Acceptance

I don’t know if folks notice when I miss Mindful Mondays, but I notice, because I made this commitment. I missed last week and thought about rushing to get it done later in the week, but had to make the decision that I needed to drop a few things in my schedule in the last push of my busy season. I had to accept that I couldn’t do everything I wanted to. This is such a small example of acceptance.

I usually talk about acceptance in terms of emotions - being able to experience the emotions that come up for us, even when we want to do anything but experience them. There are so many ways that we avoid our emotional experience - from social media to substance use to toxic positivity. The more that we avoid our feelings, though, the more they will continue to show up and feel more and more daunting. So, in this way acceptance is allowing space for our experience and having the agency to decide how we will act from there.

When we talk about acceptance in terms of events or behaviors, I think about a concept from Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) called radical acceptance. Radical acceptance is accepting things how they are, because we cannot change things we don’t accept. You know that moment when you drop something fragile and it shatters and you just wish you could rewind to the point where you didn’t drop it? You need to accept that this item is broken before you can begin to pick up the pieces. Similarly, if we get stuck in wishing something didn’t happen a certain way, hoping somebody else will change, or not accepting responsibility for our behavior - nothing will change. Radical acceptance doesn’t mean that you like something or are ok with it, but just that you accept it as it is.

I invite you to examine where you are resisting acceptance in your life. What would you be doing if you accepted it? Can you try doing that?

As always, take what is helpful and leave the rest. I hope you have the week you need.