Acceptance vs Resistance
In this week’s blog I discuss the concept of acceptance vs resistance.
What does this mean and how do you shift the focus when you are in a spot of frustration and/or anger about what is in front of you in this moment.
Audio Transcription:
Hello, and welcome to my musings. Today I want to talk about acceptance versus resistance.
When I was growing up my mom used to say that when we argue with reality, we lose. Now I know she didn’t come up with this adage, it’s been around forever, but it really stuck with me and in the past few years I’ve really come to understand it in a bigger way.
So let’s think about it, when we argue with reality, with what is, we lose, or said differently, we suffer. When we resist what is present in the moment we suffer. Why is this? Because what is present in this moment, just is. When we get stuck in the story of wanting what is to be different and arguing against it, we feel frustrated, angst, suffering.
Now this doesn’t mean that we can’t desire something different for ourselves or our reality, but in order for this to shift, I would pose that we need to soften the edges a bit.
What if we could look at what is in front of us in this very moment and accept it as it is. Nothing changes in that moment except our feelings about it. It is what it is and from a place of acceptance we relax, we soften the edges. We find peace and I would say that peace is what we’re looking for in life.
But this is a process. Life is full of opportunities for us to practice this. We have times of ease and flow and easily accepting what is going on. And then we have times when we’re faced with things that stretch us. This is where the awareness and practice come in. I’ll give you an example.
A couple weeks ago I had car trouble. I was able to get it into the garage. All was well, but then the repair work took longer than I had anticipated or wanted for that matter. I thought I’d have my car back by Tuesday morning. In my mind that was perfect, but that wasn’t the case. I had meetings and appointments to get to later in the week, but I didn’t get my car back until Thursday and had to reschedule things.
I had some moments of frustration. I bought into the stories in my mind. I was in full resistance. Frustrated at having to reschedule things that felt important to me. Frustrated at not having the convenience of my car being at my beck and call.
But I always practice what I preach so I took a breath and realized that it was what it was. My car was in the shop. I took some more deep breaths, I came back into my body and softened the edges. In reality, in that very moment, all was well. I rescheduled an appt, I had food in the house, I felt grateful that I work from home, I didn’t need anything, all was well.
And in the process of coming back to my body I was able to find peace and acceptance of what was.
So as I said before, this is a practice, an awareness. I invite you notice where in your life you may be arguing against reality. And with that awareness you have the power to soften the edges and come back into your body and find peace.
I’d love to hear from you and what this brings up for you and also remember that I’m here to support you with this. You don’t have to go it alone.
I wish you a wonderful day and remember that true peace is always just one breath away.
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