embrace?

So awhile ago my dad came down with his college roommate to visit David and me. We had a great time. One day we went to hike Sabino Canyon and had a great time. As many of you know, my dad struggles with his weight. He used to be this extremely fit road biker who ate fairly well. For about 10 years he has been feeling overweight and often comments on this. It's one of those situations where you want to say, "Dad, enough already! Either lose weight or stop complaining about it!" So anyway, we are walking and Denny looks at my dad and says, "John either start exercising and be happy or just embrace it!' This struck me for some reason. I smiled and agreed with him because I have definetely heard his sob stories enough to be ready for him to embrace it. But I know my dad and I know that he will never be able to embrace feeling overweight.
I think we all have things that we want to change about ourselves and some of us are less vocal about such things. For me, I have been complaining about a messy house lately. We have piles of stuff everywhere. My purse is a mess. There is laundry to be done. There are spots on the annoying white kitchen floor. The list of things goes on and on and on. I think the biggest thing is that David and I just have too much stuff and we are both packrats! I get so upset about the messes that I fall into a minor depression adn then I can't get anything accomplished. Well, what good is that? So I said to David yesterday that I either need to start cleaning daily to meet the standards to make me happy or just embrace it! I need to embrace that I am not a perfect housekeeper and that it gets messy.
Do we all have things that we need to embrace? So here's the big question: Once you identify that you need to let go and embrace something about yourself that you dislike, how do you do it? How do you look at yourself in the mirror and feel satiisfied? How do you look at the piles around the house and decide they aren't going to haunt you anymore?
Thoughts?