Listen to today's going deeper session below:
Common Misconceptions about Acceptance:
1. Accepting things as they are means I will become passive and lazy.
People sometimes think that by accepting, I mean never striving for anything else. Many have become so accustomed to living in the hustle and bustle of the “bigger, faster, better” lifestyle, they can’t imagine another alternative. We have been trained to live in near perpetual state of busyness and stress, and to always be on the lookout for what’s wrong and fix it right away.
Yet, accurately assessing and accepting where one is at the moment has nothing to do with growth, being in action, or getting results in the world. We are fundamentally in action all the time: we are eating, talking, using the toilet, drinking, working, walking, thinking, watching. In the same way, our physiology is always changing, with blood cells, hair cells, skin cells, organ cells, completely renewing and replacing themselves over relatively short periods of time. We don’t have to force change.
Change is actually one of the only constants. One of the only things we can rely on throughout our lives.
Furthermore, just because you haven’t experienced a different way of being yet, doesn’t mean it won’t happen. Just because you’ve been doing something one way for decades, doesn’t mean there isn’t another “right” way.
Acceptance fosters mental clarity where we can more accurately assess our abilities and our limitations without the needless, and often fear-based internal chatter. Remember when we talked about the difference between acting from secure or insecure thought? There is a palpable difference between taking action from a place of acceptance, clarity, and stillness than from that noisy, emotional place within all of us that only wants to avoid pain or chase pleasure.
2. Acceptance means I condone the behavior.
Well, no it doesn’t. The way we are defining acceptance. Acceptance is not the same as agreement. Acceptance says I acknowledge that this is/has happened. Agreement is, well as it sounds, I approve of this.
We can all agree that things we judge as horrible do happen out there in the world, but hardening our hearts with anger or sticking our heads in the sand often does not result in productive or thoughtful solutions and may even exacerbate certain conditions such as poverty, climate change, abuse, and extremism.
“Throughout history humans have inflicted countless violent, cruel, and hurtful acts on each other, and continue to do so. Are they all to be condemned; are they all guilty? Or are those acts simply expressions of unconsciousness, an evolutionary stage that we are now growing out of?”
– Eckhart Tolle
3. Acceptance means accepting something “out there.”
Think critically with me here for a moment. From all the information we have been sharing and all the reflection you have done though the journaling prompts, the core of acceptance is to accept the fact of being human. Remember that our reactions to the world are created internally and often unconsciously. Yet, we then suffer when our conscious intellect judges those reactions as bad or wrong. Discomfort is inevitable in life. By denying pain or discomfort, we are denying half of our own existence.