“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.”
-Lao Tzu
The Law Of Acceptance
Spiritual acceptance means to not resist the experiences of your life, but rather to permit them to be as they are and let the energy flow with what is happening. It is the ability to allow people, circumstances, and situations of life to be as they are, and to make peace with your circumstances.
This universal law is also about the conscious choice to drop all forms of grudges, egos or resistances and to be in the present moment.
The law of acceptance is not about just liking or approving of things or people and accepting them. It is about letting life flow and unfold as it is and as it should be without our presumption, ego, mindset, emotions or judgements getting in the way…
The Deeper Meaning Of Acceptance In Life
Acceptance means true kindness, and true kindness means loving life and everything in it ‘unconditionally’ and resisting the dangers of perfectionism. By loving and accepting our humanity, we will treat all humanity in the same way. All history-makers have worked hard to achieve self-awareness and full acceptance of themselves. Only after this can we give compassion and love to others and reduce the suffering of others.
Acceptance is an active process of creating a prelude to change and becoming the best version of ourselves. This does not mean limiting our possibilities; Instead, we provide space for promotion and leave all the margins aside.
What Is The Counterpoint To Acceptance?
“The moment that judgement stops through acceptance of what it is, you are free of the mind. You have made room for love, for joy, for peace.”
-Eckhart Tolle
The opposite of ‘acceptance’ is ‘judgment’.
To accept, we must stop judging even in our thoughts and accept the whole reality not the parts that we want to accept based on our own choices or experiences.
Acceptance does not mean avoiding a subject, thing or person or resignation from facing the hurtful truth. True acceptance comes to us only when we accept ourselves and everything about us or in relation to us completely, then we can accept others, and then, we can accept life’s events, ‘completely’.
Lets not be mistaken, acceptance doesn’t mean giving up trying to improve. We need to think about individual and social development, as trial, error and achieving goals are all parts of the process of our development. If we fail or make a mistakes in some areas or in experiences of our lives, we should ‘accept’ it, for the -experience- it was, and learn the lessons it teaches us. And then by accepting the lessons, we can try again to do better than before, because of that lesson, and because of that acceptance that allowed us to have an eye for the lesson. It allows us to be in the present and build a better future.
Accepting is fully acknowledging all the facts of a thing, person or situation, and not forcing or trying on fixating it by thinking on how it shouldn’t be that way.
“Acceptance of one’s life has nothing to do with resignation; it does not mean running away from the struggle. On the contrary, it means accepting it as it comes, with all the handicaps of heredity, of suffering, of psychological complexes and injustices.”
-Paul Tournier
What Is Required For True Acceptance/Admission?
We need to take a step back sometimes and become more self-aware, carefully examine what is happening inside us, and ultimately prepare ourselves for future life experiences.
The three important principles for achieving the art of acceptance are:
Self-Awareness
Self-awareness does not mean that we can change events outside of our control. Rather, we can ‘only’ change the way we perceive events. The fact is that no event by itself can bother us, rather, it is our ‘judgment’ and ‘understanding’ of the event that can harm us, sometimes the monkey-mind gets on the way and plays with our thoughts, and emotions in a way that will not be beneficial for us. (Read more about ‘peace of mind’ in this article.)
We don’t know what exactly will happen, and when it will happen in the reality of life. We Fcan only prepare ourselves, and be in the flow with life, not against it.
When we focus on our strengths, become more calm and gather peace in our own thoughts and emotions, we will not only be happier, but also more effective and creative.
Mindfulness
Sometimes we cannot reconcile our feelings with objective reality, and we need to examine what is going on inside us.
The quality of our awareness, helps us to recognize what is happening in our moment-to-moment experiences. For example, when we are aware of our own fear, we will know that our thoughts are tense at the moment, our bodies feel stiff and trembling because of it, and we know that we may have to run away by the rise of adrenaline that we feel within us. But we experience all this without removing the source of fear. We ‘acknowledge’ it by being mindful about the -real- reason and not by every single thing we feel because of the fear in a different ways. It is this ‘mindfulness’ that allows us to have the reason in our mind when we want to come face-to-face with the fear and guide our reaction and energy in a suitable way. Mindfulness and being mindful about the reality of things helps us to see life as it is. (Click here if you want to read more about mindfulness.)
Compassion
It is easy to know what to do most of the time, but it is much more important to actually doing it, and it is very important to do things in the time and manner that is needed for it to be acceptable in ways that can make us closer to the goals or results that we are looking for. We need to have compassion for ourselves in the right way too. We cannot forgive others with what we do not have in us about ourselves. And we can not be really compassionate for ourselves if we can not have it for others. compassion is either in us or not, and yes most people do have it, even if they lose connection with it at times.
Compassion in some way is being able to relate in an empathetic way to what we understand from the things or feelings that we would experience.
Instead of resisting various emotions, we can accept our pain with kindness. We can understand ourselves instead of judging. And then we can do it for others, in the time and place that is needed.
Compassion honors our experience and allows us to be InTouch with the depth of life. while seeing the whole picture of it and not cutting it to pieces, just because we don’t feel compassionate about them and want to refuse accepting them.
When we consider all of these three principles, acceptance then acceptance does not seem to be a withdrawal from things, events, people or emotions in life, anymore. But it allows us to move forward with the most important steps toward life by self-awareness, intelligence, and freedom from what ever holds us back.
What Is The Positive Impact Of Acceptance On Our Life?
The more we accept life and everything in it, including others and ourselves, the more ‘stress-free’, ‘calm’ and ‘meaningful’ life will be for us. And as a result, life will unfold things for us in amazing ways, that we would never face, if we did not allow acceptance to be part of our life. As George Orwell, the famous author of The Animal Farm, mentioned:
“Happiness can exist only in acceptance.”
We might ask ourselves what positive impact acceptance has on our lives?
For sure there are many.
We must know that the way we live itself is a choice that we make over and over every day sometimes without even thinking about it. And often these two states are among our choices:
First, we are in a constant battle with everything, specially what takes us out of our comfort zone, fighting our true selves, focusing on the bad aspects, being dissatisfied with the way things are going, trying to change the people and everything around us.
The second choice is to appreciate everyone -especially ourselves-, for what they or we are, most of us have been trough a lot in life to be where we are right now in life, and despite everything, we are still alive, we have to think about our true self and the other people without the hidden judgment that makes us far from real acceptance at times. Accepting that what is in the present may change in the future. But it is always towards evolution. Life has its own reasons. And sometimes we don’t know everything and don’t have the solution to everything, non of us are perfect to the highest level of perfection and there would always be people in our life who would like us or not, for any reason. But does this all make any of us any less human or less worthy? No. This Is Life! It does not mean that we should give up, or we should stop trying for improvement or for having dreams, or wanting good things in life, acceptance actually helps us to be more positive about making our best efforts and not being afraid of failures. But we have to remember and learn to accept, life as life, obstacle as obstacle, try as try, and human as human. Just like we see water as water, ice as ice, rain as rain, river as river, steam as steam, cloud as cloud and the sea as the sea. We don’t measure their H₂O. We don’t challenge them every moment, or resist them, ignore them, try to punish them, or keep thinking about them or start arguing with them about ‘what’ they are and ‘why’. We, in every level of our mind, our thoughts and emotions, have really accepted them, we are in peace with them and about them, without even trying so hard about it. This can be about everything in life, and about life itself. It is a choice which is positive and peaceful when it is real, you don’t want to prove that you are -right- or that you ‘finally’ accepted life. You just have to see it the way it is, and this helps you to walk more in peace and with peace, your every step in life, will carry peace with it, and this inner peace is beautiful.
The real acceptance can help to make life easier for any of us, in many ways. It has this ability because it is the way to face the real reasons that we feel or face anger, stress, anxiety, hatred, depression, despair, ego and guilt. We see them as they are, and when we accept them they turn to their true meanings, some of the normal human feelings and emotions, that we face in many life situations. All of us do. It may happen to any of us. But if we don’t accept them for their truth, they may be having different meanings for us every time we face them no matter in us, or others. We lose balance and control, and the truth about them without the real acceptance. And that is why acceptance is a precious thin in spirituality. Because it might be like a medicine we take that opens our eyes to seeing things for what they are, and not for the meaning and translations we give them based on anything else.
The ‘mindful acceptance’ means the ability to face the reality in a way that allows us to cope with the past, the uncertainty of the future and the incompleteness of the present, as well as facing the truth about the situations, or things that cannot be changed or transformed at the moment. Mindful acceptance, helps our growth in a positive way.
Self-Acceptance
Many believe that acceptance should be one of our major life goals, and it can help us live a better and more meaningful life. As Carl Rogers (psychologist) mentioned: “The curious paradox is that when I accept myself, just as I am, then I can change.”
Perhaps to this day, acceptance is associated with negative concepts such as surrender or passivity. Carl Jung, mentioned that ‘we can accept others only to the extent that we have managed to accept ourselves‘. Perhaps self-acceptance is one of the ways to our tue peace and happiness.
Perfection is not just about making money, becoming famous, reading all the books in the world, or even saving the world single handedly. Maybe we will reach the point of happiness and peace when we accept ourselves and enable ourselves to change and evolve.
By knowing and accepting our selves, as a ‘whole’ and looking at ourselves and our experiences from different points of view, and as an evolving-being, not as a perfect robot, we can see our ‘true selves’ and our weaknesses properly, we can see that our weaknesses sometimes make us strong at other things and sometimes are survival modes, we can see that our weaknesses might be our life’s growth platform or something beyond just weakness as we believed them to be, we can name our weaknesses other names and make them the point that our change for better start or use the the experiences and life lessons we learned from solving them in helping others to come for solutions about their own sufferings. We can see that not only we can change in a positive way and manage our improvement, but also build a bridge to our success by accepting what we are at the time, the resources we have and the road we can take to move toward building a better self and better life.
How To Use The Law Of Acceptance In Your Self-Improvement Process?
- Accept Yourself, Including Your Weaknesses!
Accepting what you call as your weaknesses does not mean that you should not correct them, but means that you should not be depressed because of them. Don’t forget that no one in the world is perfect. No one.
First of all, stop blaming yourself and try to accept yourself with all your weaknesses and shortcomings. This means acceptance of this law: To not close your eyes on your strengths, on the goodness in you, and all the good things about you.
Consider a person who hates being overweight and considers their weight to be a major weakness. They go on a strict diet to get rid of excess fat, but after a short and temporary period of weight loss, they return to their former weight and the nightmare of being overweight does not leave them.
The person must first accept this situation in order to correct it calmly, They have to be in peace with the situation and see it as it is, no harsh feelings, no making it more or less than it is at the moment, and also having an eye for the good things in them. When they see weight as weight, food as food, exercise as exercise and extra as extra, they will be able to place things in the right order in their mind and emotions, and when their mind and emotions see that this acceptance is coming from the real place, it will play along with having courage as courage, wanting to loose weight as wanting, and going an extra mile to feeling better about the bod shape, as it’s true meaning, not as an enemy. Their subconscious mind will be helping them with putting the effort that is needed for removing that weight in them and they will have a hidden acceptance about the whole situation in them which will help them to not be going back to the same weight, even if it needs constant effort, otherwise the diet will bring them nothing but tension and anxiety. - Get Help From Others
Sometimes, you may not have any knowledge of your strengths and the things you need to fix in or about you; In these situations, it is best to seek help from those who know you well and truly want to help you in your growth process not for their own benefits or gain but for wanting to help to bring the best out of you, for your own good. But keep in mind that some of the weaknesses can be used in a positive direction if we are mindful about them. Don’t be surprised! This can be the technique that can turn what you may call your weaknesses, into strengths.
For example, your weakness may be that you are very slow at work because you pay more attention to the details and take your job very seriously, and this may sometimes make those around you angry, as you do things too slowly for them, or they may tell you that you can’t even finish the work at one day’s work hours, and you leave most projects unfinished to come back and finish them later. But have you ever noticed that doing things slowly and giving it you all, may make you special in other ways, it will show your loyalty, it will show your dedication which many people don’t have or refuse to give to others, and maybe this has made you more careful at not making damages, or by putting more attention to details you are more subtle than your other colleagues for a creative role?
(As another example: Let’s suppose that you can’t get up early in the morning -like many other people- and you’ve lost your job because of this simple weakness. But instead, you are used to be up at night and can easily do intellectual work during the night. At these times, you should spend your mind and physical strength on something that is in harmony with this characteristic that you already have -we are not going to look at the extremes in this example-. In this situation you can accept the fact about your current sleeping pattern and then start an changing process mindfully to change the situation for better, or focus on your strength in this situation and and start work in your productive hours, or working on the areas that are not in conflict with your real abilities at the moment, that requires less thinking and less physical strength in the morning, such as managing a website, becoming a content creator, graphic, animation or fashion designer, freelancing and doing similar creative projects, or many other options that are out there).
But if for some reason you can’t find the positive side of what you or others call your weaknesses, you should try to accept the reality in order to change your habits for better, so that you can make fundamental changes in yourself and in your lifestyle in an effective way. In this regard, you can make these fundamental changes in your life by using the power of your conscious habits. (Read this article if you are ready to change.)
- Highlight Your Strengths
If you think that you have many weaknesses, and this has lowered your self-esteem, use this technique: Try to highlight your strengths.
For example, if you have a habit of smiling a lot and can communicate well with different people at any place for any reason, expand the circle of these communications and smile more! By doing so, you have weighed the scales of your strengths so heavily that what you see as negative and weaknesses about you will be less allowed to maneuver, and this will increase your sense of self-confidence in the way that can help you be better and more successful and not in a way that will make you feel less because of it. In this situation, you can work on your mindset more easily, without worrying, and you can be sure that you will get better results. - Take A Little More Time
You don’t have to be or act like a professional in everything. But if you think that have many weaknesses in your field of expertise or life and these weaknesses have hindered your progress, at least try to spend more time in this field and raise your level of knowledge, your own behavior and thoughts toward and about it, every time you can work on yourself and help yourself to grow one or two degrees higher than your current point in life or your abilities. By identifying your these and practicing to improve and not staying in stagnation because it does not feel good to accept them, you can gradually become a professional at making progress and see the results of this behavior clearly in your personal and work life. If we go forward in the direction of positive changes in and about us, even the smallest movement in our desire about bringing those changes is considered in our progress, and no matter how big or fast we move forward,. The good news about it is, as long as we go in the direction of positive changes, it will come to our direction too.
Here Are A Few Simple Exercises To Practice Acceptance In Real Life:
To Focus On What We Have
This may sound a bit stereotypical, but it is a real solution.
Strengthen the feeling of satisfaction. Stay present, as the moment is all you have, you have to be fully in the moment, and stay fully aware, even if all you want is about the future! Use the time and the resources that you have at the time, not half way, not occasionally and not conditionally.
This concept may be interpreted with neglect, but in reality it is not. Many of us know what we are, what we can, what we have, but does it mean that we really feel satisfied by being present and in in awareness about what we truly have? Acceptance about it comes when you give your reply to such questions after an honest thoughtful time, evaluating about yourself, with yourself. And if you want to refer to someone to get more clear, then turn to your true self, the inner honest voce that you may not like hearing it at times. Be in peace and find peace with it, then allow your true self to peacefully give you the deep answers in alignment with life, peace, you and the world around you. Then you can be more satisfied with what you see with that inner eye, and accept things much easier.
To Forgive Ourselves
Self-blame may take us away from our goals. If we did mistakes and we dare to face the reality about them, we are already in a good place in life, and if we dare to change our thoughts, emotions, behaviors or self, well, we are already in a positive state, as many people would never reach this willingness and acceptance in and about them.
Lets move with accepting the situation, and knowing who we have been in the past why things really happened with having a whole picture, and as soon as we saw that we could accept to see the whole picture and not the parts that we like to see, we are ready to make a better person from.
This very moment that we are in can be that start, not tomorrow, or next week, or when we feel better about ourselves or the situation or anything or anyone else.
From now. And if we want to move forward, -this- moment, is our starting point. Even if we start by forgiving ourselves and balancing our thoughts and emotions, facing our inner child, or needing to find our true self and inner peace as the first steps. Starting is always better than stagnation.
To Not Avoid The Reality
We all have things that we are not certain about, in our selves, others, things, places, and events. Sometimes we may find emotions, thoughts, feelings and memories that we want to forget about in different ways, because deep inside, we want to avoid facing their reality or their truth. But we must admit that keeping them deep in our minds or even intentionally or unintentionally looking at memories or emotions in different ways and trying to shape them otherwise, is causing us to have some real complexities in life! As soon as we accept all the things and look at them with true acceptance, without grudges, anger, regret or any feelings that are far from good. We will feel peace about the, we will be in peace with them and really be able to see them for what they were, and sometimes even our eyes or emotions would be open to the things that we were not able to see or feel before reaching that level of acceptance about the, One of the best ways to overcome such issues is connect to our own truth. (Read this article to know more about ‘True Self.’)
Find What Is In The ‘Present‘ Moment
Did you pay attention that all these four exercises had something to say about the present moment? It is because the real acceptance, keeps you present!
We all worry about the past that will never come back, and the future that has not yet come. So it is better to stop sometimes, and appreciate ‘the moment’ of our lives. It is what we have and what we are sure about. Non of us knows about the time that the clock will suddenly stop. Non of us can change the past. That is why the present and the moment -which we have in our hands now- is so valuable. Because it is the ‘chance’ we are asking for, the ‘difference’ that we can make, the ability to shape a better reality. Form acceptance and coming to an understanding about life itself, we come to the moment. To its reality. Sometimes when we look back at a situation or event, we realize that we didn’t try hard enough to shape it otherwise or better, but it happened, we did not know any other way at the time, otherwise we would do it, at least most of us would! But we think maybe if we had tried harder or if we knew better, it wouldn’t have happened that way, the good way, for the better result or experience. But then, we tend to forget that all we have; in reality, is the ‘present moment’ and –here and now– is when we ‘can’ decide about creating the better version, the better experience, maybe not with what we had before, but by knowing better than we did before, and accepting this, accepting that we play an important role by being present in the moment, can help us in making the brighter future, which can actually happen in reality!
–Positivity gurus often emphasize the principle of acceptance in life.
“The moment, you ‘accept’ what troubles you have been given, the door will open. Welcome difficulty, as a familiar comrade. Joke, with torment brought by the friend. Sorrows are the rags of old clothes and jackets that serve to cover, then are taken off. That undressing and the beautiful naked body underneath is the sweetness that comes after grief. The hurt you embrace, becomes Joy!” –Rumi
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