You can’t get to where you want to go, until you accept where you are.
As I reflect on my inner work, and the work of others I get to witness, this is an emerging theme: acceptance.
It’s counterintuitive. I (and many of us) have a tendency to focus on solutions, fixing, improving and changing. Not accepting. I notice this in my work as a client but also as a coach. Where there’s a problem or suffering, we need to find a solution.
That’s normal. Nobody wants to suffer. Why would we?
But the psyche doesn’t allow us to see our way forward from the dense space we’re in, until we come to accept our current reality.
More often than not, we seek solutions not because we want to move forward, but because we want to avoid where we are.
In this process, we try to run away from ourselves. We resist what is. We fight reality as if it’s a software bug or a blip that shouldn’t be there and we go to coaching to help uninstall the virus (no pun intended).
Acceptance is painful, humiliating and often full of rage.
We can make small, temporary improvements in our situation by changing our thoughts, our feelings and behaviours. That’s useful, especially when we need tools to cope.
But when we strip away the specific problems we’re working through, whether it’s a career change, a failed relationship, or a loss of any kind, it all boils down to being a witness to our own (or others’) process of acceptance.
Only when we accept, can we be allowed entry into “the next step” of genuine healing and progress.
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