Accepting who you are, allows transformation. Have you ever felt like you wanted to fight or argue with reality? Have you ever thought, why do I feel lousy today, even when you’re supposedly physically healthy? Have there been times, when you thought, why is this person I’m talking to or dealing with, giving me such a difficult time? Have you ever felt, why aren’t things happening fast enough or the way I wish they would or think they should?
Seems like the longer you live, the more you realize that life isn’t all one way or another. You can’t control others, but you can control yourself to the greatest extent. You can slow down if you want to slow down. You can’t make others slow down-you may wish you could, but you can’t. You also may wish you could make them speed up, but you can’t. You can’t control others. But there’s a lot within yourself-you have a lot of power. How you think, what you choose to do and not do, what you accept, this realization while seemingly small…even perhaps simple, is huge.
For many years I had been going to my doctor after my first brain surgery for follow up care. I told this doctor that I was having trouble swallowing and talking and a few other not so normal things. My doctor told me that the problems that I was describing were not alarming. He told me the MRI showed nothing. I said: “how is that possible?” He said: “because, what you’re are experiencing is not related to your brain tumor.” I remember thinking…really, could that be possible? Does he think I’m a hypochondriac? Does he believe that I’m over worrying because of what I had previously been through in the past? I knew myself…I wasn’t looking for more things to worry about, but I was looking for someone who was listening. This doctor was not listening to me. He was listening to him. I knew I was in control. It was time for a new doctor. One day after that conversation I asked for all my records and found myself a new doctor. It turned out that my tumor over the 15 years I had been seeing my doctor who had been “listening” to me…had doubled in size. I was right. Things could have happened differently, but they didn’t, they happened the way they did…if I discovered this earlier I may not have been able to have had a surgery that existed when I did discover it.
It’s not easy to accept reality at times, but it’s been proven that it’s better to be happy. Why not be happy? As I’ve mentioned before in other blogs, there are reasons to feel otherwise, it so doesn’t help to think about what things may be-you can handle them when they occur. Why worry before you need to, it doesn’t gain you as much as being happy.
Accepting Reality Exercise
Here is an accepting reality exercise to try:
- Sit with yourself in quiet place and visualize something that you have a hard time accepting-it could be a person, a situation, a health problem, or perhaps just a part of yourself. You might see it as a color, a picture, or it might just be a feeling.
- Imagine embracing the situation with all your heart. Imagine all the resistance, struggle, judgments, and expectations you feel towards this situation just melting away.
- Say to it (out loud or to yourself): “I accept you, I love you just as you are.”
- Trust that this situation is just what you need. Trust that this situation is leading you to something bigger that you may not understand right now. Surrender.
- Continue to embrace this situation and accept this situation until you can just let it be. Do this exercise as many times as necessary.
This exercise has helped me feel lighter and more focused at stressful times. Sometimes we get so overloaded, it helps to just step back to be able to move forward, even if it’s for 5 minutes, or 10 minutes, or whatever amount of times works for you.