Call on me for love and acceptance for yourself and others. Everyone is a child of God. There are no mistakes and no failures. There is only love and acceptance of where you are right now on your spiritual journey. You are exactly where you are supposed to be and you are worthy and perfect exactly as you are.
Acceptance is a profound, perhaps the most profound, way of being in the world. It is the raw, pure, undiluted experience of your life in this moment.
Acceptance is the process of developing a different relationship to your experience, one that allows the experience to just be. Allowing an experience to just be not only requires a level of awareness of what’s going on in your life, but it is also acknowledging the reality of it before making a choice about how to respond. It takes commitment and a thoughtful shift in your attention.
Acceptance is not the same as giving up. Acceptance is the act of no longer resisting reality. When you resist you are complaining about the situation. The complaint creates tension between yourself and the experience you are having in the moment. Dissatisfaction and suffering can arise from the tension you are creating. It also takes energy to maintain that tension. Your sense of “you” is pushing against the reality of the situation when you say to the Universe, “I don’t want this.”
You will discover that you are happier and more peaceful when you accept what is happening instead of constantly fighting to change things. There are two ways out of everything that is happening in your life: accept what’s happening and see the positive; or fight against it, be miserable, and struggle against the Universe. Acceptance is the key to moving from feeling happy to actually being happy. Practicing acceptance prepares you to live in this changing world, where you never know what’s going to happen next. The ability to find the lesson or purpose behind every challenge will help you embrace it instead of fighting it. Choose not to judge what happens to you. Instead, believe that everything happens for a reason and that better things will always follow. That’s the beginning of true acceptance.
Here are a few tools to help you practice acceptance of yourself, others and your journey ::
- Don’t define yourself by your mistakes. Have you ever noticed that it’s easier to accept others for their shortcomings, but when it comes to yourself you seldom cut yourself any slack? While it’s a great virtue to forgive those that tread on us, it’s an even greater virtue to forgive yourself. If you make a mistake, so be it. Don’t let it define you. It’s an action you took, not an indicator of your self-worth. Instead of focusing on things that you have done wrong, concentrate on the things that you’ve done right. Celebrate your achievements. Congratulate yourself on positive decisions. Be your own cheerleader.
- Don’t compare yourself to other people. You can’t ever accept yourself if you compare yourself to others and feel you’re not good enough, smart enough, brave enough, or whatever enough. You’ll always find someone who can do something better than you. However, you’ll also find things that you can do better than other people, so in the end it’s a wash. Everyone has strengths in different areas. Embrace your uniqueness. Don’t try to be like everyone else. Just be yourself.
- Become aware. You can’t change your thoughts about yourself and others if you’re not aware of them. Become a self-examiner and an observer of your thoughts and determine where you are resisting or accepting and why. Becoming aware of your thoughts empowers you to do something about them.
- Modify unrealistic expectations for yourself. Adjust your expectations about what you can realistically achieve. Unrealistic expectations lead to self-rejection. Start with your accomplishments. Minimizing you achievements perpetuates self-criticism. Instead, start speaking more positively and realistically about your accomplishments—whether they involve day-to-day tasks or long-term goals. Not sure if your expectations are realistic? Watch for these keywords to signify that they’re not: always/never statements, ‘shoulds’, ‘I can’t’, or ‘it’s too hard.’
- Understand that you can’t control others. One of the biggest challenges is letting other people be themselves. You may get frustrated with other people because they don’t act the way you want them to act. But you have to realize that they are acting according to what they feel is right, and they are not going to do what you want all of the time. And as hard as it may be, you have to accept that. It’s not easy and it definitely takes practice.
- Modify unrealistic expectations for others. Having unrealistic expectations of others also prevents you from accepting them. It keeps you in a state of resistance, which you now know is the opposite of acceptance. Holding others to extremely high standards only sets yourself up for disappointment and resentment. When you let them off the hook, you will find your relationship with them to be more accepting, loving and compassionate.
- Understand that you can’t control everything. Newsflash: You don’t control the Universe. All the wishful thinking won’t make it so. It’s a given that things outside of your control will happen. There are things that you just cannot control that will affect every aspect of your life, and if you cannot accept that, you will be in a constant state of resistance. Letting go of the need to control everything is a key component in acceptance.
- Let go of perfectionism. Perfectionism is often confused with the positive quality of striving for excellence. If you are striving for excellence, you are motivated by the positive desire to do a good job for others. If you are a perfectionist, you are motivated by your own self-interest. If you are striving for excellence and you do not reach it, you don’t take it personally. A perfectionist takes it personally, and they will either blame others, or beat themselves up for falling short. Sometimes perfectionists will try to get others to be perfect. They believe that the only way to do things is their way and if you aren’t doing it their way, you’re doing it wrong. It doesn’t occur to them that just because someone sees something differently or handles a situation differently, doesn’t make it wrong. It only makes it different.
- Accept change and imperfection. Sometimes when you get things the way you like them in your life, you usually don’t want them to change. But they will change. It’s a fact of life. It’s impossible to keep things the way you want them to be forever. Accept that the world is constantly changing, and you are a part of that change. Also, instead of wanting things to be perfect, accept that they will never be perfect and accept what is good instead.
- Enjoy life as a flow of change, chaos and beauty. Try seeing the world as perfect the way it is. It’s messy, crazy, painful, sad, dirty and completely perfect. The world is beautiful, just as it is. Life is not something static, but a flow of change, never staying the same, always getting messier and more chaotic, always beautiful. There is beauty in everything around you, if you can look at it as perfect just the way it is.