The Power of Acceptance

“Of course there is no formula for success except, perhaps, an unconditional acceptance of life and what it brings.” ~Arthur Rubinstein

Some would say it is the act of surrendering, a voluntary submission to what is coming or has been done. Others would refer to it as the peace of mind; recognizing the unchangeable reality of the situation and coming to terms with it. A lot of you may think that it is the approval of the situation or admitting defeat; tolerating it by gritting your teeth in the midst of it all.

In these past few years, I've come to learn the true meaning of acceptance and how it feels to come out on top of your situations with a new found strength.

The actual realisation and complete power you have over yourself and your mind is nothing short of liberating.

The problem we come across so often is that we don’t cultivate the ability to truly accept whatever comes and embrace it. But instead you keep wishing, wishing that things had stayed the way they were, that if nothing changed, things would be perfect.

You fight it instead. You fight the truth. You resist reality.

Life is unpredictable and is what makes it a truly beautiful one.  Forever changing. Always moving forward. Nothing is permanent; everything changes and with the snap of His fingers your life is impacted beyond comprehension and you are left to deal with surviving by adapting or . . . perishing into darkness.

Since we are so accustomed to the stability and routine in our lives; change always comes as an uncomfortable threat to our lazy state of mind. We tell ourselves, that it will never happen to us. That you’ll never experience what they’re feeling on the television or in the papers, but inevitably these trials tear into our lives, no matter how big or small, and become such a terrorising factor to our immediate comfort zone.

Then there is the moment that you soon realise they all have one thing in common is . . . that you have no control over them. And that is what eats you up inside to the very core. Every. Time.

So, how do we react to this? How do we overcome this and accept life as it is?

Let us start at our natural human reactions. Fight or flight. Let’s see, fight? You can’t use adrenaline to bring back loved ones from the grave. How do you fight the decision or lack of decisions as to who you are really as a person; who am I really in all these situations? And you can’t exactly fly away from depression, because your thoughts and feelings will eventually catch up to you. How do you deal with issues that aren’t based on immediate life-threatening situations? 

How do you rise above these issues or incidents in your life that you have no control over? What do you do instead, when there is nothing you can do to change reality; what do you do instead of drowning in the feelings, the painful thoughts and emotions? 

It all boils down to two options. You accept what is happening, see the positive and choose a peaceful state of mind; or continue to fight against it and be miserable and struggle against the universe.

But how can you accept something when you cannot even comprehend why it happened in the first place? You can’t accept it. The cards that you have been dealt are so unfair, that it seems rigged to you and you, even with all the power in the world, can’t change them. Your life is thrown into chaos and people who have absolutely no idea tell us to deal with it?!

Just DEAL WITH IT?!  No. You can’t. Get out of my life. You’re not helping.

What is the point of fighting? To look for answers? What’s the point of trying to push all the emotions away, when it all comes rushing back in a moment’s notice, dropping you to your knees.

But it’s okay. It’s okay to fight. It's in our nature to survive. You just need to find the right way.

You want answers now; sometimes you don’t care; some lock themselves away and some reach out for their friends or professional advice. Seeking support, a validation, a resolution, but it’s all too messed up and you can’t accept the reason or lack of reason to take the blame. And so your friend tries to comfort you . . .

“It’s going to be okay. / What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. / Told you so. / Toughen up kid. Snap out of it.”

Some just try to stay away from you to give you space and  cannot deal with your negativity.

Will they ever be able to know what you’re truly feeling …?

I’m sure some of them have good intentions and what they say may be inspirational, but there’s always a right time and place for it. Most of us are not comfortable with experiencing the pain from other people and so some of your friends try to stop you from feeling that way.

“Let’s get smashed on drinks tonight. / Let’s go shopping. / Let’s get him."

And so we try to numb ourselves with distractions, seek justice through revenge etc.

However, none of these actually, confronts the problem directly and we come back to square one; and most of time, with even more problems to deal with.

When the tornado of drama begins to settle, we come to notice this gap in reality between what you had before it all happened and what you've got right now. And the bigger the gap, the more painful it gets. In our brains, we try to close this gaping void in our planet of reality with say . . .  making rash decisions, sleeping around or seeking dangerous thrills but in the end, you can’t . . .

You can’t keep up the numbing the distractions occupying your mind. 

Eventually you lie in bed, all alone, having to deal with it all the pain and suffering that you ran away from so long and you realise, that the only thing you know how to do so well, with so much practice, is to . . .  run away.

What you don’t actually realise, is that with all the effort you put into running away from the past; you essentially cloud your focus of the present. So when you try to connect with your next date, you end up instead dealing with judgemental prejudices of your past; or when you take your finals exam but end up with a frozen mind full of fears; or breakdown in the middle of your business presentation, cause in the end it finally catches up to you.

Stop. Take a moment. Breathe.

What you have to cope with is that, you can’t change what has happened, but you do have control over your actions from here on out. You can’t control your feelings, thoughts and emotions however but you can still control what you do about it.

So, we’ve had our tantrum, drunken ourselves into soberness and had enough of it all . . . let’s come back to step one.

What are you fighting against?

What we actually struggle with is not just the reality of the problem, but also the emotional reaction to the reality.

We let our emotions get the better of us and that in turn affects our attitudes which grate upon our perspective towards everything else, perpetuating this ongoing cycle of deterioration. How do we control this? You don’t. You have to fight it every day. You have to ask yourself . . .

What are you fighting for?

In some of my readings in Viktor E. Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning, he sheds light on the reality of the life in Nazi death camps and his inspiring lessons for spiritual survival. Frankl shows us how we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward with renewed purpose. He goes on . . .

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” 

So ask yourself, what are the values that matter to you, what are the very things that you stand for you in your life that give you a meaning of purposeful fulfilment, over all else.

There is no point in dwelling in the past. Gather what you learned and move on. Every moment you spend there, is another moment you lose in the present and your presence is what you lose from your “self”.

“Acceptance doesn't mean resignation; it means understanding that something is what it is and that there's got to be a way through it.” Michael J. Fox

Let's get back to the future.

Jeff