Allergic to acceptance?

Are you experiencing sudden sensations of nausea? Shaking limbs, blurry vision or headaches? Are you feeling in panic? You might feel overwhelmed by what is happening in your life.

These feelings and sensations are not on our wishlist, our first intuitive reaction is to avoid or fight them. “Think positive! Tough times don’t last, tough people do! Be resilient!” – quotes that are all around us now in our daily lives. Is this strategy working for you? Maybe actually feel exhausted yet? I mean, you could say you are running a marathon by doing this!

But then, what should you do instead? “Accept the shitty situation I am in…? No way!”

Then it might be worthwhile to think about this: there is a difference between resigning or surrendering to your circumstances and accepting how those circumstances make you feel. Still, that might not feel right to you, accepting how it makes you feel. You simply don’t want to feel that way! However, you already do and by fighting it or ignoring it, the feeling will not leave. It might hide for a while, and then …

Situations cannot always be controlled. The hurricanes happened. The pandemic happened. Depending on how it affected your life it can result in feelings of anxiety, demotivation, depression, often a combination of negative emotions. How you deal with these reactions is something you can learn to manage. This does not mean you will never have to experience those emotions again. Acceptance in this sense means you allow yourself to have an emotional reaction and you give yourself time to process the emotion rather than fighting it. You dive through the wave so you can look at it from a different perspective. You will see how it reaches the shore and disappears. Unprocessed emotions on the other hand, will wait for the next wave to become even stronger. Instead of only processing the (f)actual event, make sure you don’t forget to process the emotions that go along with it.

Is it okay to feel frustrated when covid is messing up your plans? “Of course!”
Can you accept that a situation makes you feel demotivated? “Yes!”
Does that mean you are standing still? “Yes!”
Does that mean you will not make progress? “No!”

What do you do after you dive through a wave? You catch your breath. You feel relieved, free to consciously decide how to respond to what happened. Responding is different than reacting. It means you are in control. Acceptance. Nice right?