Acceptance is surrendering to what is.
The rain has been steadily pouring down the last few weeks. Pouring by southern California standards anyway. Something I’m quite stoked for, given our desperate need for it, and any change in weather excites me. Also, any excuse to hibernate for a bit is always welcome.
Changes in weather also lead me to reflect on acceptance. People have a lot of opinions about the weather, but very little control over it (By little control, I mean the daily weather, not climate change, which we have a lot more control over through how we care for our planet.). The weather has never been something I’ve struggled to accept. Sure, it’s a bummer to have to cancel or change plans due to its unpredictability, but also, what can we do about it aside from accepting it and moving forward?
This level of acceptance is not always my jam. “It’s not fair” is one of my favorite core beliefs. The social worker in me is a major fan of equity and equality. Not necessarily a bad thing, but mindfulness is not about judging good or bad, right or wrong; it’s about being aware of reality to be more effective.
A deep-seated sense of fairness, along with self-reliance, hard work, and following “the rules,” often got me what I wanted. Until it didn’t.
Weather is a good place to start with practicing acceptance.
At which time, I realized I can be quite willful—forcing square pegs into round holes—becoming more and more frustrated as things blow up around me no matter what I do. I’ve often believed I have far more control than I do. Eventually, acceptance becomes the only choice when I can’t immediately change the world around me.
But that doesn’t mean acceptance is easy. It’s something most of us struggle with. I mean, an entire religion is essentially centered around that concept. Acceptance is hard because it isn’t something we’re often taught to practice. We don’t know how to do it. Unless you’re Buddhist. Even then, it’s a challenge.
We confuse it with approval, love, compassion, or passivity. We think if we accept something, we’re condoning or agreeing with it. We won’t work to change it and will be stuck with that reality forever. It’s especially hard when we have strong emotions about the situation. Emotions such as sadness, anger, shame, guilt, or fear give us a lot of useful information, but can also make acceptance harder to practice.
What is Acceptance and How Do We Practice It?
Things to Accept
1. The objective, factual past and present reality as it is. Even if you don’t like it. Especially if you don’t like it, since that’s a sign of not accepting.
The dream of dunking died, but from acceptance new dreams emerge.
2. We, and the world around us, have limitations. But we only need to accept the realistic limitations, not the ones others try to place on us due to their own insecurities and/or desire to protect us. A couple examples of this from my own life: For a good chunk of my childhood, I really wanted to dunk a basketball. Never mind that I hit my peak height of 5’2” in the 6th grade, and no matter how much I practiced, didn’t develop the hops to jump that high. Eventually, I decided I was better off focusing on the abilities I actually did have. I have also always wanted to be a professional writer, but put off pursuing that for so long due to buying into the limitations (“Most writers don’t get paid much, or ever really make it.”) placed on me by others who didn’t follow their dreams.
3. Everything has been caused by something else, even if we can’t outright identify the cause. This includes situations that cause pain and suffering. If we want to change something, we need to fully accept and understand the conditions that contributed to it.
4. Life can be beautiful and worthwhile even when painful things happen. Which, unfortunately, will happen to everyone throughout life. Often it’s the pain that makes us realize what’s truly important to us.
Why Accept Reality As It Is?
Rejecting reality rarely leads to happiness.
1. The opposite of acceptance is rejection, and rejecting reality doesn’t change what has happened. No matter how much we try to avoid or fight reality, it’s still reality.
2. We can’t change things without first accepting what is. Otherwise, we might change things that have no impact on what we want to be different. Acceptance provides clarity around causation and allows us to see where we can make changes to create a more preferable future.
3. We can’t avoid discomfort. Pain is a natural signal that something is wrong and needs to be addressed if we want to reduce or eliminate discomfort.
4. Suffering is the result of rejecting the reality of our pain. This can keep us stuck in physical and emotional pain. If we have a broken foot and don’t accept that reality, we might keep walking on it, not allowing it to heal and injure it further. Same as physical pain, if we don’t feel emotional pain and address what’s contributing to it, it becomes more intense and problematic.
How to Practice Acceptance using Mindfulness
1. Observe the willfulness, your questioning of or fighting reality. Remember my “It isn’t fair” thought? That’s a big sign for me. Other thoughts might be, “It shouldn’t be this way.” Or the desire to control others or circumstances out of your control. Tense muscles (clenched jaw, tight shoulders or hips, balled fists) are also physical signs of attempts to control things you have no control over.
Physical relaxation and calming body language can help with acceptance.
2. Remind yourself that the unpleasant reality is still what it is and can’t be changed. It’s what happened even if we wish it weren’t. I can’t tell you how often I’ve wished things were different, but all the wishing in the world has never actually changed the reality.
3. Seek to understand what caused the situation. Or if you don’t know the specific history, know that there are causes for the reality. Things had to happen in a particular sequence for this moment to occur exactly as it did.
4. Use relaxation techniques and accepting self-talk to involve your whole body in accepting a situation. Meditate, pray, breathe slowly and deeply, go into nature, move your body (sometimes vigorously if you need to burn some pent-up energy in order to find a place of calm), relax tense muscles and use body calming postures, imagine a peaceful place, create some art, whatever works for you to regulate your nervous system.
5. Practice opposite action to our usual desire to marinate in the unfairness. Think of how you would act if you did accept reality and then act that way. Even if you don’t feel like it. But if that’s too hard, visualizing what it would be like to accept in a situation can also be helpful. Do that until you feel a shift in your acceptance.
6. Feel the physical sensations in your body, allowing them to pass through like clouds in the sky. This also calms the nervous system and keeps your body from turning pain into prolonged suffering.
And sometimes, what we most need to accept is ourselves.
7. Do these things whenever feelings of resistance to reality arise. Sometimes we accept a situation and then later, not so much, and we have to go through the process again. That’s normal and okay. Some things take longer to process and accept than others. Sometimes we accept one aspect, and then there’s a whole other layer to accept.
That being said, I want to reiterate that acceptance can be a challenging concept to fully grasp and, even more so, to put into practice. It's important to note that encouraging acceptance is not about gaslighting anyone into believing that disrespectful or harmful behavior is ever okay. There are situations that are absolutely awful and should never be tolerated.
However, in order to create a more just, peaceful, and thriving world for all, we must first accept the current realities contributing to these problematic situations. Only then can we begin to make meaningful, lasting changes.
As much as I resist acceptance, it offers a freedom that little else can provide. I hope you join me in embracing this freedom and practicing acceptance as often as you can.
Written by Amanda Stemen, MS, LCSW