Acceptance

“Acceptance of one’s life has nothing to do with resignation; it does not mean running away from the struggle. On the contrary, it means accepting it as it comes, with all the handicaps of heredity, of suffering, of psychological complexes and injustices.”
—Dr. Paul Tournier

Acceptance does not mean we like where we are, where we’ve been, or what has happened to us. It means that rather than living in denial we accept that we are in a certain place or have had certain experiences and we learn from that so that we may grow and move on.

If our finances are not where we need or want them to be, we can’t fix them by sticking our head in the sand. We must accept our situation as being what it is and look for ways to correct it.

If we have an addiction, admitting it/accepting it is the first step in breaking it. When we have let ourselves go physically we must accept our present situation if we are to lose weight, get fit, eat right, or stop abusing our bodies with various addictions.

If we are experiencing a breakup or divorce when the other person is leaving us, it does no good to make excuses and pretend that they’ll be back and that it’s really not over. Acceptance will allow us to heal.

Denial and acceptance are opposites. One hides from a situation or problem and the other meets it head on. Having denial won’t wish away our problems, situations or issues. Acceptance of what is allows us to make the changes in behavior that will lead to healing.

While denial can numb us to life’s issues, it will only give us a temporary respite from out pain. Denial can represent fear while acceptance offers hope.

If we don’t like our present lot in life, we must first accept that we are right where we are no matter what our situation. Then with a clear head we can begin to work at turning our lives around and getting ourselves to a place where we want to be.

Running away or hiding from our problems will never change them; acceptance is the beginning to healing.

Understanding Our Power

“Things turn out best for the people who make the best out of the way things turn out.”
—Art Linkletter

Fighting what is can be a very frustrating thing to do. When we want something to be one way and it goes another way, acceptance is the best solution.

And so it goes when we have difficulty with other people. We may want a romantic relationship with someone who only wants to be our friend. Or it’s possible to work with someone who we cannot seem to get along with no matter what we do. We only have the power to change ourselves, or to accept the situation. What we cannot do is make the other person change or behave in the way that would make us happy.

Prayer is power because if we have faith we believe that God can make the changes or put us in a different place. Letting go helps since we really have no other option. Insisting that things are bad and will never get better won’t solve anything. It’s best to think in a positive vein, to believe that we have the power to change a situation by moving forward in our lives, and not attempting to force someone else to be a certain way.

Making lemonade when life hands us lemons is how we deal with those things that are out of our power and control. Understanding what we have power over and what we don’t is how we are able to make lemonade.

Do what you need to do to make your life better without expecting someone else to do it.

Having Support

“The love, the acceptance of other persons makes me into the unique person I am meant to be.”
—Peter G. van Breemen

Having a support group is an important part of life no matter where we are in our recovery, growth, or maturity.

This support can come from a recovery group, church, family, or friends, and is usually best if it’s a mixture of many. We may have friends at church or in a recovery group who have never met our friends that we do other things with. All of the different people in our lives are our support group regardless of what heading of acquaintance they fall under.

When things are going great in our lives we may not feel the need to have people to turn to, but let us suffer a loss, or have a need and we soon discover the importance of friends and family for support. Having many people in our lives to turn to does not mean that each of them know everything about us. Some friends will be closer to us and know our darkest secrets; some may be there simply because they make us laugh; and another may be there because they have had similar grief in their life. The more variety the better when it comes to having people in our lives.

When we feel loved we are better able to love ourselves. When we love ourselves others are drawn to us. As others are drawn to us they become part of our social network of support, and we become theirs as well.

If we don’t have this support in our lives we can get it by starting where we are. We add one at a time until eventually — sometimes suddenly — we realize that we are in the middle of something that will not fail us because it is strong and diverse.

Even when we are single and spend a great deal of time alone, we can still feel love and support from those in our lives. We will never truly feel alone when we know that there are people who care.

Having others to lean on when in need makes the down times so much easier.

Denial

“Self-acceptance comes from meeting life’s challenges vigorously. Don’t numb yourself to your trials and difficulties, nor build mental walls to exclude pain from your life. You will find peace not by trying to escape your problems, but by confronting them courageously. You will find peace not in denial, but in victory.”
—J. Donald Walters

No matter what we do in life we can either sugarcoat it into something better than it was, or curse all over it and turn it into something negative. Whether it’s a thought, an action, a fear, it is what it is no matter if we’re in denial over it or not. We deny the truth to make situations appear better than they are, as well as some sort of self-punishment to make things not seem so great when maybe, just maybe they are that good.

To deny our thoughts and feelings does not make them go away, in fact, holding our feelings inside can make us sick. Pushing down, internalizing pain brings on stomach problems, backaches, and headaches.

Denial is not noble. Courage to face our fears, feelings, and consequences of our actions is noble. Saying a thing is black when it is white does not make it white. To pretend, even to ourselves, that we are not hurt when we are does not make us free of pain. It is simply a temporary fix to a long-term issue, one that will be resolved when we are willing to be honest with our self and others in order to stop running from it and face it.

We all use denial as a defense mechanism for things that we find intolerable. Sometimes it is necessary for a while, but there comes a point in our “recovery” that we need to face all of the facts, feelings, and actions of our lives so that we may grow and heal.

When we learn to accept rather than deny we are better able to deal with life on life’s terms. Life is not smooth and easy, it hasn’t been for centuries and it is not going to be tomorrow. Living in denial about our difficulties doesn’t make them disappear.

Denial only prolongs the growth from and solution to every situation.

Powerless Over Others

“We admitted we were powerless over others — that our lives had become unmanageable.”
—Step One of the 12 Steps of Co-Dependents Anonymous

We cannot control other people. We can’t control their thoughts, behaviors or actions. No matter how much we may wish to we will never be able to do such a thing. So the sooner we learn this and accept our powerless over others, the faster we can move forward with our own growth and ability to be in relationship with others. When we try to control others our lives will be unmanageable and we won’t find peace until we let go.

We may have tried in our lives to help a partner, friend, or family member who has an addiction problem, only to find out that no matter what we did they didn’t get any better because it’s their issue and no amount of interference will stop a person until they are ready.

Sometimes in relationships in order to get along with another person we may try to control outcomes of interactions only to find our best intentions fall flat. We may try to say what we think they want us to say and that’s not right. So we say nothing and that fails too. We let them make all of the decisions and that doesn’t work either.

We simply cannot control another person, just as we cannot control any outcome. As soon as we can admit being powerless over others, we can begin to let go and move on. We can look at what we do have power over. We can walk out the door, quit the job, move on if need be. That’s where our power lies, in what we can do, not what they do or don’t do.

We can have more manageable lives when we learn to take care of our side of the street and leave other people to deal with their issues. It’s not usually easy, especially when we care about someone deeply, but we can’t have relationships with others the way we want on their terms only. We only have power over what we do and say and that’s a big enough job without trying to control another person’s behaviors.

Accepting powerless over others gives us power.

Pain is Part of Life

“Pain and death are part of life. To reject them is to reject life itself.”
—Havelock Ellis

It’s very easy after suffering an incident that caused pain, to just give up and say we won’t ever go there again. Maybe it’s a relationship issue and we just want to crawl into an imaginary shell and hide from the world and the thought of any future romance in our lives. Or it may be a member of our family who continues to hurt us each time we see them and we really would like to just cut off contact with that person, but they are our family so it’s not always the best idea.

Pain can come from many sources and usually it hits us when we have been at our most vulnerable. And in order to get over the pain some time must pass and we will need to feel what we feel until it is gone. Feeling our pain is how we move forward. Shutting down and closing ourselves to future relationships is not the answer if we choose to live full lives.

One way to recover from a painful incident is to practice acceptance. We just stop fighting it and asking why it happened, why someone did what they did. What’s happened is done and there’s no going back in that situation to undo or redo. We accept it for what it is.

Another necessary recovery tool for pain is to forgive — forgive whoever hurt us and forgive our self if we need to do that. We may have been equal partners in the painful situation, or perhaps we are angry with ourselves for allowing our self to get in the situation that hurt us. Whatever the circumstance we forgive those who hurt us and our self.

It’s okay to grieve. We can cry and scream if we have to, as long as we don’t turn our pain onto someone else or turn it inward. Grieving is a process that doesn’t fit into a nice tidy little package. We feel what we feel and stay away from medicating our pain with drugs, alcohol, or anything that we would use to keep us from feeling.

Pain comes when we live our lives fully, just as joy comes too.

Look for the Lesson

“Are you focusing on the circumstances of your life instead of the lessons? Instead of asking why, learn to ask what the lesson is. The moment you become ready to accept it, the lesson will become clear.”
—Melody Beattie

Life can sure throw us some curve balls at times causing us to wonder why this or that experience came our way. We often can’t see the reason why we got what we got, or didn’t get what we wanted, or lost what we had.

We can continue to focus and live in the “why me” way of thinking or we can choose to do what Melody Beattie suggests above and look for the lessons in the circumstances. There are lessons in everything we do, usually more so in the difficulties in life than those things that bring us joy.

When we take the focus off of “why” and look for the lesson, it can also help us to let go of those things which are causing us pain. When we stop obsessing about why and step out of it as much as we can for the moment, it takes away some of the power of the situation. Stopping, even if we can only do it a minute or two at a time, and asking what the lesson is … focusing on that instead of “it” can help us along the way.

Often when we are in the grips of a painful situation the last thing we think of to look for is the lesson. However, if we begin now, with one thing in our lives, and start making it a way of thinking, a habit, we will begin to look for the lessons in all things that happen to us. The lessons may surprise us too; we may learn something we weren’t even seeking to know.

Look for the lesson instead of asking “why me.”

Live and Let Live

“To live and let live, without clamour for distinction or recognition; to wait on divine love; to write truth first on the tablet of one’s own heart — this is the sanity and perfection of living.”
—Mary Baker Eddy

To live and let live is one of the most freeing things we can do. It’s letting go of our attempts to control others and our judgment of how other people live their lives.

Life becomes easier when we grow into this way of living. Thoughts may pop up from time to time about another person when we wonder why they are doing something a certain way or not doing it the way we would. We can just think to ourselves, “It’s not my deal,” and go on about our business.

For those who have never had control issues surrounding other people, this concept may seem foreign. And it will probably seem foreign to those who have not had this awakening. But once we have it, we know that it is the way to be. And if we haven’t we can strive to get it.

We know we cannot control what other people do. We cannot control our children, coworkers, siblings, parents, friends, or neighbors. When we really grasp this concept and set forth to live, really live our own lives and let them live theirs, we will find a peace that we have not had before.

When we learn to live this way we have more peace and we are better able to love others without trying to fix them to fit what we think they need to do.

When we let others live we free them and ourselves.

Stop Beating Yourself Up

“Who would you see if you saw yourself walking your way?”
—Chester Davidson

How do you see yourself on the inside and out? Are you totally flawed, or just normally flawed. When you make a mistake do you wallow in it for days or weeks, or do you pat yourself off and move on?

We can be our own best friend. It’s time to stop beating ourselves up for past mistakes. It’s time to see that nobody is perfect and whatever we do that is less than perfect is still OK.

Look past the mistake as one woman’s college basketball player learned because anytime she made a mistake it negatively affected her game and caused her not to play her best. She would hang her head and now when she looks down one shoe says “Next” and the other shoe says “Play.”

When we make a mistake we cannot afford to get bogged down in that error, rather we should learn from it and move on to our “next play.”

Everyone has struggles even though it may seem as though we are alone in ours. We go through our lives wishing that we didn’t have to go through this or that and wondering why us. And we think other people handle things better or don’t suffer through some of the growing pains we do. But the reality is, we all have issues that we either work on or we don’t. If you’re reading this you are most likely one of those people who chooses to work on your issues to grow and become all that you were meant to be.

But in doing so, don’t be so hard on yourself. Lighten up. You can get so stuck in the mire of mistakes and disappointments and beating yourself up that you forget all about being happy and having fun.

Go easy on you. Treat yourself as you would your best friend if they were having the same issues as you. Hopefully you’d treat them with dignity, respect, and love. Hopefully you’ll treat yourself that way.

Next Play

Laughter is the Best Medicine

“You have to laugh at yourself, because you’d cry your eyes out if you didn’t.”
—Emily Saliers

We take ourselves and life way too serious sometimes. We worry about tomorrow and yesterday and forget all about what we are doing at the moment.

Have you every done anything really silly? Maybe something that you cannot believe you would do by letting yourself be out of perfect control for one minute? Did you live through it? Did the world come to an end? Of course not.

And the best part is that when we do make mistakes or do something outside our ordinary boxed in perfect little lives and we can laugh about it, the world is a happier place because we’ve let go, even if momentarily, of perfectionism.

Someone said, and it’s been repeated often, that laughter is the best medicine. A good ol’ deep belly laugh can be one of the most healing moments we can have. We don’t have them enough, but if we think back to the last one we had we can see where it helped. Most likely we had tears streaming down our face and could not control the laugh or the tears.

It’s not always easy to get to that place. In the movie “Steel Magnolias” there’s a part where two usually crabby older women have just attended the funeral of a young, vibrant new wife and mother. They argue a bit and before you know it they are laughing. I did the same thing watching the movie; cried and then laughed.

Both crying and laughing can bring healing tears.

Find something to laugh about every day.