Hello, friends. You can’t even imagine how necessary the skill of acceptance is in our lives. After all, acceptance is the key to a calm, serene, happy life, to getting rid of mental suffering and many physical illnesses. Why is this so and what is acceptance of oneself and everything? How to accept yourself as you are, how to learn to accept people, your destiny and all reality? We'll talk about this today.
Acceptance as a source of happiness
Acceptance is a psychological attitude, a certain view of reality, when we accept reality, life as it really is. The opposite of it is rejection, when we do not agree with what happened, we make our egoistic demands on the world around us. As a result, we become angry, resentful, depressed, or experience other negative feelings. This is how suffering and illness appear. Often a person simply becomes depressed.
The world that surrounds us does not always correspond to the mental templates hanging in our heads. It is complex, diverse, and therefore can also be cruel and unfair. But people do not accept this state of affairs. We all want the world to revolve only around us, for other people to do what we like, for there to be no difficulties in life, for everything to go smoothly and beautifully. But this is an illusion. This is not a wise, childish view of the surrounding reality, which gives rise to all sorts of problems in life. But most people live like this, without even understanding why things aren’t working out for them and how to change it.
But once you learn the skill of acceptance, life will immediately begin to change for the better. This is how we come to happiness. After all, acceptance is not hanging your head in the face of difficulties, not giving up positions, but only an adequate view of things without dissatisfaction, in which we can also change and improve something. But we will do this much better, because we do not dwell in our illusions, but accept the truth of life. We do not run away from reality with the help of our fantasies and inflated demands. Rejection is an escape from reality.
Acceptance is a sober look at reality. Thanks to this, we begin to act more productively, make fewer mistakes, and therefore achieve more. But reality, I assure you, with this approach will only help you and improve your life. After all, you began to cooperate with her, and not run away from her, demand too much from her. You have yet to realize this paradox.
Remember the fairy tale about the goldfish. If you interact with the world with the help of your egoistic motives, demand from it the realization of your ego’s desires, you will get the opposite. So you fight the world, you want to squeeze everything out of it and only for yourself. The world will not forgive you for this. On the contrary, by cooperating with the world, understanding it, accepting any of its manifestations, whether they are not the best for you during this period of life, in the long run you improve your life. Therefore, it is very important to learn to accept any situation in life as it is.
Rejection is a manifestation of our ego, the lower consciousness of man. Acceptance is a manifestation of our soul, when the lower egoistic motives that generate a flurry of uncontrollable negative emotions subside. That is, having learned to accept, we mentally relax, we come to peace and tranquility. This mental work is much more productive. We do not make mistakes, we act confidently and clearly, listening to both our hearts and our minds. It’s just that now the ego will no longer rush around in its illusions and fetter and absorb our attention.
Remember the rule: the ego distorts the view of reality. We don't see the truth, we only see the distortion that the ego creates. We live in a kingdom of distorting mirrors. Imagine that we look in the mirror, but we see a distorted reflection there, like in a funhouse. It is our programs, settings, and templates that introduce this distortion. A pure view of the world is possible only with mental silence, when emotions and ego feelings subside. It is precisely acceptance that contributes to such silence.
Bright positive feelings will appear in the soul: joy, love, understanding, compassion. We begin to be content with what we have and feel the joy of life itself, from simply living. This is how we come to happiness. You see how everything is interconnected.
It would seem that such a simple mental attitude as acceptance radically changes everything in a person. It’s just time for us all to understand, and this has been repeatedly said on this blog, that our attention, the work of our consciousness is closely interconnected with the rest of the body. Certain programs and settings force our attention to work in a certain way, absorbing or, on the contrary, releasing energy into space. And emotions and feelings necessarily affect the body in different ways, change its biochemistry, cause muscles to contract or, on the contrary, relax them.
Negative emotions as a result of rejection poison the body, cause blocks, and lead to physical illness.
Achieve What's Important
Everyone wants to feel great, the more often the better, and the psyche helpfully feeds you a buzz for any achievements, even illusory ones. Passed the level? Cool. Did you get any likes? Goddess.
Video games and social networks are so addictive because they give you a boost in self-esteem for no reason, but (fortunately) life puts everything in its place. If you are tired of falling into the pit of “I’m nobody” and running with your heels sparkling for a new portion of likes, you need to understand one thing.
Self-esteem is increased by real achievements in areas of life that are important to you. The only way. No other way.
If it is important for you to look good and you lose weight, or learn to dress nicely, or finally get your teeth done, you will feel better. The main thing is that these achievements will stay with you. A hundred pictures that you took so that one could turn out to be more or less nothing, will not give this, no matter how many likes you collect. The feeling you get from beating a newbie in a game is nothing compared to completing a difficult project at work.
Don't be angry with yourself or others because you are unhappy with yourself. Why be happy? What did you do today to feel great? If all the answers come down to what you ate (literally or figuratively) and not what you cooked, things are bad.
By the way, about those around you.
Acceptance as a source of health
That is why, having learned to accept the world, we not only improve our health, prevent diseases from appearing in the future, but even recover from many already acquired ailments. It seems like a miracle, but it is true. Many people do not understand how the power of thought can be cured of serious illnesses. And it’s right that they don’t understand. It is very difficult, almost impossible, by strengthening some positive thought or attitude towards recovery, to get rid of the disease. This is not really why recovery happens, and I will tell you this secret.
Healing will occur only if the negative manifestations of the psyche subside and stop draining our strength. This is where our energy goes, leading to illness, mental and physical exhaustion. The mind and body are closely interconnected. And uncontrolled thoughts and emotions consume the lion's share of vital energy, lead to muscle tension, energy blocks, and change the biochemistry of the body for the worse. Once they subside, the body will breathe a sigh of relief and begin the process of self-healing. He will do it himself, without your participation. It contains enormous reserve forces and the ability to self-heal. And our task is not to interfere with him in this, stopping to generate egoistic manifestations of the psyche.
It is precisely the attitude of acceptance that calms down this whole barrage of emotions devouring us. A healthy person is a calm person who shows wisdom and adequacy.
I would like to once again recall the main thesis, which has already been repeated several times in various articles on this blog.
Selfish thoughts and emotions distort our view of reality, take away vitality, and therefore lead to illness.
Ego distorts vision
The inner critic turns on, which, on the one hand, constantly reminds you of how bad you are, a loser, etc., and on the other hand, cultivates the image of a victim. The illusion is created that the more you scold yourself, the faster you will receive a reward for your torment from the Universe: in the end, there must be justice. This masochistic expectation of compensation indicates your excessive selfishness. You consider yourself the center of the Universe and distort reality yourself. Calm your ego and everything will fall into place.
Accepting other people improves your relationship with them
Why do we quarrel in the family with loved ones, why do we swear at work, make enemies, hate someone, are constantly angry with someone, spoil relationships. It's simple. We don’t accept people as they are, we don’t want to learn it.
We only want people to conform to the behavior that suits only us. For people to be the way we want them to be. Accepting people's characters and their behavior changes relationships with them for the better, improves communication, and leads to an understanding of their actions.
It’s best to show this with an example; I’ll tell you my experience of accepting other people. Before I learned about the practice of acceptance, I had a bad relationship with my boss at work. I was constantly irritated by the fact that the boss did not fully fulfill his duties due to lack of time and weighed part of his work on his subordinates, and simply forgot a lot.
At the same time, I was indignant because he received a very large salary, which means that for that kind of money he had to do a lot, with high quality, and manage to do everything. Because of this, we constantly conflicted, and I was not afraid to tell him to his face that in many matters he was wrong, that he should do a lot himself, and I should calmly carry out only my duties for my salary. I don’t know how this would have ended if I hadn’t taken the path of self-development and started implementing an attitude of acceptance.
Of course, this did not happen right away, but as soon as I calmly accepted this state of affairs, this tense situation was lifted, my relationship with my boss improved, and the situation resolved itself. I just calmly accepted the fact that the boss is not ideal, that he can sometimes do mean things, exceed his authority, and weigh a lot of work on us. Before that, a program had stuck in my head that people should do only good things, and the boss should manage everything for that kind of money.
After that, my eyes were opened, and the understanding came to me that he actually did not have time for many things. After all, the boss is not a superman, he cannot do or remember everything. If I were him, I would do the same. Please note that I did not weak-willedly accept this state of affairs, I hinted to him about it, but I did it calmly, without scolding, with understanding, even a little compassion. I just felt sorry for him. I don’t know how it happened, but the situation resolved itself. The boss stopped giving me extra work, and he stopped forgetting many things that concern me. It just became easier for me to work.
Another example. When I embarked on the path of self-development, many people began to irritate me. I saw that they live like robots, unconsciously, drink alcohol, lead a meaningless life. And it really pissed me off. As a result, I became alienated. People, feeling a disdainful attitude towards themselves, began to avoid me. This also led to conflicts at work. I caught myself in time and discovered a very big vice in myself - pride.
I was successful in my development, I thought I was much better than most people. Many who embark on the path of self-development fall into this trap. And such a road, on the contrary, leads to degradation. The key to getting back on track is allowing people to be themselves. Don't expect them to all be good or developing individuals. We are all different, we need to accept this fact deep down. Many people will always lead an ordinary life, they simply do not have enough intelligence for anything else and you should not expect more from them. There are also criminals, degrading souls, capable of meanness and crime. There is no need to hope that an animal will do something human. They simply do not have the physical and mental support for this in the form of a normal mind and a developed soul.
After I allowed people to be themselves, accepted all their shortcomings, I immediately stopped being annoyed by their base behavior. Pride passed, a stone was removed from my soul, my energy increased, and people reached out to me. It became pleasant to communicate with me, I began to understand people, one might even say, to see some of their thoughts. I also realized that many of their actions are justified and are actually not so stupid and senseless. The most interesting thing is that I clearly saw that I myself am not ideal, I often commit unconscious actions, and my self-development, it turns out, is still very far from ideal.
Pride obscured the correct view of things. Also, if someone did something bad to me, committed a crime against me, I did not get irritated, did not fall into indignation or fear, but calmly took measures against such an attitude towards me. Acceptance even helps to dissolve fear. Fear of a criminal is often caused by aversion to being hurt.
You see how the practice of acceptance leads to a sober view of things and gives us back our strength. I repeat once again, remember this law and remember it more often.
The ego takes away our strength and distorts our perception of reality.
And another example from my personal life. Let my wife forgive me, but I will still bring it here, since it will be useful to many to avoid divorces and bad relationships in the family.
When I got married, I thought I had thrown in my lot with the best girl in the world because she met all my ideals. Of course, as happens with many, falling in love obscured the true state of affairs. In everyday life, a character trait of my beloved appeared that irritated me very much. This led to conflicts and tension in family relationships. Then I simply accepted her character within myself, this state of affairs.
People, even loved ones, cannot be ideal; everyone has their own shortcomings. Let my beloved have some shortcomings. I accepted it, but I calmly told my wife about it. “I don’t like it, but do it, since this behavior is typical for you and you want it so much, dear.” After some time, the tension eased, but what’s most interesting is that my wife began to show much less of that character trait that I didn’t like. It’s just that my acceptance strengthened our love, and my beloved intentionally, as well as unconsciously, began to do this in order to please me. By making me feel good, she understood that this kindness and warmth in the relationship would be returned to her twice as much. Remember the rule. If you want to receive good, do good to others. In fact, if people in a family learn to accept the shortcomings of their husbands and wives, there will be fewer divorces, quarrels and conflicts. This also applies to children. Only in this case is a healthy, happy family possible.
How important it is to be able to accept a person as he is. But acceptance of a person is possible only when there is self-acceptance and self-love.
Why do we NOT accept ourselves?
The answer to this question often lies in childhood. Mom, dad, siblings, grandparents - everyone who surrounded the child in his early years influenced his self-perception. It’s enough to throw out “come on faster, why are you so slow,” so that after many years an adult hates himself for his slowness. Systematic reproaches can create a distorted image of yourself.
At the same time, parents do not necessarily have to bully their child forever. Constant phrases “you should...” also have a negative impact on self-perception. And it doesn’t matter whether the child can do it or not. The main thing is “you must.” With this, children move into adulthood, continuing to demand the impossible from themselves.
Society is not limited to loved ones. Caregivers, teachers, friends - they all influence how we see ourselves.
One more thing. These are comparisons. First, mothers and fathers compare us with obedient children, then teachers compare us with excellent students, then we compare ourselves with successful colleagues and successful classmates. Getting out of this is difficult, but it is very important if you want to live a joyful life filled with pleasant emotions.
The power of self-acceptance
The biggest crime against yourself is lying to yourself. In this case, specific personality degradation will occur.
We also lie to ourselves when we don’t accept something about ourselves. We all have negative character traits, strongly negative manifestations of the psyche that poison the lives of us and other people. And in order to get rid of them, first of all, you need not to hide from them, but to admit that they exist, to see them, to accept them in yourself. This is how the path of self-development begins. This is the only way to eradicate them.
Acceptance dissolves negative manifestations of the psyche. We can get rid of all our fears and other bad emotions through accepting them. This is the key to getting rid of phobias, depression, panic attacks and other psychological problems. Why is that?
Without accepting something within ourselves, we simply turn away from it, from some part of ourselves, and pretend that it does not exist. This is a lie, a crime against oneself. Remember, I said that acceptance leads to the truth, to a sober view of things. And rejection leads to the illusion that this does not exist. But bad feelings and emotions do not disappear anywhere, but are only driven further into the subconscious or, in other words, repressed. By turning away from a negative experience, we do not get rid of it, even though it seems to us that we have forgotten about it. This is very important to understand. This is how our consciousness works.
To get rid of negativity, you first need not to hide from it, but to meet it, to recognize it in yourself. And to do this you need to accept it within yourself. Awareness and acceptance are closely related.
Many people cannot overcome their fears because they do not accept them, they are afraid of them, they run away from them. This way we will never get rid of internal negativity. But how can you learn to accept negative thoughts and emotions?
Let go of the situation
In colonial times, in some places in India, live monkeys were caught by placing a sweet fruit in a gourd or empty coconut that had previously had a hole made in it. The hole was large enough for the monkey to reach through, but could not close while holding the prey in the palm of his hand.
The monkeys fell into a trap and could not get what they wanted. To be saved, all they had to do was unclench their hands and let go. But they refused to do this and were easily captured.
Sometimes we cling to difficult situations that cause us pain and have a difficult solution. By continuing to arrive at them, we do not want to let go of “what is ours”, or because we want to solve them in our own way. We remain there, contemplating a conflict that never seems to be resolved.
In certain situations, the only true solution is to learn to “let go” so as not to get into a situation that causes us pain and deprives us of the energy to continue on our path and continue to grow.
“You can win a fight, but lose a battle; You can win a battle but lose a campaign; You can win a campaign, but lose the war." — Napoleon I Bonaparte
In this way we can conquer ourselves and open the door to a much better life.
How to accept yourself means to love
To learn to accept any of your feelings, you need the skill of mindfulness in relation to them. We also need to introduce into our heads the idea that we can experience any feelings, emotions and there is nothing wrong with that. Understand that we cannot always experience only positive, bright feelings. We often manifest fear, negativity, anger, and resentment. All this is triggered by ego-protective mechanisms, as a reaction from the hostile attitude of the surrounding world and people.
The psyche defends itself, this is natural, the body needs it. But this should not be too long, and should not continue when the stressful situation has already passed. It is human nature to overindulge and continue to experience negative emotions after they are no longer needed and will only cause harm, destroying the body. Therefore, allow the negative manifestations of the psyche to manifest themselves, do not interfere with this, accept them in yourself, let them be. This is the acceptance of internal negativity.
Many people drill into themselves the following attitudes: I’m not afraid, I don’t get depressed, I’m not angry, and so on. This is not acceptance, this is denial. With this approach, this negativity will still manifest itself within you, because this is a mental reaction to stress, their appearance does not depend on you. And you start to fight it, run away from it, turn away, pretend that it doesn’t exist. This is repression, non-acceptance, so you will never get rid of it.
And if you calmly accept negative experiences, they will manifest themselves in you without hindrance. The nervous system will begin to be excited, some muscles will tense, and processes in the body will change. This is necessary in order to cope with stress. Don't interfere with this. But watch this, turn on your awareness, see what a negative emotion does to your body. Don't be afraid of your fears, face them, accept them, become aware of them.
I assure you, after such acceptance, and not denial, the emotion will arise for some time, and then dry up, having fulfilled its function. If you do not accept it, but repress it, it can get stuck inside you for a long time, you did not allow it to come out. This is how people become depressed for a very long time.
Calmly observing your fear. And, without denying that you are afraid, you thereby come to courage, fearlessness. This seems like a paradox only at the beginning. But look at the first word in this sentence: calmly . Calmness is a manifestation of true courage and fearlessness.
Yes, reading this is one thing, but in practice it is difficult to implement due to low awareness. We cannot look at the emotion from the outside; we merge with it. This mental attitude comes to our aid, which we need to say to ourselves. “Let my fear (anger, resentment or other bad feeling) continue as long as it wants. I don't interfere with this, I don't interfere with him. I accept my fear. Let him be. But I am separate from fear. There is I, there is fear."
When we are overwhelmed by bad feelings or emotions, close your eyes and mentally, silently, slowly, understanding the meaning of these words, say these words. After that, see how the emotion manifests itself in the body, observe it, be separate from it. This way you will learn to accept your negative manifestations of the psyche, which means getting rid of them. Once accepted, it will gradually dissolve.
The skill of acceptance is closely related to awareness. To accept some part of yourself, you need to realize it at least a little, understand that it is in us. Therefore, be aware, train your attention in order to learn to accept your emotions.
Thus, to learn to accept something in your life, repeat the thought form described above. It can be applied to anything.
As soon as everything in your life starts to go wrong, relationships begin to deteriorate, or people start pestering you, stop, take a break, and figure it out. Most likely, you don't accept something in life. Realize this and slowly speak the thought form. For example: “I accept the fact that people can be mean to me. I agree with it. It's their problem, I don't care about it. I won't stoop to their level." “I accept the fact that life can be difficult and unfair. Behind the black stripe there will then be a bright stripe of my destiny.” “I accept the fact that government can be unfair and make mistakes.” “I accept and agree that people have different characters, behave differently, not the way I like.” And so on.
I repeat, acceptance does not mean that you will not strive for better or, for example, not respond to insults, silently watch as you are robbed. It’s just that now you will act clearly, with a clear head, because emotions of rejection, such as irritation, dissatisfaction, or others will not cloud your head. This is a wise, adult attitude towards life.
"Lion Stage"
In connection with the last example from my life, I am reminded of the stages of personality development that the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche outlined in his book “As Spoke Zarathustra.”
I was greatly influenced by this philosopher in my youth, having read all of his major books. But now my views are almost the opposite of the basic ideas of Nietzscheanism, which I am incredibly happy about. Nietzsche's philosophy contains the most dangerous delusions for the individual. My ideas have nothing in common with the sophisticated aesthetic hedonism and egocentrism that the German philosopher preached.
I won't dwell on this in detail. Let this be the topic of a separate article. This was a necessary remark. Since I am giving an example from Nietzsche's book, I should also briefly indicate my attitude towards his views.
So, the philosopher designates three stages of personality development.
The first stage is the camel. Man, like this animal, carries tons of weight on himself. Of course, the load is a metaphor. This refers to the ideological burden: moral norms, social stereotypes, behavior patterns, ideals. The camel does not ask what exactly is in the bags that were placed on it. Likewise, a person does not ask about the meaning of those values that were “hung” on him.
The second stage is the lion. This stage corresponds to a reassessment of values. The lion is a formidable and aggressive predator. A personality, like a lion, after a reassessment of values, will aggressively attack its past ideals, which society “hung” on it at the camel stage.
He will not ask what is bad and what is good, but will simply mindlessly destroy all this cargo.
This stage corresponds to the stage of denial, which I wrote about above.
The third stage is the infant. The baby looks at the world with an unclouded gaze. His perception is pure and free from stereotypes. Leo destroyed the previous ideals, and now the baby can re-experience nature and create a new system of values.
I gave this classification because I partly agree with it. I just don’t agree with the conclusions the philosopher comes to. His infant forms a new, bloodthirsty, opportunistic, hedonistic-oriented scale of values. My baby partially returns to the traditional values of goodness, love and compassion and happiness (namely, permanent happiness, and not temporary pleasure), only he perceives these values consciously, and does not thoughtlessly “throw” at himself, like a camel.
These values no longer serve him as abstract ideas, but become real, applied experience.
So, I gave an example of Nietzsche’s reasoning in order to clarify this article. I want you to notice the lion stage. This is the opposite of acceptance - denial, nihilism. Only in my example, the lion’s rage is directed not only at values and ideals, but at the world in general (and you yourself in particular) along with all its properties.
You took some steps in self-development and saw what you had not paid attention to before: your many problems and the problems of other people. And sudden awareness of these problems can lead to denial!
You must understand that denial, the “lion stage,” is not the last stage of personality development. I don’t want you to think that when you began to notice the weaknesses of other people more than before, when you began to pay attention to your own shortcomings, when you began to attack your previous ideals with the fury of a predator, then you have already reached the limit of development.
The Leo stage is inevitable for many people involved in self-development, so there is nothing wrong with it, as long as you don’t linger in it or, worse, stay in it forever.
There is a tempting temptation to constantly feed on an illusory sense of your own superiority over other people, to criticize their values and ideals, to criticize their behavior, although you yourself are a millimeter step away from them and just yesterday you were the same as them...
When awareness develops, reality reveals many new properties to you. And along with these properties, all the injustice and grief with which reality is saturated begins to appear.
There is a danger of getting carried away by denying this reality in connection with your new, enriched understanding of it.
Don't get caught up in this denial! Know that there is even better things to come! Conquer the lion in yourself!
Resistance
Resisting current realities is like fighting windmills. You will mark time, rejecting reality. This self-deception will only lead to depression, melancholy, dissatisfaction, dissatisfaction, as well as complete stagnation. As American physician Joseph Goldstein once said, you can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.
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Do you know a simple way to make anyone depressed? Make you compare yourself to others. Be sure that even the most successful person, in your opinion, will lose in comparison to another, even more successful one. We feel unhappy and ourselves distort reality with these meaningless comparisons. After all, when looking at others, we do not see an objective picture, but see only the outer shell and on its basis we make our erroneous judgments.
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