Acceptance and Stress Part 2

 

It is easier to develop the quality of acceptance when the stakes are not too high. Begin with small things and those close to home. Begin with yourself. Notice the occurrences in your day that seem to invite you to become willful, argumentative, or insistent on your way or the highway! Notice areas of your life or situations where you may feel (or assign) blame, shame, fear or even embarrassment. For instance, how do you really feel about your body? Do you accept it as is or are you always hoping or wishing for a different weight or a different shape? How about relationships? What challenging or difficult relationships do you engage in regularly? Is there someone in your family or perhaps at work that always seems to “push your buttons?” Are you comfortable with your Self? Do you genuinely love and truly accept yourself just as you are or do you try to be someone you’re not? How about your financial situation? Do you accept it as is and move forward from there or do you blame others for where you are? After you take a true look at yourself, broaden the circle and look within your family. Widen it again and look around your neighborhood and so on. Notice how you feel about each situation. Notice if you collapse into feelings of overwhelm or even anger, feeling as if the deck is stacked against you, or as if things will never change. Any situation that doesn’t feel good is an opportunity to try a new approach, to elicit feelings of acceptance and let things be for a time. Think of it as an experiment. Try it purposefully on everyday situations and gradually you will get the kind of feedback that encourages you to keep on building and go on to higher and higher skill levels. If you find it difficult to develop acceptance about personal issues, begin with something as common as the weather. Suppose you had your heart set on a gorgeous warm and sunny summer day to spend outside either by yourself or with friends and family. You wake up and it’s pouring rain or cold and gray. You plans need to be set aside or adjusted. How do you usually react to such situations? Do you go along with it, accept it and adjust to it? Or do you let it consume your energy, leaving you frustrated, tired and depleted? Perhaps you’ve already established options and you know how you’re going to spend your time regardless of the weather. You know that if the weather is sunny you’ll go with Plan A. If the weather is less than favorable, you’ll move forward with Plan B. No matter how the day turns out, you’re ready for it; you accept it as is and adjust accordingly. You are able to let go and simply make the best of what comes up. Look for “energy leakages” in your daily life. These are situations that aren’t balanced or situations that don’t feel good. They are situations where you expend more than you take in. They are perfect opportunities to practice building new skills and to develop emotional intelligence. When you practice acceptance, you broaden your perspective and allow different points or view. You don’t need to be right and have someone else be wrong. You accept situations as they are and you work towards mutually agreeable terms or conclusions. You open yourself to personal growth and development. You get to the heart of a problem without blame and you determine the proper course of action. You are able to do this objectively without making others feel bad or feel rejected. Acceptance is about inclusion rather than exclusion. When you are inclusive, you are flexible and you are open to different ideas, situations and people. You set judgment aside and you work with “what is” — whatever it is. As a result, you open yourself to more opportunity and awareness. You open yourself to the bounty of life Listen carefully and pay deep attention to your inner self. You will notice your areas of resistance and where you cause yourself physical, emotional and/or spiritual pain. As you notice, you can choose the path of acceptance. Doing so leads to real freedom! It is important to remember that we cannot strong arm ourselves into a new mind set with our thoughts alone. Tools such as breath work, EFT, and other energy techniques can help bring relief from old patterns at the level of the body-mind where our beliefs live and “drive our bus” without our conscious permission. The exercises in our recorded programs are particularly well suited to helping you reworks your system so you can be free to move into acceptance and the ease that it brings.