What is acceptance? Acceptance is basically when you receive something for the way it is and you come to terms with it. The confusion with acceptance is that we think if we accept things, we can not change our circumstances but that is not true. Sometimes we try to change situations or ourselves in ways where it is too unrealistic because we don’t want to face our reality. You can absolutely move forward after you accept things. It just may be in a different way than you had imagined.
The reason why acceptance is important is because you can’t move forward without acknowledging the way things are. You can try but most likely you will always wind up back to where you are or wind up feeling upset and depressed. There will always be disappointments without acceptance because your lack of acceptance for things is causing you to move forward in unhealthy ways.
Acceptance is hard because reality can be too brutal for us sometimes. We have to be raw and vulnerable to accept things in our lives and to accept ourselves, that can be scary. In order to cope, we try to protect ourselves as much as possible, so we then will live in an unrealistic world. We may want things to be a certain way or we personally want to be a certain way so we ignore what is actually going on and create a protective fantasy type reality.
Anyone can suffer from a lack of acceptance for things. Whether you grew up in a healthy environment or not. But more than not, when you do grow up in an unhealthy environment, you have a harder time with acceptance because you were exposed to such toxic unhealthy behaviors at a young age. When we are exposed to that we don’t learn the coping mechanisms on how to accept things for how they are and we may go to a fantasy type reality to cope. When our ego is hurt or bruised, it can be harder to accept things for how they are because we want better. We don’t want the things that have happened or who we are to be our reality.
So how do you come to accept?
A lot of the time, the reason we have a hard time with acceptance is because we are not entirely being honest with ourselves. I want you to close your eyes and think about something you are having a hard time letting go of or accepting in your life. Why do you feel like you can’t let go or accept?
I want you to feel what your body feels like when thinking about it. What feelings and thoughts pop up when you think about the situation? Do you feel anger? shame? Needing of approval? Fear? The minute you stop suppressing those emotions that come with that lack of acceptance is the minute the answers will come to you as to what is actually going on inside your head. It is just you to yourself, so be honest.
Now when these feelings pop up I don’t want you to dismiss them right away. I want you to acknowledge them for what they are. Whatever did come up like fear, sadness, anger, disappointment, unsatisfactory, pain. This is what is going on right now. This is what you have been feeling. There is no running away from it.
Feel them for a couple of minutes. Sit with them and allow all of those thoughts to come out. It helps to either write it out or talk it out loud. Give yourself that moment to grieve over your reality and negative emotions and then give yourself the compassion you need.
Pick yourself up and let yourself know that it is okay to feel that way and maybe what you are experiencing is frustrating. You have been dealing with this for a while. You are no less of a person because of what you are experiencing.
Now that you have addressed your feelings I want you to address your reality. What is going on in your life that you maybe are numbing yourself to? Who are you trying to be like? Do you feel these are unrealistic expectations? What is your actual reality v.s what are you expecting of yourself? Can you now see how your reality can’t coincide with your fantasy?
When it comes to lack of acceptance for who we are it is time we acknowledge who we really are and practice self-love. Self-love has a lot to do with acceptance and recognizing our good traits/flaws. It helps us see who we genuinely are and then helps us have healthy expectations of ourselves.
When it comes to lack of acceptance towards your reality about certain situations it is time we acknowledge our curtain situations and remind us that our situations don’t define who we are. We define who we are based on how we handle them. The thing in your life is actually happening.
Now that you have accepted your reality, it is time to let go of those unhealthy expectations of yourself. This is the fantasy world you have been holding on to, to cope with the reality that you did not want to face. Your unhealthy expectations are the ones that are holding you back from being able to move forward in your life.
You can not expect yourself to cook a 5-course meal and have the house super clean for a dinner party when you have low energy. It is unfair to yourself to expect yourself to live life like a rich man when you are in fact in debt you are ignoring. You can not have a redo on something that already ended badly, even though you are unhappy about the consequences, you still need to face the facts…it happened and you can not undo it.
Something that may help is by closing your eyes, imagining your unrealistic expectations and then take a deep breath and say “I release you” as you breathe out. You can do this with multiple expectations. This will help accept that this is not something healthy for you and then release it out from your life. You are releasing fantasy and accepting reality.
Like I had said earlier, accepting your reality does not mean that you can’t make changes in your life. You can absolutely make changes, but the changes will be based on what you can do rather than these extremely high fantasy like expectations. You have let go of your unhealthy coping mechanism and now you are replacing it with a healthy one!
So set goals, make plans, do things based around your reality and what you can actually do. So maybe instead of that super clean house with the 5-course meal, you can have a semi-clean house with a couple of dishes. Maybe instead of living life like a rich man when you have ignored debt, you can work towards paying off your debt and work towards a better career. Instead of trying to have a redo to a situation that ended badly, you can comfort yourself, learn from the situation, be forgiving and move to the next situation.
You don’t have to be super happy about your reality. Reality can be tough. It does not mean that it can’t change. You may need to either change the way you view it or change the way you are reacting to it. Either way, you can do something about it! But you can’t do something about it if you don’t accept that it is, what it is.
What do you guys think? Do you have a hard time with acceptance? Do you have any ways you handle acceptance? Leave it all in the comments below!
1 Comment
[…] of self. Build a healthy self-esteem and form that strong foundation you need to grow and be open. Accept yourself and others rather than being critical. Work on loving and accepting […]