A quality can help us in life not only when dealing with others, but also with ourselves. We’ll tell you what it is and how you can learn to use it.
As we get older, some things become clearer to us. For example, behaviors that have caused stress or frustration in the past. Such energy thieves need to be sorted out. But we are not always able to identify them. We’ll tell you a quality that can take some of the burden off your shoulders.
This property relieves us in everyday life
You’ve been waiting ten minutes in front of the café where you wanted to meet a friend. She knows that punctuality is important to you. If you get angry, your heart rate may increase and your mood may worsen. However, you acceptthat you neither have this behavior of your girlfriend your current situation can influencethis relieves some of the stress. Instead of waiting outside, you could go in, choose a nice table and quietly people watch or do something else while you wait. That has something good for you too.
Another example of the power of acceptance: You want to get home from work, but end up in traffic after work and take an hour longer than necessary. You can now get angry, scold or honk if someone in front of you doesn’t close a gap quickly enough. But that won’t get you out of the situation. The only thing you gain is more dissatisfaction. If you accept the situation, you will become calmer. You might listen to music that improves your mood or a podcast that calms you down. You realize that it doesn’t matter whether the person in front of you moves immediately or not. Because a car won’t make a difference in a traffic jam.
Why is acceptance so important?
Those who accept more often in everyday life instead of building up resistance, uses fewer resources. You become calmer and practice accepting that not everything is under your control can be. Sure: We would often wish that everyone around us would act the way we want them to. We often believe that our version is the only right one… Instead, with acceptance, we welcome the world as it is.
Acceptance can support us in many ways:
- In relationships, because we accept that someone acts or feels differently than ourselves.
- By improving our emotional and physical health.
- It can help us stop a never-ending, analytical wheel of thought.
- We regain control over our attitude to the situation and our behavior in it.
When we accept, we are more willing to find solutions to our problems:
If you’re always unhappy about the traffic jam at work afterwards, you might want to look for alternatives. There can be many reasons why we get angry: being late to see our loved ones, the lost time, the stress we have because we can’t just drive our route like we’re on autopilot, and so on. Let’s think about solutions:
The person may be able to leave earlier or take a ride so that you don’t end up in the situation alone. Or she uses public transport – or leaves after her lunch break to spend the rest of her work in the home office, if that’s possible. If you don’t want to get home quickly, but just want to beat the traffic jam, you could meet up with friends after work, take a short walk or go out to eat every now and then.
How to practice acceptance
- When thoughts like “it should be this way / it shouldn’t be this way” or “this is so unfair” arise in your mind, realize that you are entering a state of resistance. Notice how this feels in your body and emotionally.
- Take action against these thoughts. Instead of resorting to “should,” “could,” or “should,” keep in mind what happened. Do you have any influence on the situation or not?
- Try to relax your body. We often automatically hunch our shoulders, become more tense and don’t even notice it. Your body language can affect how you feel right now. So try to release the tension where it arose for you.
Sources used: consciousdiscipline.com, psychologytoday.com, sharp.com, psychcentral.com