This website contains about 400,000 words. You could read every single word and it wouldn't make any real difference to you. You might become better informed, but that won't change you.
The power of acceptance is the freedom that it gives you.
Freedom from the tyranny of your thoughts and emotional responses to the events and circumstances of your life.
The transforming power of acceptance is that it:
Acceptance is the foundation stone upon which all personal change is built.
It is also the foundation of ACT [Acceptance Commitment Therapy] and a range of other mindfulness based therapies:
"Clients learn to stop avoiding, denying, and struggling with their inner emotions and, instead, accept that these deeper feelings are appropriate responses to certain situations that should not prevent them from moving forward in their lives.
With this understanding, clients begin to accept their issues and hardships and commit to making necessary changes in their behavior, regardless of what is going on in their lives, and how they feel about it."
Carl Jung believed that acceptance and spiritual interconnectedness were crucial to a person's recovery.
Practising The Power Of Acceptance
The Deep Acceptance Process
The key to this process is simplicity.
Do not think it, just run with whatever comes up.
A good place to start is with your resistance.
An Example
WHAT AM I FEELING? "I am thoroughly pissed off and think this is a stupid bloody process."
I ACCEPT THAT: "I am thoroughly pissed off and think this is a stupid bloody process."
WHAT AM I FEELING? "I am upset and angry because a business deal I thought was going to happen this month hasn't and has been postponed to next February."
I ACCEPT THAT: "I am upset and angry because a business deal I thought was going to happen this month hasn't and has been postponed to next February."
WHAT AM I FEELING? "I am disappointed and upset because my earning from that project was going to pay for the healthcare and family of a good friend of mine in Asia."
I ACCEPT THAT: "I am disappointed and upset because my earnings from that project were going to pay for the healthcare and family support of a good friend of mine in Asia."
WHAT AM I FEELING? "I feel that I have let them down."
I ACCEPT THAT: "I feel that I have let them down."
WHAT AM I FEELING? "My son's dog [that I am dog sitting today] is barking and annoying me, and I feel that I want that bloody dog to shut up."
I ACCEPT THAT: "My son's dog is barking and annoying me, and I feel that I want that bloody dog to shut up."
It may take just 5 minutes or it make take 25 minutes but what you will find after a number of iterations of this process is that the answer to the question: WHAT AM I FEELING? is "I am feeling calm, I feel present, I am peaceful."
If you are not feeling calm and peaceful, you haven't finished the process so continue until you are.
Remember, that you run with whatever comes up with no filtering. If you feel pain and anger - say it. If you want to swear and use angry, offensive and abusive language - say it.
If you want to curse God [trust me, you won't die!], life, your partner, your ex-partner, your parents, anyone and everyone who you feel has let you down and done you wrong...
If you feel shame, pain, regret...
Just say it - whatever it is, whatever comes up - and accept it.
As with all mindfulness practices the hardest part of this process is just doing it! Check out the story of the leper and the dirty river.
I have used this deep acceptance process many times and it always works.
Further Reading On Acceptance:
How to Make Friends with Your Beautiful Monsters
Next Article: Stop Thinking - Discover The Benefits Of Having Space In Your Mind
Return from "The Power of Acceptance" to: Walking The Talk
Contact me
- What if everything we think…
LATEST ARTICLES
The Balanced Brain - The Ultimate Route To Personal Transformation
How To Experience The Benefits Of A Balanced Brain. Underpinning all of the belief systems and practices that offer routes to personal change, transformation and spiritual growth is the balanced brain…
How To Make Better Decisions - By Avoiding The Narrative Trap
To Understand The Truth We Have To See The Whole Picture. One of the best ways to make better decisions is to have a deeper understanding of the many things that might stop that happening. To understa…
The Greatest Love - The Most Important Relationship You Will Ever Have
Yet Most Will Never Know It Everyone of us has a place, in our hearts there's a space, that is home to the greatest love of all. This love transcends everything we think we know about the world of for…
Everything Is Connected And Why You Don't Feel It
...And Why It Matters
As human beings we are skating on very thin ice with our sense of self and certainty about "how things are" and what we like to think of as reality:
Who Is In Charge Of Your Brain?
How Not To Be Stupid. Who is in charge of your brain? This is not a silly questions. It matters because the outcomes that you experience in your life are determined by how you respond to the events th…
How To Be A Winner On A Very Large Scale
The Incredible Benefits Of Selective Attention. This is not a typical article about how to be a winner. We are not going to talk about goal setting, the importance of habits, the power of focus and al…
The Metagame Approach To Life
How To Achieve Your Biggest Objectives.
The metagame approach to life is all about winning and achieving your biggest objectives by:
- Understanding the bigger picture
- Being better by doing things d…Shantideva - The Way Of The Bodhisattva
Walking The Path Of Compassion. Shantideva the 8th century Indian Buddhist sage is famous for his treatise "The Way of the Bodhisattva" delivered as an extended teaching to the monks of Nalanda monast…
Reframing History - Deconstruction And Discussion Not Destruction
History is always about context, not imposing our own moral values on the past. For those of us fortunate enough to live within western democracies, we are living in an age where a vociferous and into…
Tao Te Ching - Connecting To Your True Source Of Power.
How To Be Lived By The Tao. The Tao Te Ching is one of those books that many people read, few understand, and even fewer put into practice. The only way to know the Tao is to experience it, and it is…
How Things Really Are - The Inbuilt Design Flaws
Chaos, Disorder And Decay Is The Natural Order Of Things. Nobody has the perfect life. We all struggle and strive to attain health, wealth and personal happiness. Yet these three big areas: our health…
Intuition Or Anxiety - Are There Angels Or Devils Crawling Here?
How To Tell The Difference Between Intuition and Anxiety. How do you know whether the voice of your intuition is real or just the product of your inner anxiety? Several months ago I was having a drink…
What Is Truth - How To Tell A Partial Truth From The Whole Truth?
How the truth and nothing but the truth is often not the whole truth. My great aunty Flo broke her arm and died. It is true that she broke her arm in 1923. It is also true that she died in 1949. But t…
Duality And Life Beyond Your Thinking Mind
Duality and life beyond your thinking mind focuses on the limitations of time, foreground and background, duality and "stuckness". The first aspect of duality and life beyond your thinking mind focuse…
The Conscious Mind Is Limited - Be Aware And Be Prepared
Being aware is the first stage of being prepared. The conscious mind is limited in so many ways. There are some who would argue that there is no such thing as conscious thought and that it is represen…
Your Inner Map Of Reality - Here's Why You Think The Way You Do
The big picture of how your inner map of reality creates your feelings, thoughts, and behaviours. Your inner map of reality is based on the filters of your own ethnic, national, social, family and rel…
The Failure Of Cancel Culture - Suppression Not Engagement
Why we need to wear our beliefs lightly and develop negative capability. Throughout history people have campaigned to fight beliefs, ideologies, and injustices that they perceived to be oppressive, di…
4 Big Reasons Why We Get Stuck In Our Attempts At Personal Change
Most People Spend Their Entire Life Imprisoned Within The Confines Of Their Own Thoughts. This first of the 4 big reasons why we get stuck is, in my view, the most important. The "self-help industry…
How Do I Change And Why Is It So Hard?
We Would Rather Die Than Change, And We Usually Do In my experience, the vast majority of people who say they want to change don’t change. Most people reading this won’t change because they don’t real…
The Illusion Of A Separate Self - Windows 11 With Self Awareness!
Beyond the content of your mind you are so much more than you think you are. When we talk of "myself" this is the conventional way of referring to our self image which is in fact the ego's constructio…
Finite And Infinite Games - Dazed, Confused & Ultimately Transcendent
This is not an instruction manual, it is a wake up call!
Over this past week I have read Professor James Carse's highly regarded "Finite And Infinite Games - A Vision Of Life As Play And Possibility"…
The Gap And The Gain - How Your Brain Sabotages Your Happiness
How Your Lizard Brain Sabotages Your Happiness We are hardwired to measure our progress in any and all areas of life where we have goals and aspirations. We can't not do it. But what we measure and ho…
How To Wake Up - 4 Simple Practices To Help You Wake Up Now
So What Exactly Does It Mean to Wake Up - What Is "Enlightenment"? There is nothing magical, mystical or mysterious about waking up we’re actually having glimpses of enlightenment all the time. Enligh…
Situational Communication - Different Strokes For Different Folks
Situational communication is about taking account of 3 often ignored factors about the other person. You are a situational communicator when you recognise that effective communication is not an event…
How To Influence Without Authority - 6 Key Tips
The secret to how to influence without authority is that you get what you really want by giving other people what they really want. We live in an interconnected world and knowing how to influence with…
Change Questions To Change Your Outcomes
Asking The Right Questions Is Critical For A Successful Change. Every time we initiate a significant change - whether in our personal life or in an organisation - we will most likely over-estimate our…
Group Culture - The Invisible Software That Rules Your Life
Group culture is: "How we do things round here". We like to see ourselves as free agents making our own choices and living authentically but the reality is that The Matrix has many layers and we are u…
Why Getting From A to B Is Not Aways A Straight Line
In circumstances of significant change, the progress from A to B will not be in a straight line. We run our lives largely on auto-pilot. In most circumstances your experience of getting from A to B is…
The Art Of Persuasion Planning For Success - Here's How To Do It!
To be successful in the art of persuasion you must ensure that certain things happen. To be successful in the art of persuasion you must establish a framework of what has to happen to get you to that…
The Art Of Persuasion Advanced Communication Skills - Gaining Buyin
Create The Environment Where They Want To Buyin to Your Proposal In order to build the win-win you have to uncover what it is that the other person really wants or needs, and to do that you have to as…