Acceptance. Resistance

What if you just accepted your experience instead of resisting it?

Acceptance does not mean giving up on your efforts to change your circumstances; it means you start working to accept things as they are, until they are different.  Until you transition from where you are to where you want to be.  It means living and believing the phrase, “it is, what it is”. Stop waiting for the difficulty to be over. Stop waiting for the next best thing to arrive. Stop waiting to loose 10 pounds. Just be where you are. What if you hate what’s on the other side of your waiting? What if at a size 6 you are just as miserable as your were at a size 12? What if after your divorce you feel just as lonely and sex deprived as you did when you were married? What if making your first 100k makes you realize how much time was spend away from being with the kids and you want all those moments of lost parenting back?  What if you were diagnosed with a life threatening illness? What is, is just what it is. It is the platform from which we grow, and change and blossom into what we want to be. But before the garden bore fruit and veggies it wasn’t necessarily a horrible barren wasteland. It just was, what it was. Join me in my efforts to not resist the small yet difficult and seemingly insignificant moments. The moments of challenge can feel like brutal anticipation, overwhelming frustration, prickly angst, or spiraling anxiety.  By accepting all the moments in our lives we are accepting our life as it is rather then resisting what it is. What you find on the other side of a tough moment could be juicy joy, still peace or blessed harmony. But you won’t notice it if you were unwilling to be in it. I just came out of 4 days of a miserable flu-like cold. I had such a renewed sense of appreciation for feeling well simply because I noticed how terrible I felt while sick. I didn’t resist it. I accepted it and all it’s inconvenient glory. I stayed in bed. I didn’t cook. I asked for help, I canceled work. I felt sick and I accepted it. Breathe a deep breath and take something with you from this post if it feels worthwhile. If it was just that you took a moment to sit down and read something, whether you got anything from it or not, whether you “like” it, share it, or delete it from your inbox, who cares. Acknowledge you took a moment to just be. Now:

1. Name something in your life that you’re resisting.
2. Feel the sadness, the grief, the loneliness, the shame, the disappointment. Feel the feeling associated with what you are resisting.
3. Commit to accepting yourself in your entirety in this moment, by saying, “it is, what it is”.
4. Appreciate yourself for taking a moment to be exactly where you are.

When you get up to move on from where you are now, you will be different, in some small way, something about you or your day, can feel different, but it requires your curiosity to name it, feel it, accept it, appreciate yourself for it, but above all not resist it. To preserve the light, we have to slow down, notice it, and care for it deeply. If we move too fast our tiny flame will be blown out. With juicy joy I am wishing you a wonderful holiday season ~L To learn more about Life Coaching click here.