Accent is like breath, no one wants to have it. What's wrong with that?

Watch out! This book might be dangerous for you.

Working on pronunciation is important, but be careful how you understand or perceive it.
Generally, people treat ACCENT as if it was something negative; actually it is not. Accent is simply a manifestation of difference in speech. The way we pronounce the words are determined by factors built in a community of speakers which we belong to. It involves historical, geographical, sociological and cultural aspects of a certain group of speakers from a determined town, city or even a village. We shouldn't see (or hear) accent as something bad, ugly, incorrect or inferior, but simply as different from one another. As Rajan pointed " accent is like breath, it's something someone else has".
As language teachers and students, we should keep our minds opened to the variety of speeches expressed in our mother tongue or any other language we decide to study. Accent is a trace of your identity and this should be respected and never denied. Of course, we all must work hard our pronunciation in order to be understood, but at the same time, we need to be careful not to discriminate or even offend someone just because his or her pronunciation is different from ours.
We can say that is the easy part beacuse in fact, people will always discriminate you if your pronunciation does not represent exactly a prstigious one. That happens in our mother tongue and especially when you are learning a foreign or second language. The important thing is to be concious of the importance of your identity, your self-steem and never let anyone make you feel down or frustrated with your accent. It's not always easy but we have to try.
When someone perceive your accent in a foreign language (english, for instance) let them know that it shows you are able to speak at least a second language besides your mother tongue. And that you have no reasons to immitate theirs or even worse, try to erase your own.
As a final word, I would like to point out to the fact that accent is part of who you are and we all need to work hard our pronunciation but without prejudice. Once José Saramago said "There isn't only one portuguese language, but many lanuages in portuguese". I guess we all should think about that.