Unconditional love for Yourself & Acceptance* (extremely verbose details below on How to achieve this)
Ok, so what is acceptance? Fundamentally it's absolute unconditional love for yourself.
Many ask, isn't that selfish? Actually no. Turns out that absolute acceptance of yourself is the most selfless thing you can do. Because when you feel no Needs at all, all you want to do is Give.
Confused yet? You should be, I sure am. This is wacky stuff that is counter to everything most of us have been told.
Ok, so here is how it works.
You are the best "version" of you when you feel good, have eaten & slept well and feel _appreciated_. Under these conditions you respond to all situations better. When you feel as though your needs are being met.
When you are not being the best "version" of you possible, you know. You can feel it. It's uncomfortable. This causes you to have very little patience, time or resources for anyone else. When you have needs it's hard to worry about others.
Well if you are feeling nervous it means that you still care so you can't be that bad of a person. Hell you are reading all this so you obviously want to get better. (That's kinda awesome by the way).
So what next you ask?
Pick one thing to do tomorrow. Nothing huge, but nothing small (you can't cheat yourself) And make sure no matter what happens you get that done.
After a little while add another goal and another. Keep going till you realize something. You trust You to do what you say You will. Don't overcommit. Don't set yourself up for failure. Build slowly. This can take months for some.
Try to focus not just on What you do, but How you do it. Do it with some style. Do it with a grin. Have some fun with it. See how doing things while happy gets better results from you AND the people you interact with. Realize that a bad situation can be nullified or even turned around by the right reaction.
Overtime you start to realize that life isn't so bad, and you are actually kinda good at it.
Now if you keep going you start to realize that life is a lot more about how you react than what happens. You start to see that if you are well rested, fed, appreciated, feel good about yourself that you make Good choices. Sometimes great choices! That you try really hard. That you make the best out of amazingly bad situations.
Now try a test. Wipe out all expectations for tomorrow. Imagine all the events of tomorrow are fixed. Just go through the day reacting the best way you can. Play out each scene being the best You that you can.
Feels pretty good huh?
So if you can trust yourself and love yourself through absolute acceptance of yourself what then?
You can slowly start being your .... biggest fan! You can start rooting for yourself. ( gasp!) Start helping yourself to succeed. Realize that you want to be awesome and _deserve_ to be awesome. You can start defending your bed time, start proritizing eating and exercise with kids and dogs and significant others etc. Start setting yourself up to win.
But that's selfish right? NO!! Selfish is not being the best husband/wife/student/friend you can be. Do you want to show a low quality version of you to the folks that matter to you? So NOT taking care of yourself is selfish. Not rooting for your own success, that is selfish. You are the best you by absolutely accepting yourself. That is the least selfish thing you can do.
One day you realize you've changed. You won't be sure when it happened. However you realize that no matter what happens you are going to be fine, because you are always going to respond the best way you can. And since that is all you have control over anyway, you might as well put all your energy into reacting the best way possible.
And so the reason everything is going to be fine, is because you will always be fine. You know this because you take care of yourself and you trust yourself. And it feels pretty good.
You realize that your anxiety isn't for what might happen. Your anxiety is based on you imagining yourself in a future situation and "not being able to handle it" or "breaking down". Which is total bullshit. Because you have been proving to yourself that you are awesome, that you can handle any situation any condition because you know you can. You have been. You trust yourself. Nothing can change that. If you screw up one day, laugh it off, be better today.
Acceptance means you laugh at your mistakes. It means you love being wrong. It means you love being challenged. It means you know what you rock at _and_ what you don't. You have no problem asking for help. Life becomes fun because you make sure it does. Because you can. Because you are the most awesome you that you can or ever will be.
Rinse & Repeat
Eventually you realize that life isn't about Christmas or New Years or birthdays or weekends. Life is about waking up, eating breakfast, paying bills, traffic, working, etc. All those things that may at times bug you ARE your life. So make it happiest place you can. Don't put up with unhappy existences. You don't deserve it. Be happy. By reacting to it the best way you can and performing your best because you want to, you can, you deserve to. It's best for everyone.
And as more and more of your "needs" wash away over time you find you have endless time, patience and resorces for everyone & everything around you. Which makes the world around you a rather pretty place.
Some may see acceptance as giving in or up. They are wrong. What the practitioner discovers is that beneath that cliff they were afraid of falling off on is a lush green valley of energy, patience and willpower. That with acceptance you can perform at a higher level for a significant part of your day. And have fun doing it. Living moment to moment. Experiencing and responding to Life. Getting more out of every second that you could ever imagine. Which is why life is about how you react, not what happens. Choose Awesome, Be Awesome.
You never did anything wrong. You didn't know. Now you do. You will always be awesome, because you chose to be. You can do that now, you have been proving it.
So everything is going to be just fine.
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