Acceptance

“Without first letting things be as they are, you won’t be able to move into a positive space,” my coach said to me.

Oooff. I have heard this message before- and she was not wrong.

By experiencing anger (or any other large emotion) and dwelling on your feelings that a situation should never have happened, one misses the point that this experience did happen. It happened and now you have to deal with it. The action of living in one's emotions about a given moment often results in more suffering. When one is blinded by emotion it can be challenging to see the facts of a situation or see the next steps clearly.

An alternative to this mode of thinking is something that psychologists call radical acceptance. This means to look at yourself within a given situation, and the situation itself, and see it as it is without being clouded by emotion. It is about accepting life as it is, with all its ups and downs. In this practice, you intentionally accept the things in life that you don’t have any control over. And it really IS a practice.

Think of the last time you were emotionally hijacked by something and later found out that the facts of the situation were different than the story you told yourself. How might that situation be different if you had accepted the situation without creating emotional attachment, and were able to find solutions from there? How much anguish would you have saved yourself? What damage to your relationships could have been prevented?

Let me clarify that radically accepting a moment or situation does not mean that you ignore, disregard, agree with, or condone the actions or behaviors of others. This type of acceptance allows us to address the difficult situation without adding an additional layer of creating pain for ourselves.

I now enter into a state of practice. Repeatedly challenging myself to accept each challenge I experience, without judgment of myself or others. I am finding that I am less confrontational when handling issues, and more likely to listen for the facts of a situation rather than storytelling. And when I miss the mark, I remind myself to accept my own imperfection.

How might this practice change your perspective?