test. And the results of these tests must leave no room for interpretation. Tests should reveal straightforward yes/no or pass/fail results.
• Criteria should be clear and concise. You aren’t writing comprehensive documentation here. Keep your criteria as simple and straightforward as possible.
• Everyone must understand your acceptance criteria. Your criteria is useless if your developers can’t understand it. If you’re unsure about whether something is clear, take the time to ask and make adjustments until things are clear.
• Acceptance criteria should provide user perspective. Acceptance criteria is a means of looking at the problem at hand from a customer’s standpoint. It should be written in the context of a real user’s experience.

Why Do You Need User Story Acceptance Criteria?

Acceptance criteria serves several purposes for cross-functional teams.

Let’s dive in a little more into the benefits of acceptance criteria.

A user story on its own leaves a lot of room for interpretation. Acceptance criteria clarifies the expected outcome(s) of a user story in a concrete manner. It also gives developers and QA a clear-cut way to determine whether a story is “done.”

You want to incorporate these requirements into your process for many reasons. First of all, when you define your desired outcome before development begins, you help promote alignment and shared understanding. This understanding helps reduce the likelihood of surprises down the line.

Who is Responsible for Writing Acceptance Criteria?

Virtually anyone on the cross-functional team could write acceptance criteria for user stories. Usually, the product owner or manager is responsible for writing acceptance criteria or at least facilitating the discussion about it. The idea behind that is to ensure that the requirements are written with customer needs in mind, and who better to understand customer needs than a product person? That said, it is widely recommended to make writing acceptance criteria a group activity that includes both dev and QA representatives.

Involving developers and QA as you define acceptance criteria has several benefits. For one, it gives you another opportunity to communicate with developers about product strategy and vision. Secondly, developers and QA staff can help point out any missing pieces or identify dependencies that may not have been clear before. Finally, these discussions can help you as the product owner better understand what your user stories look like through the eyes of developers. So whenever possible, define done together.

When Should User Story Acceptance Criteria Be Written?

Many product managers and product owners choose to write acceptance criteria during backlog grooming sessions. They then bring this criteria to sprint planning meetings to discuss with developers and refine based on their feedback. But there is no rule for specifically when to write these requirements out.

At the very latest, acceptance criteria should be defined before development begins. Otherwise, you’ll miss many of the benefits of having it in the first place. It’s also worth noting that writing acceptance criteria too early can backfire as well. Remember, the agile methodology encourages frequent reprioritization based on new findings. And that means you can reprioritize user stories from sprint to sprint.

One way to balance this uncertainty is to only write acceptance requirements when you decide to move something into the sprint backlog. This way you aren’t spending time writing out specs for user stories that ultimately get deprioritized. Once you’ve moved user stories into the sprint backlog, it’s fairly certain that they are up next. So you can go ahead and loosely define acceptance requirements and later discuss and finalize them during sprint planning meetings.

How Should You Format User Story Acceptance Criteria?

There’s no single right or wrong way to write acceptance criteria for a user story. Ultimately, you need to establish a format and procedure for creating acceptance criteria that consistently works for your team. Expect a little bit of trial and error if you’re new to this. Most agile organizations use one of two formats for their acceptance criteria:

1. Given/When/Then Acceptance Criteria

The Given/When/Then style of user story requirements is similar to the traditional formatting for user stories themselves. The standard user story follows the template: “As a (intended user), I want to (intended action), so that (goal/outcome of action).” User acceptance criteria in given/when/then format follows the template: “Scenario: (explain scenario). Given (how things begin), when (action taken), then (outcome of taking action).”

It looks a little confusing until you see a realistic example of a user story paired with given/when/then acceptance criteria. So here’s an example.

Example Acceptance Criteria – Given/When/Then

User story :

As a product manager.

I want to score potential ideas.

So that I can decide what to include on my product roadmap.

Acceptance criteria for that user story could be:

Scenario : The product manager adds potential ideas and ranks the best ideas based on benefit versus cost.

Given that I have added two or more ideas and scored them using the Benefit vs Cost scoring model

When I click the Rank button

Then ideas are sorted with the top-scoring ideas at the top.

2. Verification List Acceptance Criteria

Formatting your user story requirements as a checklist is another viable option. It’s also extremely straightforward. You simply work as a team to define a list of pass/fail statements that the functionality must meet in order to be marked complete.

At the end of the day, the format of your acceptance criteria doesn’t matter as much as its practicality. If your team understands it and is able to work off of it, you’ve managed to create effective acceptance criteria. No matter what the format looks like.

The Bottom Line:

Acceptance criteria is an important component of every user story that an agile team works on. It clearly defines the scope, desired outcomes of, and testing criteria for pieces of functionality that the delivery team is working on. The process of creating and agreeing on acceptance criteria itself is also an invaluable communication opportunity between developers and product.

See also: Acceptance Test , Definition of Done , Backlog Grooming , User Story

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7 Tips for Writing Acceptance Criteria with Examples

by Kamlesh Ravlani | May 1, 2017 | User Stories |

Acceptance Criteria Definition

Acceptance Criteria defines how a particular feature could be used from an end user’s perspective. It focuses on business value, establishes the boundary of the feature’s scope and guides development. These are unique to a user story and form the basis of user story acceptance testing which establishes the conditions for the success of the feature.

Acceptance criteria could establish a boundary that helps team members to understand what’s included and what’s excluded from the scope of the user story. The criterion of user story acceptance not only informs the product behavior in happy path scenarios, it also guides the user experience when things don’t work as intended. It describes what would be verified by the acceptance tests.

When the product owner verifies particular user story acceptance criteria and the developed feature passes it, the development of the user story is considered a success. Pass / fail type results allow AC to form the basis of creating tests that can be automated and executed.

Tips for writing Acceptance Criteria

An essential aspect of writing good user story involves writing good acceptance criteria. It is the key to effectively testing the developed functionality. It allows the team members writing acceptance tests to understand the scope of the user story or Product Backlog Item (PBI).

How to define acceptance criteria? Here are some useful tips for writing AC for user stories. Some of the Scrum teams I’ve worked with preferred to use these ac tips as a checklist for writing good acceptance criteria. Acceptance criteria checklist helped with consistency and acted as training wheels for new team members. I encourage the teams to keep revisiting and revising these tips to fit their need. I would also forewarn to avoid using these tips as fixed rules.

7 Tips for Writing Acceptance Criteria:

• Each product backlog item or user story should have at least one acceptance criteria. Hey, don’t take writing acceptance criteria lightly or think of skipping it.
• Acceptance Criteria is written before implementation – this is obvious yet frequently missed by teams. Write acceptance criteria after the implementation and miss the benefits.
• Each acceptance criterion is independently testable. Why shouldn’t it be?
• Acceptance criteria must have a clear Pass / Fail result. Write complex and long sentences at your own risk.
• It focuses on the end result – What. Not the solution approach – How.
• Include functional as well as non-functional criteria – when relevant.
• Team members write acceptance criteria and the Product Owner verifies it. It confirms the PO and the team have shared understanding of the user story.

Acceptance Criteria examples

Example 1: user story and it’s acceptance criteria:.

As a credit card holder, I want to view my statement (or account) balance, so that I can pay the balance due.

the acceptance criteria for this story could be:

• Display statement balance upon authentication. Say for example $1560
• Display total balance. For example $3560. Here the balance due from the current period is $2560 and past balance due is $2000.
• Show Minimum payment due . For example $140
• Show Payment due date. For example May 16th of the current month
• Show error message if service not responding or timeout. For example ‘Sorry, something went wrong with the service. Please try again.’

Example 2: User story and it’s acceptance criteria:

As a teacher, I want to generate assessment report, so I can evaluate student performance.

• Show a student’s current assessment score.
• Display past assessment score of the student.
• Provide an option to Print / Save / Share. (By the way, this could be split as a separate user story by itself).
• Display error message if service not responding. (If a team chooses to add the Error Message as their definition of done for all stories – where ever applicable, it could be omitted from the acceptance criteria).

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Challenges with writing Effective Acceptance Criteria

Despite being simple to write, yet powerful, the task of writing acceptance criteria looks challenging for most teams. It’s not uncommon for teams to make simple mistakes and repeat errors when writing Acceptance Criteria. Some of the most common challenges and mistakes I’ve noticed with acceptance criteria from user stories I’ve seen in the real world are:

Pretty Narrow: Acceptance criteria is written very specific to a particular use case, scenario or technical approach.

Keep in mind, when you already have a solution in mind while writing the acceptance criteria, you end up leading your developers in that particular direction. In most cases, that may not be the optimum / best way of solving the challenge. Also being too narrow may mean that your testing may skip other user behaviors not specified in the AC. This increases the chances of missed testing, increases the risk of failure.

Very Broad: Acceptance criteria is written pretty broad.

Too broad acceptance criteria usually increase the risk of the user story being too bulky and may introduce fat in the features. Good acceptance criteria as discussed above should establish boundary so that the developers know how much to code and where to stop.

Complex: Acceptance criteria is complex, includes jargons and technical details.

Good acceptance criteria should be written in simple English and should be easy to understand. The key is to keep it simple.

What are the challenges you find with writing acceptance criteria?

Let me know in comments and I’ll address your most common challenges.

Who writes Acceptance Criteria?

Let me first burst a common myth that the Product Owner should write the acceptance criteria.

In fact, I recommend, you try ‘avoiding’ the Product Owner writes all the acceptance criteria. Why so?

Who writes the acceptance criteria, or who defines the acceptance criteria is not a matter of rules, availability or convenience.

What matters is – writing acceptance criteria (AC) should help establish and communicate shared understanding between the product owner and the development team about solving a customer’s challenge or building the product capability.

When you encourage the team members to write the AC, they must first understand the intended purpose of the feature and the outcome it must generate for the users.

Writing the acceptance criteria clarifies the scope for the team and also allows for the Product Owner to verify if the team and the PO have a shared understanding of the feature.

Alternately, Acceptance criteria may also be developed jointly by the development team and the product owner .

What is the right amount of Acceptance Criteria?

Well, if you’ve too many AC for a single product backlog item (PBI), chances are you could split it into multiple PBIs.

Tip: Have too many criteria as part of one story and chances are you’ll easily run into at least one criteria that isn’t passing.

That delays the delivery of that user story, which delays the feedback, ultimately increasing the risk of failure. I recommend, whenever you can, please go ahead and split the user story right there. Thank me later 🙂

Splitting user stories helps in keeping each user story small, improves chances of delivering it early, seeking feedback faster, hence reduces risk. Yes, there is effort involved in splitting the user stories as well.

Hence, the PO and the development team have to identify for each user story, what is a barely sufficient detail of AC. Photo source: Kenny Rubin, Innolution  where Ken discusses the pros and cons of adding too many details versus no detail and establishes the need to identify what is barely sufficient detail to get started.

It’s important that your team members spend a little time and get good at writing acceptance criteria . It’s benefits are long lasting and ROI of the effort is simply too high to ignore.

Rule of Thumb: My rule of thumb for number of acceptance criteria is to have between 1-3 per user story. If a user story have between 4-5 of these, I start exploring options to split the story. If there are 6 or more criterion then the chances are the team won’t be able to implement it all in one sprint, definitely this story needs to be split in more than one.

Remember small user stories with lesser scope can be delivered comfortable within a sprint and presented to users for feedback. Early feedback reduces risk and impact of failure.

When to write Acceptance Criteria?

Acceptance criteria (AC) should be written anytime before the user story is deemed ready to enter the Sprint Planning. Usually it is written during the product backlog refinement meeting. AC can be progressively developed and added to a user story during the refinement. However it should not be kept for when the development team start implementing a user story.

“If we write and review the acceptance critera before implementation begins, we’re more likely to capture the customer intent rather than the  development reality”  writes Steve Povilaitis.

To ensure the AC is defined for each user story upfront, many teams add writing acceptance criteria for User Stories to their User Story Readiness Checklist . User Stories that do not have at least one AC can’t enter the Sprint Planning itself. Well, that shouldn’t prevent the team from exploring the intent or refining the AC after the Sprint Planning / before the implementation when the team members have conversations with the Product Owner.

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A How to Guide for Writing Acceptance Criteria with Examples

A guide for Scrum acceptance criteria.

What is acceptance criteria?

Acceptance criteria examples and templates., acceptance criteria and user stories, acceptance criteria and the definition of done., action plan.

If you’re exploring Scrum to see how it all works, you’ve come to the right place.

Learning Scrum for the first time can be a bit overwhelming. There are a lot of new terms and concepts in Scrum , and sometimes we don’t feel confident we’re using the right words. You may find yourself asking:

What is acceptance criteria, and how is it different from user stories in Scrum?

Acceptance criteria plays a crucial role in Scrum because it clarifies what it means for something to be done . This article will cover three essential topics to help you.

• Templates and acceptance criteria examples.
• Acceptance criteria and user stories.
• Acceptance criteria and the definition of done.

Acceptance Criteria defines the requirements which must be met for the sprint deliverables to be accepted by the product owner . 

You’re at the end of the sprint . You and your team have worked hard to deliver new functionality based on the user story you were given. As the product owner presents it, there is confusion about how to take the right action or if it was successful. 😞

You might have created some incredible new functionality, but if it’s not presented at the right moment in the user journey, then the benefit is lost.

Clarity is a crucial ingredient in Scrum, especially clarity about whether or not something is done . Acceptance criteria supports this kind of completion clarity by providing clarity about the user experience of new functionality that results from a user story .

Acceptance criteria is part of the standard the product owner uses when deciding whether to accept work during the sprint review. It expresses the requirements in terms of what action the user can take to achieve their goals.

Acceptance criteria format

Let’s look at the format of an acceptance criteria statement.

• Given that [context allowing me to take an action]
• When [I take the action]
• Then [a result occurs indicating success or failure]

Now let’s break each of those down a little.

• “Given that…” Here you define the context in which your user can take the necessary action to complete their goal. You might have created some incredible new functionality, but if it’s not presented at the right moment in the user journey, then the benefit is lost.
• “When…” Here you define the exact action the user will take. This will feel unnecessary at times because you will think, “it’s so obvious what action they take. Why do I need to spell it out?” Here’s the thing. You are the expert, and you created the functionality, so it is obvious to you. But what’s important is if it’s obvious to someone who sees it for the first time.
• “Then..” Here you define what happens next. Have you ever clicked a place-order button and then been unsure if it worked. You’re hesitant to click it again because you don’t want to double order, but you’re unsure how long you should wait. Providing feedback to the user on the success or failure of their action is critical.

3 acceptance criteria examples

Now, let’s look at a few acceptance criteria examples.

Checkout process functionality

• Given that I’ve added all the items to my cart and I’m logged in,
• When I click the check out button,
• Then the checkout page loads with all my payment and shipping information preloaded.

Advertising campaign 

• Given that someone fits our ideal customer persona,
• When they search for keywords we’re targeting,
• Then a link to a compelling offer is displayed above the fold.

Marketing campaign

• Given that a customer is already receiving email communications,
• When they visit the site and engage content related to a specific product,
• Then they will be automatically subscribed to nurturing campaign highlighting that product.

If you’re ready to give acceptance criteria a try, download this quick template .

You can print it out and cut it into acceptance criteria note cards to use with your team.

Related Guides

Acceptance criteria and user stories are key tools used in Scrum to describe the work to be done. Let's take a closer look at how they're similar, how they're different, how they work together and then look at some examples.

Both acceptance criteria and user stories have a simple but effective format. They both bring clarity to the value you’re creating for the end-user.

How is acceptance criteria different than user stories in Scrum?

Acceptance criteria and user stories fundamentally answer different questions. They each contribute complementing aspects of clarity.

A user story focuses on the identity, goals and motivations of the user you’re designing for. It emphasizes the why of the new functionality.

• Acceptance criteria focuses on the actions taken by the user to meet their goal. It emphasizes the what of the new functionality.

Acceptance criteria and user stories are a dynamic duo of user-centric development.

How do acceptance criteria and user stories work together?

Because acceptance criteria and user stories answer different questions, when combined, they provide a fuller picture of the work that must be done.

The user story really comes first because it answers the why . If there is no why , then the work isn't really delivering value. But once the why is clear and identifies the user's goals and motivation, the team must answer the question of what . What will they create to help the user achieve their goal?

The acceptance criteria takes a tighter focus on specifically how the interaction will be designed and what the end state will be.

Together user stories and  acceptance criteria answer the questions of

• Did we build the right thing?
• Did we build it right?

Examples of acceptance criteria and user stories being used together.

Here’s an example of using a user story from my post on writing good user stories .

• As a student studying project management,
• I want to understand the general ideas of Scrum,
• So that I can determine if something I want to pursue a certification in.

Acceptance Criteria

• Given that I’m reading through the What is Scrum Guide ,
• When I click the FAQ section,
• Then I see a question about certification without having to scroll.

This example also illustrates how you can apply the tools of user stories and acceptance criteria to creative work like content creation . 

The user story is created first, and the acceptance criteria is built from it. They are a dynamic duo of user-centric development.

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The Definition of Done is another Scrum concept that many people ask how it compares to acceptance criteria. When it comes to using Scrum to get stuff done, Acceptance Criteria and the Definition of Done both play important roles

How is acceptance criteria different than the definition of done in Scrum?

The definition of done is also a criterion. It outlines what must be true for any product backlog item to be considered “done.” This criterion is broad and flexible enough to be applied to all backlog items yet concrete and specific enough for it to be clear whether or not it has been met.

So the definition of done applies to all work done by a team and answers the question, “What are we committing to do every time we complete a task?”

In comparison acceptance criteria applies to a single task or product backlog item and answers the question, “What are we committing to do on this specific task ?”

So you see acceptance criteria is specific to a given task and definition of done applies to all tasks. So every task should have both acceptance criteria and definition of done defining what it means for the task to be done. 

How do acceptance criteria and the definition of done work together?

Have you ever been on a project where everything seemed mostly done, but nothing seemed really done?

Acceptance criteria and the definition of done work together to tackle the challenge of work staying undone. Because it’s so frustrating when you expected something to be done, and it’s not. Or someone says it’s 80% done, but a week later and it’s still 80% done. 

The truth is… It’s either done or it’s not.

Acceptance criteria and the definition of done are two tools to help combat the challenge of undone work. When both are included on a given task, there should no longer be any ambiguity. If the task's acceptance criteria has been met and the team's definition of done requirements have been met, then the task is done. Anything short of that and it's not done yet.

Examples of acceptance criteria and the definition of done being used together.

Let’s look at an example of acceptance criteria and definition of done for a creative team delivering marketing collateral.

Will use the same acceptance criteria from above for a marketing campaign.

• When they visit the site and engage content related to product X,

So you can see this acceptance criteria is specific to a given task. If at the end of the sprint this isn’t how the functionality works, then the task isn’t done. Period.

Now how might the definition of done play a role here?

That same Scrum marketing team my have this as their definition of done.

• User testing performed and results shared with the client.
• At least one demo performed during the sprint for the client.
• Success criteria met
• Assets delivered to the client.
• Assets and design files archived in the proper folder.
• Product owner accepts the user story.
• Invoice submitted.
• Customer survey sent.
• Evaluation scheduled.

Remember the definition of done is the commitment of the whole Scrum team to every task. So for this to be called done it has to meet all the definition of done criteria as well. 

This can seem a little OP at first, but look back through the list. These are basic things that are just part of doing the job. However by explicitly stating them and committing to them as a team you can change the team culture around getting stuff done.

Leaning Scrum is a process

There are a lot of new terms when learning the Scrum essentials , and I hope this post helped clear up some of the vocabulary around acceptance criteria. If you want to learn more about Scrum in general, check out my What is Scrum? A Guide for Everyday People to Learn Scrum . If you have more questions, please feel free to reach out on LinkedIn .

Still not sure about your next step with Scrum? I offer a couple of free coaching sessions each month. You can signup for a free 1-hour coaching session , and we can work together to identify a good next step for you.

Frequently Asked Questions

Acceptance criteria, what's an example of acceptance criteria.

Acceptance criteria is structured using the template

Here are 3 examples:

Advertising campaign

Marketing campaign (Did you know you could use Scrum for marketing )

• Then they will be automatically subscribed to nurturing campaign highlighting that product. Or

See more acceptance criteria examples and learn to write how to create your own or learn other essential scrum terms .

What is acceptance criteria in scrum?

Acceptance criteria is written using the following structure:

Learn more about how acceptance criteria is used in Scrum and explore the essential Scrum glossary .

How to write an acceptance criteria statement?

Acceptance criteria is broken down into three parts.

Learn more about templates for writing acceptance criteria or learn other essential scrum terms .

How are acceptance criteria and user stories different?

Acceptance Criteria focuses on the action taken by the user to meet their goal. It highlights the what of the new functionality.

See more acceptance criteria examples and learn to write acceptance criteria or learn other essential scrum terms .

How are acceptance criteria and the definition of done different?

Acceptance criteria is specific to an individual task, but the definition of done applies to all work done by a team. Acceptance criteria answers the question, “What will be true when this task is completed.” The definition of done answers the question, “What are we committing to do every time we complete a task?”

See more examples and learn to write acceptance criteria or learn other essential scrum terms .

Scrum User Stories

What is a user story.

They keep the team focused on the value they create for the end-user and are written using the following format:

• As a… [user]
• I want to… [goal]
• So that I can… [motivation] 

See examples of user stories to learn to write your own and explore the essential Scrum glossary .

What are story points?

They aren’t absolute measurements like hours or days but measure the amount of work a PBI takes relative to other PBIs. Typical measurements include using Fibonacci numbers or t-shirt sizes.

Learn to use story points and explore the essential Scrum glossary .

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Project Acceptance Criteria: Checklist and Examples

• July 28, 2021
• Emerging Tech
• Reviewed by Andrius Keblas
• Edited by Olha Didenko

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Table of Contents

It’s hard to argue that any project’s ultimate results heavily depend on how well all the parties and team members understand each other’s needs and wants. Software development is not an exception. Creating technology solutions is usually a somewhat complicated process that often involves people with different backgrounds (i.e., CEO, CTO, tech specialists, marketers, etc.).

How do all these people who speak different professional languages agree on a shared product vision? And what exactly do clients mean when they say they need stunning solutions to make their businesses work better?

The answer lies in the acceptance criteria, and we will discuss them in detail in this blog post. What are the acceptance criteria? Who writes them, and who needs them? And the most crucial question – why? We will provide you with some examples to better understand how the acceptance criteria may look like in practice and capture their vital role in the project’s success. But let’s start from the basics and take a brief look at other essential components of specifications.

Specifications, Epics, and User Stories

Software Requirements Specifications or simply “SRS” or “specs” is a document that describes all the product features and requirements. Specifically, it is used to define how the system is meant to operate and what functionality is required to satisfy user needs. Also, specs usually contain some non-functional requirements such as security, performance parameters, etc.

SRS (Software Requirements Specifications) often consists of epics and user stories. Simply put, an epic is one big piece of product functionality. For example, registration and user profiles are epics. Specs are divided into epics that allow everyone involved to grasp the big picture and discuss high-level product details (for example, between tech leads and CEOs).

The specific tasks within an epic are written in the form of user stories. they describe the required functionality from the user’s perspective. These are, for instance, “Sign-up with e-mail,” “Log out,” etc. As a rule of thumb, the following wording is used to create a user story:

As a [type of user], I want to [action] so that [outcome].

So here is a user story to describe a task for a system when a user forgot his or her password:

As an unauthorized user, I want to have an opportunity to recover my password using my email to have a new password for my account.

However, as you may see, the above statement lacks many details and creates room for ambiguity. That’s why user stories usually go with a set of acceptance criteria. Let’s cover them next.

In this video, you will learn about Agile User Stories and Acceptance Criteria.

What are the Acceptance Criteria?

In short, acceptance criteria are the conditions that a specific user story must satisfy to be considered as completed, you may think of them as a checklist that helps verify if a coding team built the right feature and whether it is completed correctly.

Acceptance Criteria can include details such as:

• User experience;
• Impact of the current User Story on the existing functionality;
• Key performance metrics (e.g., speed);
• What the User Story should do.

To figure out the minimum set of actions your team needs to take, you must thoroughly understand the complexity of a certain function. If a new feature is involved, it will be essential for you to write as many detailed Acceptance Criteria as possible to help your team avoid confusion.

There are no templates of acceptance criteria. Neither would you find an exhaustive list of requirements that should be covered by acceptance criteria associated with a particular user story. Every product is unique, thus, everything depends on the client’s demands and specifics of the system to be developed.

For instance, acceptance criteria may describe the functionality, expected level of performance, constraints, restrictions, interaction with other features, etc. Let’s say a coding team needs to work on a “Reset password” user story. In such a case, the acceptance criteria might be the following:

• The user will need to enter a new password.
• The new password must differ from the previously used password.
• The new password must contain at least eight characters.
• The new password must not contain braces.

The above example is oversimplified, of course. In practice, acceptance criteria may be written in different formats (for instance, bullet points or a table or scenarios). The only requirement is that they should cope with their primary task, i.e., show what exactly should be in place to make the system work as intended.

Types of acceptance criteria

Now that we have further defined the acceptance criteria and figured out what functions they perform, let’s talk about their variety. There are three main types of acceptance criteria:

• scenario-oriented (drawn up as scenarios illustrating each criterion);
• rule-oriented (documented as a list);
• custom criteria (can be presented as plain text or a table).

Scenario-oriented acceptance criteria

Many teams that work with the Agile methodology prefer the scenario-oriented type. This approach helps to overcome the requirements and involves manual and automated acceptance testing. This approach was inherited from behavior-driven development (BDD).

A popular approach to writing acceptance criteria is the scenario-oriented Given / When / Then approach. This format is a structured approach for many test environments such as Cucumber. The Given-When-Then pattern allows you to automate a test to determine if a requirement is developed or not.

You can describe Acceptance Criteria in paragraphs or immediately in the Given-When-Then format:

• Given is a clause that describes the state before the user entered the script.
• When – something happens: the user takes some action.
• Then – a description of how the system responds to user actions.

For example, if you create a website with two types of users (registered users and guests), the acceptance criteria will be written for the user story that defines requirements for the logged out user:

Example of acceptance criteria : User story – Sign Up

System user signs in with valid credentials

“Given I’m a logged-out system user

and I’m on the Sign-In page

When I fill in the “Username” and “Pa

password” fields with my authentication credentials

and I click the Sign-In button

Then the system signs me in”

Given / When / Then helps reduce the time it takes to write test cases because when writing criteria, we describe the system’s behavior in advance.

Rule-based acceptance criteria 

Unfortunately, the Given / When / Then structure is not always suitable for writing acceptance criteria. For example:

• You are working with user stories that describe system-level functionality that requires different quality assurance methods.
• The target audience does not provide enough exact details for testing acceptance criteria.
• Suppose you need a description of the design and user experience limitations of a function. Developers may be missing many important details.

In cases where Given / When / Then does not suit you, you can use the rule-based AC format. A rule-based form assumes a set of rules that describe the behavior of a system. Based on these rules, you can write specific scripts.

Typically, criteria generated using this form look like a simple bullet list. For example:

As a logged-out user

I want to be able to sign in to a website

So that I can find access to my personal profile

Key functions of Acceptance Criteria

So why are acceptance criteria critical? All participants of the development process take advantage of them in some way. So let’s take a look at how acceptance criteria contribute to the project’s success.

Help reach consensus  

As mentioned, software development usually involves people having different backgrounds. By formalizing the client’s expectations, acceptance criteria allow for sharing a product’s single vision to everyone in the project. They determine the set of requirements that is sufficient to build an envisioned and working solution.

Allow for accurate estimation

Acceptance criteria show how the product should function in great detail. It helps a development team correctly estimate the work in terms of time and costs. Also, acceptance criteria allow programmers to plan the process in the most efficient way.

Define the minimum conditions for success

A coding team relies on acceptance criteria to determine a detailed must-have feature scope. In other words, acceptance criteria constitute a list of minimum requirements for a user story to be considered “done.” Without them, there would be too much room for uncertainty, and programmers would have a hard time figuring out what exactly they have to build.

Serve as a basis for testing

All acceptance should be testable, i.e., have precise pass and fail results. That’s why the quality assurance team uses them to check if a system works as it’s meant to work. On top of that, acceptance criteria come in handy when testing specialists write autotests .

Importance of acceptance criteria

As we have already figured out, acceptance criteria actually determine the desired outcome of a user story, show when it is completed, and is ready to be tested by QA specialists. If you still are not 100% convinced why acceptance criteria are vital, we would like to count some reasons that highlight  the importance of acceptance criteria and prove that they influence the final outcome:

• Manage expectations of the function that the user story was created for;
• Make the project scope and requirements accurate and clear;
• Help to create the needed testing criteria to figure out if the function will fail or pass.

Who creates Acceptance Criteria?

As a rule, acceptance criteria are written by a product owner or a business analyst (depending on the chosen project management methodology). However, all participants of the development process, including clients, can contribute.

If a client documents acceptance criteria, they should be reviewed by tech specialists. It is required to ensure that there are no constraints from the technical perspective and all the requirements can be implemented.

The development team has an opportunity to make some inputs to acceptance criteria during the discussion of a particular user story. Yet, there are two essential things to consider. First of all, acceptance criteria must be expressed in a simple and not technical language. Because, as we already mentioned, people with no technical background will use them. And, secondly, acceptance criteria should describe what to build rather than how to make it.

Examples of Acceptance Criteria

Here you can find several more examples of how acceptance criteria actually look like as a component of a user story.

How to write acceptance criteria?

And of course, to make life easier, we will provide you some tips to create correct and convenient acceptance criteria from our Business Analyst:

• always write a scenario name for each acceptance criteria, it won’t take too much time but will bring your team a lot of benefits. First of all, the list of points for the review meeting will be ready. Secondly, in case you forgot how to act in a specific case, you can search for the correct answer by the scenario name.use “AND”, “OR” and “BUT” to make no ambiguity to your acceptance criteria and provide more clear steps for the dev team
• use simple English to be sure all the specs users will fully understand you
• draw a high-level diagram with positive and negative scenarios not to miss something and to visualize the process to everyone.

Significant challenges and mistakes in writing acceptance criteria

At first glance, it may seem to you that there is nothing complicated in writing acceptance criteria, but it is not. When, in practice, teams start working on them, they face difficulties. Let’s take a look at methods to help avoid future problems.

Overly broad acceptance criteria make the user’s story vague. Correctly written ACs, as we have said, must define the scope of work so that developers accurately allocate time and effort for development.

When must Acceptance Criteria be defined?

All acceptance criteria must be defined before development starts. No acceptance criteria could be added after a coding team begins to work on a particular user story. And this is a crucial aspect that has a considerable impact on the ultimate success of a project.

In case acceptance criteria were not specified in advance, they would likely describe what programmers build currently without any previously defined plan. It is unlikely the developers’ actions will 100% fit the client`s requirements.  As a result, a deliverable would not meet the expectations, and it is an entirely negative outcome for both a client and a coding team.

Checklist: components of acceptance criteria

Acceptance criteria are tasked to provide developers with a clear understanding of how this part of the solution`s functionality should look, what aims it has, and what value it brings to users. We covered the core tips to help you make your acceptance criteria complete, valuable, and easy to understand for the development team and the stakeholders as well.  Hence, acceptance criteria should include the following:

• Think of real user experience and behavior to ensure that it will be valuable for users;
• Define how a particular user story influences the solution`s functionality;
• Set the limit to the number of details which acceptance criteria must include;
•  The more accurately the acceptance criteria are defined, the more accurate estimation the development team will provide, so the details still matter;
• Identify key performance metrics;
• Determine what a particular user story provides;
• Write acceptance criteria considering the customers` views and expectations;
• Make sure the criteria are accurate and clear for the stakeholders and development team, don`t use vague words and phrases.

You can also download our checklist with acceptance criteria components and use it for your goals. 

The bottom line

Acceptance criteria play an important role in software development. In particular, they help all sides of a project (i.e., clients, partners, tech team, marketers, etc.) get a single vision of a product and stay on the same page all the way through. As a result, programmers know exactly what to build, and clients receive a decent solution that meets their expectations.

There are no strict rules on how to write acceptance criteria, and all participants of the project are allowed to make their inputs. In practice, the same set and format of acceptance criteria depend on a project’s specifics, features of a product to be developed, project management methodology, and other factors.

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Job Offer Acceptance Letter and Email Examples

Tips for Accepting a Job Offer With Examples

Before You Accept the Offer

How to accept a job offer.

• What to Include in an Acceptance Letter
• Writing a Job Offer Acceptance Letter
• Letter Accepting a Job Offer Example

Example of an Email Accepting a Job

Sending an email to accept a job offer.

 Andresr /E+ / Getty Images

You’ve just been offered a new job and have decided to accept the offer. How should you formally accept the position? It’s always a good idea to accept a job offer by sending or giving your new employer your acceptance in writing. Do you be sure that everything you expected is in the offer, and ask about anything you have questions about before saying "yes."

When you receive the offer, you don't have to accept it immediately. It's acceptable to ask for time (typically 24 hours to consider it) even if you think you'd like to accept. That way, you'll have time to make sure the terms of the offer are what you expected, and get a response to any questions you may have.

Once you've had time to review the offer and are ready to accept, ask for the offer in writing so you're sure your expectations match what the employer is offering.

The best way to accept a job offer is to confirm the details in writing. Even if you have verbally accepted the position, it's important to confirm the terms of employment and the date you'll be starting your new job.

A job acceptance letter allows you to demonstrate your professionalism and make sure there is no confusion about the precise terms of the offer, such as compensation, vacation time, or benefits. It's also an opportunity to express your gratitude for being offered the position, as well as your enthusiasm for taking on the new role.

What to Include in a Job Offer Acceptance Letter

When you're ready to respond in the affirmative, take the tip to write a letter or an email confirming your acceptance of the offer. Your letter can be concise, but should include the following:

• Thanks and appreciation for the opportunity
• Written acceptance of the job offer
• The terms and conditions of employment (salary, benefits, job title, etc.)
• Starting date of employment

Advice on Writing a Job Offer Acceptance Letter

Format your letter correctly. The letter can be sent by email or mail. If you're sending a hard copy through the mail,  format the letter as you would any business letter . Include your contact information and phone number, even though it’s on file with the employer.

Keep it brief. While you want to include all the most important information, this doesn’t mean your letter should be long and drawn out.

The employer is busy, so a concise letter that includes all the necessary information is best.

Express your gratitude. Demonstrate how thankful you are for the new job opportunity. You might want to briefly explain why you’re particularly excited to work for the company. For example, you may want to share your desire to contribute to their sales team, or your passion for their mission. Again, keep this polite but brief.

Proofread and edit. You don’t want to create any last-minute reasons for the employer to take back the job offer, such as a sloppy or unprofessional letter.

Watch out for spelling and grammar errors.

Go over the letter a couple of times to make sure you catch all the typographical errors and grammar mistakes. While you’re at it, it’s a good idea to double-check the spelling of the name of the person who offered you the job.

Example of a Letter Accepting a Job Offer

This is a job acceptance letter sample.  Download the letter template (compatible with Google Docs or Word Online) or read the example below.

Example of a Letter Accepting a Job Offer (Text Version)

Jason Burnett 87 Washington Street Smithfield, CA 08055 (909) 555-5555 jason.burnett@email.com

August 17, 2020

Mr. Michael Hynes Director of Human Resources Smithfield Granite and Stonework 800 Marshall Avenue Smithfield, CA 08055

Dear Mr. Hynes,

As we discussed on the phone, I am very pleased to accept the position of Advertising Assistant with Smithfield Granite and Stonework. Thank you again for the opportunity. I am eager to make a positive contribution to the company and to work with everyone on the Smithfield team.

As we discussed, my starting salary will be $48,000, and health and life insurance benefits will be provided after 30 days of employment.

I look forward to starting employment on August 31, 2020. If there is any additional information or paperwork you need prior to then, please let me know.

Again, thank you very much.

Handwritten Signature  (hard copy letter)

Jason Burnett

Here's an example of an email sent to accept a job offer. The email confirms the start date, salary, benefits, and vacation leave.

Subject line : Janet Fieldstone - Job Offer Acceptance 

Dear Mr. Campbell, 

It was wonderful to speak with you on the phone yesterday about the Marketing Director role at ABC Company. I'm thrilled to formally accept this job offer. I'm looking forward to working with you, and the rest of the senior management team at ABC, on charting a new direction for marketing strategy. 

As we discussed, my start date will be May 13, 2020, with an annual salary of $65,000, and three weeks of paid leave annual. This salary does not include company provided health insurance, which is effective on my start date. 

I'm looking forward to seeing you next Monday. Please let me know if there is any paperwork or additional information you need from me beforehand, or if there is any documentation I should bring along on my first day.

I'm always available by email, but feel free to call if that's more convenient (555-555-5555). 

Again, thank you so much for this opportunity. 

When sending an email letter, put your name in the subject line (Your Name - Job Offer Acceptance). This helps ensure that your message will be opened and read.

No matter which way you send the letter, make sure to address the letter to the person who offered you the position.

CareerOneStop. " Is the Offer Right ?" Accessed July 1, 2021.

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How to write acceptance criteria: Definition, formats, examples

Editor’s note : This article was last updated on 5 July 2023 to include more context around the role of acceptance criteria in agile methodologies, concrete steps and best practices for writing acceptance criteria, and additional formats such as Given-When-Then and Gherkin language.

Almost every product manager and backlog owner uses acceptance criteria in one way or another. Acceptance criteria help us clarify requirements, give directions, and provide a checklist when reviewing the final work item.

However, all acceptance criteria are not created equal. There are various ways to use them.

In this guide, we’ll define what acceptance criteria are, how to write them effectively for your user stories, the role of acceptance criteria in agile methodologies, and more.

What are acceptance criteria?

Acceptance criteria are a set of predefined conditions that a product or feature must meet to be accepted by the customer, project stakeholders, or the product management team. They serve as an essential guide for developers during the development process and help ensure that the final product aligns with the intended user needs and business goals.

Defining acceptance criteria in advance enables teams to better manage expectations, streamline communication, and reduce potential misinterpretations throughout the product development lifecycle.

Why are acceptance criteria important?

Acceptance criteria play a vital role in product management because they:

• Provide clear guidelines — Acceptance criteria outline what is expected from a product or feature. This clarity helps to align all stakeholders, including developers, testers, and the business team, on what needs to be achieved
• Facilitate and understanding across teams — By clearly defining the expected outcome of a feature or product, everyone knows what to aim for and what will be considered a success, in turn minimizing the potential for misunderstandings
• Form a basis for testing — Testers can use acceptance criteria to determine whether a product or feature works as intended. If the developed feature meets all the outlined conditions, it can be marked as complete
• Help manage customer expectations and enhance satisfaction — When customers are involved in defining acceptance criteria, they have a better understanding of what to expect from the final product, leading to increased satisfaction when those expectations are met

Acceptance criteria in agile methodologies

Acceptance criteria play an indispensable role in guiding agile development teams toward their end goal: delivering value to users with high-quality software.

Agile practices emphasize collaboration, flexibility, and customer satisfaction. Acceptance criteria support these values by ensuring all team members understand what needs to be done and how success will be measured. They provide a shared understanding of requirements and prevent scope creep by keeping everyone focused on what truly matters: meeting users’ needs effectively and efficiently.

Furthermore, well-defined acceptance criteria enable effective testing processes within agile teams. By setting clear expectations upfront, testers can design more accurate test cases that align with the desired outcomes.

How to write acceptance criteria (7 steps)

Acceptance criteria serve as a critical roadmap for product managers, guiding the development process and setting clear expectations for what a finished product or feature should look like.

Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to craft create clear, concise acceptance criteria that drive successful product development efforts:

• Identify the user story — Start by identifying the user story that your feature or product is designed to address. A user story describes an action or goal from the perspective of a user, such as, “As a blog reader, I want to be able to save articles so that I can read them later”
• Define the desired outcome — Once you’ve identified your user story, it’s time to define what success looks like. This is where you describe the desired outcome in clear and specific terms. For example, “The blog reader can easily save any article and access it later from their personal reading list”
• Detail the requirements — Next, detail all requirements that must be met for this outcome to be achieved. This could include technical specifications, design elements, or other factors that contribute to achieving the desired outcome
• Create scenarios — Scenarios are specific instances of how users might interact with your product or feature. By creating these scenarios, you can better understand how your acceptance criteria will play out in real-world situations
• Ensure clarity and simplicity — Acceptance criteria should be simple and easy to understand for everyone involved in the project, from developers and designers to stakeholders and end users
• Seek feedback — Before finalizing your acceptance criteria, seek feedback from all relevant parties. This helps ensure that your acceptance criteria are comprehensive and aligned with everyone’s expectations
• Review regularly — As work progresses on your product or feature, regularly review your acceptance criteria to ensure they’re still relevant and useful

Best practices for writing acceptance criteria

Writing effective acceptance criteria is a crucial part of the product management lifecycle and you should take care to ensure it’s done with a clear end goal in mind. Below are some tips and best practices for writing clear, easy-to-understand acceptance criteria for your user stories:

• Start with the end in mind — Before you begin writing your acceptance criteria, it’s essential to have a clear understanding of what you want to achieve with your feature or product. What does success look like? What needs to happen for the product or feature to be considered complete?
• Be specific and concise — Avoid vague language and make sure each criterion is precise and easy to understand. Each criterion should describe a specific aspect of the functionality
• Use simple language — Your acceptance criteria should be easily understandable by all members of your team, regardless of their technical knowledge
• Focus on the user — Remember that acceptance criteria are about defining what will satisfy the user’s needs and solve their problems. Keep the user at the center of your writing process
• Collaborate with your team — Writing acceptance criteria should not be done in isolation. Involve your team in this process as they can provide valuable insights and help ensure that everyone is on the same page about what needs to be achieved
• Testable conditions — Make sure each criterion describes a condition that can be tested once development is completed
• Include both functional and non-functional requirements — While functional requirements describe what a product does, non-functional requirements deal with how well it performs certain functions or its qualities like security, performance, design, etc.

Acceptance criteria example

Understanding and effectively utilizing acceptance criteria can be a game-changer. These crucial guidelines serve as a roadmap for development teams, outlining what a finished product or feature should look like from both technical and user perspectives.

Here’s an example to show what acceptance criteria can look like in practice. The criteria described below are designed to enhance communication within your team, streamline testing processes, better manage customer expectations and ultimately increase customer satisfaction with the final product or feature delivered.

Let’s say you’re managing the registration feature for an app. The acceptance criteria below describe the user’s experience when registering using their email:

• Users should be able to register using an email address
• Registration form must include fields for first name, last name, email address, password, and confirm password
• Password field should have validation rules – minimum eight characters long, at least one uppercase letter, one lowercase letter, one number, and one special character
• Users must verify their email addresses before they can log in
• Users should receive a confirmation email after successful registration
• If users try to register with an already registered email address, they should receive an error message
• Every step in creating these acceptance criteria focused on clarity and usability from both a developer’s perspective (who would use these as guidelines for building features) and from a user’s perspective (who would interact with these features)

Prescriptive vs. guiding acceptance criteria

There are two main approaches to crafting acceptance criteria: prescriptive and guiding. Understanding whether your project requires prescriptive or guiding acceptance criteria will ultimately depend on factors such as team dynamics, project complexity, and organizational culture.

The prescriptive approach tends to be more detailed and specific, outlining exactly how a feature should function or look. On the other hand, guiding acceptance criteria provide a broader view, giving developers more freedom to find solutions while still aligning with the overall goal.

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The table below highlights the major differences between the two approaches:

Let’s take a closer look at both approaches:

Prescriptive acceptance criteria

Guiding acceptance criteria.

When someone refers to acceptance criteria, they usually mean prescriptive acceptance criteria.

You can think of prescriptive criteria as twofold:

• They serve as a detailed requirement list
• You can use them as user stories broken into smaller pieces

Example of prescriptive acceptance criteria

Let’s take a look at an example of prescriptive acceptance criteria.

Story : Transfer premium points

Acceptance criteria :

• A primary CTA button with text saying transfer points on the homepage.
• A friend dropdown list (mandatory)
• An add a friend button.
• A field for the number of points (mandatory)
• A send button
• A cancel button
• A user chooses a friend from a dropdown list
• Users can input between 100 and 1000 points to the field
• If they do not have enough points, show an error modal
• If they input too few or too many points, show an error modal
• If not, throw a standard validation error
• If yes, show another are you sure? modal
• Clicking no moves the user back to the points transfer model
• After finalizing the transfer, add the transaction to both the sender and receiver history, titled: Points transfer: {amount} from {userID} to {userID}

The purpose of prescriptive acceptance criteria

There are numerous reasons to use acceptance criteria in your product development work. The most common ones include:

Managing expectations

Managing scope.

• Serving as a basis for estimates

Acceptance criteria help manage expectations, between both the PM and the product team and the team and stakeholders .

They define precisely how a given feature will work. If your “I want to log in” user story has a “log in with Google” option in the acceptance criteria, that builds clear expectations that users will be able to log in with Google, but perhaps not necessarily with Facebook.

Good acceptance criteria leave no room for misinterpretation.

Who’s never had to cut scope to meet a deadline? Throw a rock.

Acceptance criteria help PMs with scoping activities, both when it comes to adding and removing the scope from the initiative. After all, you probably can’t remove the “I want to log in” user story, but you can strip it off fancy acceptance criteria and leave bare basics.

Acceptance criteria help you manage scope in a more granular, scalpel precision.

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Serving a basis for estimates

The vaguer the estimation object, the vaguer the estimate. Acceptance criteria provide the so-much-needed details to make development estimations more precise. After all, one could spend an hour or a week working on the “I want to log in” story, depending on the exact details of the login process.

Serving as input to test plans

Acceptance criteria serve as valuable input to the QA teams when it comes to preparing test cases. With properly-written acceptance criteria, they know exactly what to test and how a given functionality should work. Otherwise, they would probably need to ask the team, “is it a bug or a feature?” questions all the time.

At a certain level of the product team’s maturity, detailed descriptions of solutions are not only unnecessary, but often very limiting.

In such cases, writing acceptance criteria in the form of high-level, general objectives might be wiser.

It’s all about giving the team a high-level direction and letting them figure out the rest.

Example of guiding acceptance criteria

Story: Transfer premium points

Acceptance criteria:

• A user should be able to transfer up to 1000 points to a friend’s account
• The process should be easy and UX friendly
• Don’t overcomplicate. Let’s try to make an MVP within one sprint
• Include mechanics that prevent accidental points transfer
• Document and store all transfers

Such a description gives enough details to provide boundaries for the initiative while giving the team the ownership to define the exact detail. At the end of the day, product teams are best-equipped to determine the actual solution, and product managers should do all we can to empower them to do so.

Combining guiding and prescriptive acceptance criteria

Different types of acceptance criteria have different uses for the product team.

Guiding acceptance criteria works well as a form of high-level boundary. Bring the problem to the team, let them discover potential solutions, and once you decide on a direction, set boundaries for the solution based on business needs and constraints.

Then, as the team defines the details of the solution (sometimes consulting with the product managers, sometimes autonomously), let them write more detailed, prescriptive acceptance criteria that will help them to manage expectations and scope .

Ultimately, it’s not guiding OR prescriptive acceptance criteria. Both of them serve different purposes at different stages of solution development.

Acceptance criteria vs. definition of done

One of the common confusions is the difference between acceptance criteria and the definition of done.

Although they serve a similar purpose, there’s one big difference. The definition of done is shared by all user stories , while acceptance criteria are story-specific.

The definition of done is shared by all user stories, while acceptance criteria are story-specific.

Also, acceptance criteria usually work as a development checklist, while the definition of done works as a holistic process checklist.

In other words, acceptance criteria includes things that should be built as a part of the feature, such as the “log in with Google” and “email me a magic link” features.

At the same time, the definition of done describes the whole journey of the user story (such as developing, testing, writing documentation, performing stress tests, and whatever is part of the definition of done).

Only when both acceptance criteria and definition of done are fulfilled, the story is fully complete.

Given-When-Then

Given-When-Then (GWT) is a semi-structured format for writing test cases. For product managers, it is a popular method for defining acceptance criteria.

This approach, also known as behavior-driven development (BDD), allows product managers to clearly express the expected behavior of a feature or product.

The Given-When-Then structure works like this:

• Given some initial context, …
• When an event occurs, …
• Then ensure some outcomes.

For instance, consider a simple user story: “As a blog reader, I want to be able to save articles so that I can read them later.” The acceptance criteria using the Given-When-Then format might look like this:

Given that I am a registered user and logged in, when I click on the ‘save article’ button, then the article should be added to my saved articles list.

This format provides clarity and makes it easier for everyone involved in the project, from developers to stakeholders, to understand what needs to be achieved.

Gherkin language and its use in writing acceptance criteria

Gherkin is a domain-specific language used for defining acceptance tests in BDD. It uses plain English by default but supports multiple languages, making it accessible for non-programmers involved in software development projects.

The structure of Gherkin is similar to that of the Given-When-Then format. A typical Gherkin scenario consists of:

• A title that explains what’s being tested
• A Given step or steps that set up conditions
• A When step that describes the key action
• A Then step or steps that define the expected outcome

Here’s how our previous example might look written in Gherkin:

Scenario : Saving an article Given that I am a registered user and I am logged in, when I click on the ‘save article’ button, then the article should be added to my saved articles list

Using Gherkin language when writing your acceptance criteria enables you to provide your team with easy-to-understand guidelines that help streamline both development and testing processes.

There are two types of acceptance criteria. Guiding acceptance criteria serve as a high-level direction and boundaries for the product team. Prescriptive acceptance criteria serve as a more detailed checklist that helps manage expectations and scope, estimate tickets, and plan test cases.

Less mature teams usually receive requirements with a predefined set of acceptance criteria. Once the team matures, though, they write their own acceptance criteria based on the problem they are solving and high-level guiding acceptance criteria.

Although acceptance criteria are similar in concept to the definition of done, while the former relates to a shape of a specific story, the latter defines the journey every user story should go through as a part of the development process.

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Defining Acceptance Criteria for Successful Projects

1) They need to accomplish with Specifications, according to Scope, Cost and Time restrictions ( Project Success Criteria ). 2) The deliverables must be accepted by others ( Project Success Factors ).

What You Will Learn

• 1 Project success criteria (PSC)
• 2 Project success factors (PSF)
• 3 Key performance indicators (KPI)
• 4 Acceptance criteria for consulting services

Project success criteria (PSC)

These are defined as  the qualitative or quantitative criteria by which the success of a project is judged.  For example, Success Criteria may be:

• Delivered within Time and Budget tolerances
• Delivered to Specifications
• Customer Satisfaction rating achieved
• Health and Safety adherence
• Realisation of Business Benefits 
• Increased market share
• Improved productivity

From the point of view of the Project Managers, success may be defined as delivering on Time, Cost and Scope Specifications. However other stakeholders may be more concerned with business benefits. These will probably not be known at time of project completion. It is perfectly possible for a project to be deemed a delivery success but fail to produce its business benefits. On the other hand, many projects that have been delivered late and over budget have nevertheless delivered considerable business benefits.

Project success factors (PSF)

Project Success Factors (based on the concept of Critical Success Factors, CSF) are those elements within the structure and context of the project that are conductive to success. The elements can be compared to  Hygiene Factors  in that their presence will not guarantee success but their absence will markedly increase the probability of failure. Some examples of this are:

• Clear project mission
• Top Management support
• Client consultation
• Committed project personnel
• Monitoring and feedback mechanisms
• Clear communications
• Adequate resources

Key performance indicators (KPI)

Finally, we need Key Performance Indicators (KPI) in order to continuously meassure over the life of the project and anticipate any project deviations from Specification, Time or Cost requirements.  They directly measure the project performance against Project Success Criteria. Although success criteria can be qualitative or quantitative, ideally they should be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Accountable, Realistic and Timely).

Acceptance criteria for consulting services

I received recently an email from a ProjectManagers.Org member asking me the following question: “What are the acceptance criteria for a consulting service?. Results from this consulting service are only documents consisting of recommendations, there is no product.”

The first thing about services (that is, “intangible products”) is that it is very important try to “tangilibilize the service”. That is, it is necessary to make physical the project deliverables (from a work that  is   mainly intangible) in order to transmit a real practical value from the customer’s investment. We need to transform money into tangible value. This can be done through many different ways. The most common way for reaching Acceptance Criteria is by adding into the consulting services contract a “verification checklist” of deliverables that the consulting project will deliver at the end. For sure we have seen project acceptance criteria examples before, such as the following project acceptance criteria example: 

• 4 processes documented, implemented and validated by those responsible.
• 10 Quick-Wins implemented with proven results.
• 2 Practical Training seasons performed (of a duration about 4 hours each) to all the stakeholders involved in the new processes.
• 4 hard copies of a book (including a beautiful cover) wth all the processes and procedures implemented
• 4 corporate CDs/pendrives with all the documentation generated
• A Mind-Map as the project documentation catalog, for fast document finding
• A Walkthrough Report for each of the processes implemented 
• A final Performance Report of all the processes implemented
• A Sumary Powerpoint presentation of the entire project
• A final Presentation season for the Senior Management and Sponsor of the project which focuses on the “impact of the project on the everyday work operation”.

In this basic example of acceptance criteria for projects in consulting services, the customer will check at the end of the project if all agreed deliverable have been provided by the project, or there is any pending to receive and therefore the project it is not finished.

In any case, in serious customer organizations every new document has an acceptance workflow before it goes into effect. Driving your project documentation over this customer acceptance circuit usually is enough to know if you have reached  acceptance  or not. In theses cases, also it is very important in your project schedulling to include all the TIME estimates about all the steps the project document deliverables will need to go through before they get accepted. It is also important to take into account that it is probable that some of the documents will require some reworks and approvals before reaching the final acceptance.

Finally, I share with you two quotes:

Success is simple. Do what’s right, the right way, at the right time.  -Arnold Glasow.  If there is any great secret of success in life, it lies in the ability to put yourself in the other person’s place and to see things from his point of view-as well as your own. -Henry Ford. 

What is your approach to get acceptance of your projects?

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Project Scope Statement: How to Write One With Examples

Table of Contents

What is a project scope statement, how to write a project scope statement, project scope statement sample, project scope statement examples, project scope statement vs. scope of work, scope statement vs. scope management plan.

The scope of a project is the sum of all the work that needs to be executed. A project scope statement helps project managers define the boundaries of what will and what won’t be done. But scope statements aren’t just about work management.

To write a project scope statement, you’ll need to understand the project goals, work breakdown structure and requirements, among other things. Then, once you’ve defined your project scope, you can create a scope document.

A scope statement is a document that defines all the elements of the project scope as well as assumptions, project requirements and acceptance criteria. Your project scope statement will act as the primary tool for stakeholders and teammates to reference and use as a guideline to accurately measure project success.

A project scope statement is part of the scope management plan , a larger document that contains all the strategies, rules and procedures to manage your project scope. In the same way, the scope management plan is an important component of your project plan.

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Project Scope Template

Use this free Project Scope Template for Word to manage your projects better.

Now that we know what a project scope statement is, let’s learn how to write this important project management document. Similar to the five Ws of journalism—who, what, when, where, why—to properly outline your project scope statement, you must address these seven things:

1. Project Goals & Objectives

Project goals and objectives are what define the purpose of a project. Project objectives are the smaller steps that lead to the project goals, which are broader. Start your project scope document by explaining them. These goals and objectives should be documented in a project charter , too.

2. Project Requirements

Project managers and stakeholders must reach an agreement about the project scope and other project requirements such as the expected quality, risk, benefits and cost, among others.

3. Project Scope Description

It might sound easy enough, but this is the most important step. Here is where you’ll define your project scope, which is all the work that needs to be done to complete the project. Here are some simple steps to help you define the project scope.

• Use a work breakdown structure to visualize all your project tasks, deliverables, and milestones.
• List what’s within the scope of your project, and what’s out of scope. Everything that’s not included in the project scope is known as project exclusions.
• Identify project constraints, which are all the limitations such as time or cost.
• Create a scope baseline to compare your actual progress to the planned project scope.

Project exclusions and constraints are essential because they help establish boundaries for the project to exist. They also manage your stakeholders’ expectations/input and give your team members some creative limitations to work within.

4. Project Exclusions

While it’s imperative that you define the boundaries around what the project includes from the outset, it’s also extremely important that you list what this project doesn’t include. For example:

• Application updates that are planned for a later project and are intentionally not included in this project
• Restricted or rescheduled customer access to certain support lines/product features

5. Project Constraints

Project constraints are what make managing projects such a puzzle to solve. The top three constraints to managing any project are typically time, money and scope, known as the triple constraint of project management. They’re interconnected, meaning that if you pull one lever on ‘scope,’ another lever on ‘money’ or ‘time’ will also move.

But there are additional project constraints that can crop up at any time, including risk, resources, organization, method, customers and more. List all the constraints you foresee in your project, so you can try to have solutions in place ready to launch when needed.

6. Project Assumptions

Your project assumptions typically revolve around the very things that end up being constraints, including time, money and scope. For example, it’s in this section of your project scope document, “the front-end development team will be available during this project time period,” or, “the customer support team will receive new product training by x time.” It’s important to list these out as this won’t only tell key stakeholders what your primary resource needs are to make the project go, but it also gives you fast insight as to where your biggest risk factors lie.

7. Project Deliverables

List out the deliverables your team members need to produce in order to meet business objectives. This can include the product itself, instruction and installation manuals, marketing materials, press releases, advertising campaigns and more.

Your project scope statement outline helps act as a marker as you build out your full scope statement. Because while predicting the future of the project is impossible at such a high level, this is the first step to getting your project as close to the outcome as possible. By starting with the seven key statements above, you can get a head start on a successful project.

Gantt charts are the workhorses of scope management. However, most Gantt chart software is woefully limited in terms of its functionality. ProjectManager has dynamic online Gantt charts that do the regular organizing, prioritizing and linking dependencies and adding milestones. But unlike other tools, you can filter for the critical path. When you set the baseline, you’re able to compare your actual progress to what you had planned. There’s no better way to monitor project scope.

To better understand what the project scope statement is, we thought it’d be helpful to visualize it using our free project scope template for Word as a project scope statement example. As you can see, it has the basic project scoping information on top and then goes into a general justification for the project’s need and how it’ll fulfill that.

Then we get into the main part of the project scope statement, such as what will be in scope and out of scope for the project. This creates boundaries for the project and makes clear what is essential and must be prioritized.

Now we get into explanations of the business objectives, such as targets that the project needs to hit in order to be successful, and the deliverables that’ll be produced over the life cycle of the project.

From there, you’ll describe project exclusions, issues of time, cost, scope, risk, resources and so on that could constrain it and whatever is assumed to be done in the project.

Finally, you’ll go into costs. The project scope statement is going to estimate the costs and list them all, including the estimated cost, the actual cost and the cost on completion of the project. Then you can show the variance, which is the difference between the estimated cost and the actual cost.

Now let’s review two simple project scope statement examples to better understand how a scope statement can be used in different industries.

Construction Project Scope Statement Example

Defining the scope of a project is one of the most important steps in the project planning process . In construction, defining the scope helps construction project owners, contractors and subcontractors not only reach an agreement on what the construction project will look like but also create an accurate project cost estimate based on the work, materials, equipment and labor that’ll be required.

• Project Goals & Objectives: Build a residential construction project, an apartment complex that will generate revenue for the construction firm.
• Project Requirements: Architects, engineers and construction project managers will work on the construction design to determine the specifications and requirements for the project. These include quality standards for construction materials and safety requirements, among others. To have a clear understanding of what these project requirements will look like, they’ll need to create a set of construction drawings and construction documents such as blueprints, a bill of quantities and computer-assisted designs.
• Project Scope Description: Once there’s a design for the building, the project scope can be defined by using a work breakdown structure that’ll allow the construction management team to zoom into the types of tasks that will need to be executed, such as masonry, plumbing, electrical and other types of construction activities.
• Project Exclusions: One of the most important things when writing a scope statement is to state what activities won’t be executed, known as project exclusions. Clearly explaining this helps avoid misunderstandings down the road.
• Project Constraints: In project management, there are three traditional project constraints; time, scope and cost. However, there are even more project constraints that can affect a construction project, such as resources, quality and risk. For any construction project, there will be constraints that need to be factored in during the project planning phase such as environmental concerns, local regulations and building codes.
• Project Assumptions: In any project, there are assumptions that subject matter experts will draw before the construction phase begins. These are usually things beyond the control of the construction management team, such as weather conditions, availability of suppliers and the ability of the team to complete work within the planned time frame. These assumptions will be proven true or false once the work begins.
• Project Deliverables: As previously stated, the construction project involves different types of work such as HVAC, electrical work, woodwork and masonry, among others. Each of these construction crews or subcontractors will be responsible for producing many project deliverables throughout the construction phase.

Manufacturing Project Scope Statement Example

Manufacturing projects generally involve the production of physical products. This takes a series of steps needed to transform raw materials into finished goods. Here’s a simple scope statement example for manufacturing.

• Project Goals & Objectives: Create a finished product based on market research and the strategic planning of the company.
• Project Requirements: There will be internal and external requirements for the development and manufacturing of your product. In terms of internal requirements, think about the concerns of your company stakeholders who will want low production costs, high profit margins and the shortest time possible to get a return on their investment. In terms of external requirements, consider the competition in your market and the preferences of your target customers such as the quality, price and features they expect from your product.
• Project Scope Description: The project scope in this case will summarize the different activities that are part of the production cycle. This includes the product development process, the procurement and transportation of raw materials, parts and components from suppliers to the production line, the assembling process, quality control procedures and the distribution channels that’ll be utilized to bring the product to the market.
• Project Exclusions: It’s important to explain to your stakeholders exactly what features will be included in your product as well as the quality standards that will be followed. Product documentation such as a bill of materials is ideal to define your project exclusions.
• Project Constraints: There will be project constraints specific to manufacturing such as limited production capacity, resource availability, customer demand and machinery maintenance.
• Project Assumptions: Brainstorm with different departments involved with the product, such as marketing, sales, production and maintenance to draft as many project assumptions as you can get. The more cross-functional insights you can get, the better. It’s important to be ready to face multiple scenarios. A good way to do so is to use linear programming models to simulate different levels of production and customer demand.
• Project Deliverables: The deliverables will be all the different product development documents that’ll guide the production process , the product prototype and finally the final version of the product that’ll be launched to the market.

There are a few things that project scope statements typically get confused with, including your scope of work . They may sound like similar project scoping documents, but here are the primary differences between these two.

Your scope of work is an agreement of work, typically between consultant and client, that details the agreement of work to be performed, including, but not limited to:

• Deliverables/products/results
• Project timeline
• Project milestones
• Reports to catalog project progress

While your scope of work can be time-consuming to write, it outlines the project itself and not necessarily the plan that’s to follow. The project scope statement, in turn, fulfills that role by detailing and mapping out exactly what to expect with the project plan and the project itself.

They might sound similar, and the outcome of the project may be similar, but a project scope statement is different from your project scope management plan . A project scope management plan is what follows the project scope statement, detailing the scope management process from the start to the finish of your project life cycle.

Additionally, it helps define the work that must be done over the course of the project, and it controls and monitors those processes. It also documents and tracks phases to avoid scope creep  and assists with project closing, including an audit of deliverables and assessing the project outcome for success factors.

Your scope statement isn’t nearly as involved—it’s just the umbrella over your project scope management plan, acting as a rubric for stakeholders and team members to follow.

Tips to Write a Project Scope Statement

Here are the best practices to consider as you write your project scope statement:

• Avoid using jargon-heavy language. You’ll be talking to multiple people across multiple departments and specializations, so keep the language consistent and clear.
• Keep it short. Since this is a project document that’s seeking stakeholder buy-in, there will likely be plenty of editing to be done before it’s finalized, and it’ll need to be a quick reference guide for later. So, keep it simple and save the verbiage for your full project plan.
• Stay away from sweeping statements. You don’t want to over-commit your resources to the project before it even kicks off.
• What are the long-term business benefits?
• What does it provide our customers that do not already exist?
• Is this better than what we currently offer on the market?

ProjectManager & Project Scope Management

Major project rollouts can be demanding on both your time and energy. Don’t let it overwhelm you before kick-off. For starters, you can use our Gantt chart software to create a WBS and get a visual on deliverables, as well as the tasks needed to complete before submitting your project scope statement.

From there, you can try ProjectManager and use our task management features to get all the necessary tasks organized, prioritized and sorted by project phase. You can even ask other people for input: team members can comment directly on the tasks so communication stays organized and to the point.

Keep tabs on your resources, tasks, deliverables and more so you can keep your project on track. With ProjectManager, you can practice mapping out your project timeline by using our Gantt chart, listing out deliverables using our task list or kanban tool and inviting team members to review the timeline before submitting the scope statement to key stakeholders. Start your free 30-day trial today.

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The productivity problem

Senior Deputy Governor Carolyn Rogers talks about some of the reasons for Canada’s poor productivity track record, and what we can do to turn the tide.

Watch Senior Deputy Governor Rogers speak to the Halifax Partnership by webcast. Read the full speech.

A healthy economy depends on high productivity

Strong productivity—which leads to faster growth, more jobs and higher wages—is an important way to protect the economy from the risks of high inflation.

Canada has seen no productivity growth in recent years. And over the past four decades, we have actually slipped significantly compared with some other countries. In fact, relative to the United States, among G7 countries we are now second only to Italy when it comes to productivity decline.

This is important because a number of factors threaten to drive inflation persistently higher in the future. These include global trade tensions, changing demographics and the economic impacts of climate change. We need to ramp up our productivity now, as a buffer against these and other forces down the line.

What’s behind highly productive economies

Three elements contribute to stronger productivity:

• capital intensity—giving workers better physical tools like machinery, and using new technologies to improve efficiency and output
• labour composition—improving workers’ skills and training
• multifactor productivity—using capital and labour more efficiently

Considering these, there are two basic strategies to improve productivity: focus the economy on industries that add greater value, and be more efficient with the work we’re currently doing. Canada generally hasn’t performed well on either front. This needs to change if we want to ensure a stable and prosperous economy for everyone.

The bottom line is that the benefits from raising productivity are there no matter what your role is: for workers, for businesses and, yes, for central bankers, too.”

Canada needs to do better

When we look at the factors that drive high productivity, we see some clear areas for improvement.

Canada can focus more on making sure the training and education we provide teach the skills we need for jobs today and in the future. This includes post-secondary learning and apprenticeship programs that better respond to what employers are looking for. It also involves leveraging the skill sets of the many new Canadians who immigrate here.

A more competitive business environment would also help drive greater innovation and efficiency. This is particularly important for small and medium-sized businesses that can’t take advantage of the economies of scale afforded to larger companies.

Perhaps most importantly, Canada’s investment levels are nowhere near as high as they should be in the areas of machinery, equipment and intellectual property. In fact, investment levels have decreased over the past decade.

Everyone has a role to play in encouraging a strong investment climate that will help boost productivity. With stronger productivity, everyone can enjoy robust growth and better wages without high inflation. And in a healthy economy, we are better positioned to manage inflationary pressures without having to rely so much on raising interest rates.

At the Bank of Canada, we will keep working to provide the stability that’s most conducive to risk taking and investment. With governments providing the right policy background, and with the business community doing its part to invest, together we will all be able to help Canada’s economy to grow—and Canadians to prosper—in the years ahead, no matter what surprises may come.”

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Tony Kushner Defends Jonathan Glazer’s Oscar Speech as an ‘Unimpeachable, Irrefutable Statement’ About the Israel-Hamas War

By William Earl

William Earl

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• Will and Jada Pinkett Smith’s Charity to Close After Oscars Slap: Donations Sink; Thousands Spent on Elusive Mental Health Orgs and Overdrawn Bank Fees (EXCLUSIVE) 4 days ago
• Tony Kushner Defends Jonathan Glazer’s Oscar Speech as an ‘Unimpeachable, Irrefutable Statement’ About the Israel-Hamas War 1 week ago
• Dan Schneider Responds to ‘Quiet on Set’ Allegations: Apologizes for On-Set Massages, Advocates for Inappropriate Jokes to Be Edited Out of Reruns 2 weeks ago

Screenwriter and playwright Tony Kushner has defended Jonathan Glazer ‘s Oscar speech against critics.

The speech has been met with both kudos on social media and dissent in the industry, including an open letter from over 1,000 Jewish creatives and execs denouncing his words.

Kushner, who he himself has received four Academy Awards nominations for “Munich,” “Lincoln” and “The Fabelmans,” was a guest on Wednesday’s episode of “Haaretz Podcast.” When asked about the speech, he said Glazer’s words were an “unimpeachable, irrefutable statement.”

Asked if he identified with the speech, Kushner answered, “Of course. I mean, who doesn’t? What he’s saying is so simple. He’s saying: Jewishness, Jewish identity, Jewish history, the history of the Holocaust, the history of Jewish suffering must not be used in a campaign of — as an excuse for a project of dehumanizing or slaughtering other people.”

“This is a misappropriation of what it means to be a Jew, what the Holocaust meant, and [Glazer] rejects that,” he continued. “Who doesn’t agree with that? What kind of person thinks that what’s going on now in Gaza is acceptable?”

Kushner’s work often ties in thematically to his Jewish identity, and he has publicly spoken out in the past about Israel and Palestine.

The “Haaretz Podcast” is a weekly show hosted by Allison Kaplan Sommer from Israel’s oldest daily newspaper, which tackles topics such as Israel, the Middle East and Jewish politics and culture.

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Nex Benedict’s Family Releases Statement with New Information about Medical Examiner’s Findings

The family of Nex Benedict is speaking out about the incomplete and premature medical examiner report released earlier this week, and releasing new information they have learned from the medical examiner “to ensure that other pertinent portions of the report are not overshadowed by the ‘classification’ of Nex’s death.”

In the statement from their attorney, the Benedict family says they felt compelled to release the new information to avoid allowing “incomplete accounts to take hold and spread any further.”

GLAAD is elevating the family’s information and urging reporters to continue to ask more questions about Nex’s death and all that led up to it and after. Below, GLAAD has 16 key questions for reporters to ask about the medical examiner’s report, the history of controversy in the state medical examiner’s office including loss of accreditation, and ongoing questions about school and state leaders’ responsibility in failing to appropriately respond to the assault on Nex, the state-sponsored discrimination by harmful legislation and false rhetoric that remain safety issues for all Oklahoma students, and when or if officials are implementing any new measures to prevent, report and address bullying in Oklahoma schools.

Nex, a 16-year-old 2STGNC+ (Two Spirit, transgender, gender nonconforming+) student of Choctaw descent, died the day after a three-on-one fight in a restroom at Owasso High School in Owasso, Oklahoma last month. Nex had reported to police in the hospital following the attack that they had endured a year of bullying in the school, and that they did not believe the school would do anything to address the bullying. The Owasso police officer that the family, not the school, called to Nex’s emergency room bedside the night before Nex died, discouraged Nex’s family from filing a police report about the assault Nex endured in the school bathroom that afternoon.

On Wednesday, the medical examiner and Owasso police released a one-page document with a box checked for cause of death, noting “suicide” but revealing no details about how the medical examiner arrived at the decision to check the box, or about other determinative factors about Nex’s last hours including the bathroom assault. A full report is due on March 27th.

The Benedict family statement includes direct quotes from the report it received noting trauma to Nex’s head and neck, hemorrhages, scalp lacerations, as well as lacerations and bruising on the torso and extremities. The Benedict family statement further continues to call on schools, administrators, lawmakers, and communities to come together to prevent any other family from suffering a similar tragedy, including reforms in schools to prioritize “pillars of respect, inclusion and grace, and aim to eliminate bullying and hate.”

The Benedict family responded to the incomplete report in a statement from their attorney last night: “With each passing day, the numerous ongoing investigations surrounding Nex’s untimely passing yield additional information. Yesterday [March 13] , a summary report from the Medical Examiner was released, simply stating that Nex’s death was caused by suicide. As the media and the public await the release of the full report, the Benedicts want to ensure that other pertinent portions of the report are not overshadowed by the ‘classification’ of Nex’s death. Rather than allow incomplete accounts to take hold and spread any further, the Benedicts feel compelled to provide a summary of those findings which have not yet been released by the Medical Examiner’s office, particularly those that contradict allegations of the assault on Nex being insignificant. As outlined in the full report, the Medical Examiner found numerous areas of physical trauma over Nex’s body that evidence the severity of the assault.”

GLAAD’s CEO and President Sarah Kate Ellis responded, “Nex’s family accurately notes how the report released this week does not reflect the full picture of what happened to Nex and continues to urge accountability of those who failed to keep Nex and all students in Oklahoma safe from bullying, harassment, assault, and most brutally, death.”

“Media must continue to question those who release information prematurely and incompletely in this investigation, and demand answers about the abysmal response to a horrific assault in a public school bathroom and the state-sponsored bullying that led up to it. Our hearts remain with Nex’s family as they endure their unbearable loss. All families deserve to know their children’s safety will always come first in their schools and communities.”

State and local equality groups in Oklahoma have also released their responses to the incomplete report and demands for full accountability for Nex’s death and the safety of all Oklahomans. See their statements released to state press this morning, here .

At the 35th annual GLAAD Media Awards in Los Angeles last night, GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis highlighted the epidemic of state-sponsored bullying via legislation targeting LGBTQ youth, including in Oklahoma :

“Over 500 anti-trans bills have been proposed nationwide this year. And it’s only March. It’s time to get the bullies out,” Ellis said.

In addition, GLAAD is releasing 16 Key Questions for reporters covering Nex Benedict’s death to ask of state, local and school officials:

1.  Why is the police department rushing to release premature and incomplete information? As reported before, Owasso police have already rushed to release incomplete information about Nex’s death amid an ongoing investigation, admitting that doing so was not normal practice, and that it was to “head off” national scrutiny.

2.  Why did the police not wait to release any information until the full investigation was completed and the full report is out, as already announced, on March 27th?

3.  Why has the state medical examiner’s office been operating without accreditation for at least fourteen years?

4.  As recently as nine months ago, the Tulsa office reported being significantly behind in cases and understaffed. How are these shortcomings impacting the investigation and rushed premature reports about Nex’s death?

5.  What other scandals has the medical examiner’s office been implicated in? The Office has faced allegations of misconduct, incorrect death certificates, and more, from families of the deceased to former employees of the office.

6. When have Benadryl and Prozac ever been listed as a lethal combination?

In fresh and original reporting today, Christopher Wiggins of The Advocate spoke to Dr. Joshua King, medical director of the Maryland Poison Center at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, and Dr. Masha Yemets, a clinical toxicology fellow at the same institution, to gain insights into the risks associated with these medications in overdose scenarios.

“‘Without the full autopsy report and associated toxicology data, we couldn’t comment about the medical examiner’s determination,” Yemets cautioned — but they agreed that both of the medications reported to be in Benedict’s system are commonly taken and pose a low risk of dangerous interactions when used correctly. Diphenhydramine is an antihistamine taken for allergies and fluoxetine is used for depression and anxiety.”The medications are “part of a larger group of medications that, in the vast majority of cases, are used safely by millions of people. The risk of death from these medications, especially when used as directed, is extraordinarily low,” King added.

7.  How did the medical examiner determine that these two common medications millions of Americans take were not ingested accidentally or improperly administered via medical providers who treated Nex the night before their death?

8.  When did the medical examiner or police department review the records and interview medical center personnel from Nex’s visit the night before they died to determine what medications, dosages or other treatments and guidance were prescribed or given and when?

9.  Why did the school not call police immediately after the assault in the school bathroom?

10. Where are the formal written protocols and policies that guided this non-response to an assault in which a student was beaten unconscious in a school bathroom?

11. What programs exist to prevent, report and address bullying in Owasso and all Oklahoma public schools? Where are the materials used to inform students and educators about bullying? If such a program exists, when was it created and initiated and by whom; when was the last time staff or students were briefed about bullying, including ways to prevent it, report it, and address it? How are schools familiarizing students and teachers with differences that are commonly targeted by bullies? What is being implemented today to stop bullying from happening again?

12. Have there been other attacks in schools on Indigenous or LGBTQ students? Where do these reports and documentation exist?

13. What correspondence has Owasso public schools had with Superintendent of Public Instruction, Ryan Walters, about Nex’s death and next steps to prevent any more bullying or deaths of Owasso students?

14. When will Owasso and all public schools in Oklahoma update its bathroom policies and protocols to ensure all students, including Two Spirit, Transgender and Gender Nonconforming (2STGNC+) can simply use the bathroom they feel safest in?

15. Why does Superintendent Walters continue to deny the existence of transgender and gender nonconforming people, in a state whose Indigenous history and culture has long respected and honored Two Spirit people and expanded definitions of gender and gender expression? How does Superintendent Walters think his inaccurate statements and beliefs such as “there are only two genders” impact people of other faiths and Indigenous backgrounds who know and respect that transgender people and youth exist, attend Oklahoma public schools, and as taxpayers, pay Walters’ salary to represent and protect their families and children?

16. What other cases of the deaths of Indigenous and 2STGNC+ people has the medical examiner and police department handled? How do their families feel about state officials and department credibility and competency?

GLAAD is documenting Superintendent Walters’ record here , which includes:

• Falsely and harmfully denying the existence and history of Two Spirit and gender expansive people including among Indigenous cultures in his own state
• Pushing book bans, harassing educators who support the freedom to read, and appearing with extremist national book banning group Moms for Liberty , an appearance for which Walters billed Oklahoma taxpayers, and a post on Twitter/X just today with the cofounders of Moms for Liberty (ominously) saying “We’ve got plans.”
• Producing and promoting videos that wrongfully and dangerously accuse transgender youth of being a threat in schools
• Appointing to a state position a social media extremist whose posts have preceded bomb threats in Oklahoma schools, children’s hospitals, and libraries, who also has no educational qualifications and who does not live in Oklahoma
• Spreading disinformation about accurate inclusive history in his state, including about the Tulsa Massacre as a racist attack

Walters is also featured in a new report citing state records that show efforts to use Nex Benedict’s death to promote Walters’ profile, again using Oklahoma taxpayer dollars.

Walters’ anti-LGBTQ record and other leadership failures are chronicled in news reports and featured in an ad campaign currently airing in Oklahoma. (View/embed ad here .)

350+ groups signed an open letter urging full investigations of the bullying and death of Nex Benedict and accountability for Ryan Walters. Signatories include faith organizations, health care advocates, one of the world’s largest service unions, educational leaders, as well as LGBTQ, civil and human rights groups.

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Northwestern acceptance rate increases to 7.5%

Northwestern’s acceptance rate is expected to be 7.5% after receiving more than 50,000 first-year applications during the 2023-24 admissions cycle, according to University spokesperson Jon Yates.

The University admitted about half of these applicants during Early Decision , Yates said in a statement to The Daily. After announcing Early Decision application results on Dec. 15, NU released decisions for Regular Decision applicants Wednesday.

NU has seen increases in both the number of applicants and the number of secondary schools represented. Students in more than 10,000 secondary schools applied during the most recent admissions cycle, Yates said.

Since the 2019-20 admissions cycle, the University’s acceptance rate has hovered between 7% and 7.2% — the former being a historical low. This year’s acceptance rate remains lower than pre-pandemic levels.

NU unveiled a new set of supplemental questions for the 2023-24 admissions cycle, including a required question for Common Application and Coalition with Scoir. Essay questions asked applicants to discuss personal experiences that shaped how they see themselves engaging with the University’s community. 

The change followed last June’s Supreme Court ruling banning universities from considering race as a factor in admissions. Universities can still consider how race or ethnicity affected an applicant’s life if one discloses that information in an essay.

Test-optional policies implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic have contributed to increased application numbers and, consequently, decreased acceptance rates. NU will remain test-optional for both first-year and transfer students applying during the 2024-25 admissions cycle.

Students admitted through Regular Decision have until May 1 to accept their offer by submitting nonrefundable housing and tuition deposits. 

Transfer applicants who could not meet the March 15 application deadline can apply through April 10. Those students will receive decisions in May.

Email: [email protected]

X: @edwardsimoncruz

Related Stories:

— Northwestern adapts new application process in wake of Supreme Court affirmative action ruling

— Northwestern receives historic number of applications as overall acceptance dips slightly to 7%

— As Northwestern admits 7% of applicants for its class of 2026, President Schapiro says he still reads application files

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50 Cent Suggests Feds Wouldn't Have Raided Diddy's Homes 'Unless They Got a Case'

Homeland Security's raid of Diddy's homes in Los Angeles and Miami created the perfect moment for 50 Cent to troll.

50 Cent wasted no time trolling Diddy —again.

When news surfaced that federal agents raided Diddy’s Los Angeles and Miami homes on Monday, Fif was quick to slam the hip-hop mogul on Instagram with screenshots of stories from Fox 11 and TMZ.

“Shit just got real,” 50 wrote alongside a photo from Fox 11’s live news segment, where Diddy’s sons, King and Justin Combs, appear to be in handcuffs at the Los Angeles home. “The Fed’s in all the cribs, damn they got the kids in cuffs,” 50 Cent added.

50 captioned a second screenshot from TMZ, “Now it’s not Diddy do it, it’s Diddy done. They don’t come like that unless they got a case.”

Homeland Security raided both of Sean Combs’ homes in connection to a sex trafficking investigation. It’s unknown if Diddy was present at the time of the raid.

Fif has been trolling Diddy ever since Cassie’s lawsuit surfaced last November. Earlier this month, the “Many Men” rapper took a shot at Diddy during a rescheduled show in Phoenix. When he teased the crowd about how they weren’t showing him love, he said, "We don’t want too much love, you know what happened with Brother Love and shit,” a nod to the new nickname Diddy adopted in 2017.

The jabs have been coming at a rapid-fire pace. Right after Cassie accused Diddy of rape and abuse , 50 trolled Diddy with an old video of him patting Jay-Z’s butt at a concert in 2007. In November, 50 Cent also offered to buy Revolt when Diddy stepped down as Chairman—and later teased the 54-year-old by merging his and R. Kelly’s faces into one bizarre photo, soundtracked by the disgraced R&B singer's 1998 song "Did You Ever Think."

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