Grace the Grit
It’s hard being human. These times are replete with uncertainty and all the emotions it provokes, frustration, anger, anxiety, restlessness, irritability, and fear. Clinicians recommend acceptance.
Avoiding may help minimize anxiety or discomfort in the short run but it will bite you back down the road. In other words, what we exile will come back as an unwanted guest.
Avoiding, rejecting and at the very least getting squirmy around what’s uncomfortable is human nature. A more adaptive approach to dealing with unpleasant life situations is acceptance. Acceptance allows you to evaluate what’s happening so that you can navigate the challenge effectively.
Acceptance is the ability to not react and see things clearly. It means noticing the reaction and embracing all emotions that are experienced. All of it means the emotions that are pleasant and unpleasant and circumstances we like and don’t like. Acceptance is not arguing with the way things are and it helps us get unstuck and catalyze our resources. It takes practice and it’s not easy.
Practicing acceptance isn’t suppressing, avoiding, controlling, dumping, blaming, or falling into the disempowered despair of the victim. It’s the opposite of all those things, it’s being present. Acceptance also helps enables us to accurately assess a situation to create an effective plan. If we avoid what is, we can’t access the inner and outer resources that support and help us.
What strategies help with acceptance?
Pause
Too often we wildly head down the path of our day barely stopping from one task, to the next. This way of operating creates chronic stress and wreaks havoc on the nervous system. It can keep your system in constant fight or flight or spaced-out response.
The pause calms the nervous system and allows space for the presence of mind/body. Noticing what’s happening in and outside of you gives you a choice about how you want to respond and cultivates patience.
Begin by stopping activity and focusing on the breath, notice your surroundings. You can also set the alarm on your phone at different intervals throughout the day to remind you to stop and reconnect with yourself. A day filled with pauses feels less frantic and will calm you overtime.
Get Perspective
We can get overwhelmed, deep, and fixed into a situation that we fail to see anything else. Getting distance can help. Harness the power of self-talk to gain perspective. Cognitive Behavioral therapists recommend talking to your self in the third person, “Ok Jack, things are tough right now but you’re doing everything you can, and it will be okay.” It’s like giving yourself the support and advice you would give a friend. As long as you don’t become one of those people who refer to themselves in the third person regularly, this is a strategy that can help a lot. Our brains access different resources when we think about helping another.
Remember What Matters
Think of a sweet memory. Ask yourself what was meaningful about the memory and name it. Then act.
Recently, I took a sunrise hike with a friend. After we watched the sunrise come over a mountain from our place on a ridge, we drank tea and shared zucchini bread she made. Remembering that I texted her and shared again how much I enjoyed our time together.
This exercise helps us to connect with our values and shift mindset. For me it connected me with the importance of special friendships, an appreciation for nature, and adventure.
Create a Personal Mantra
Research has showed that repeating a word or phrase silently to yourself reduces activity in the brain associated with self-criticism and rumination. A word or phrase that affirms your values and reminds you to slow down works best. Phrases like, “It is what it is”, or “Be present”, “Allow Things to Be As They Are”. And you already know what my recent favorite mantra is, “Grace the Grit”.