Acceptance of self, others and reality

7 min readDec 13, 2021

For 6 months, it’s the most salient topic in my mind. Acceptance. My plan is to describe what I mean by that, why is it useful, and how to learn it.

What’s self-acceptance

I’m not into fairy tales about how everything has to be perfect and nice. My understanding of accepting self relies on the idea of a useful mind tool.

A useful mind tool is one giving results you expect most of the time.

Self-acceptance is a useful mind tool.

First, let’s dive into the acceptance of external events.

Reality

Our understanding of reality is limited. We know enough to live and prosper. Usually.
Great. We’re going to use that knowledge to our advantage. To use it efficiently, we have to be in a proper state.

Imagine, you just got a letter from the company you work for.

It says that they won’t extend your agreement.

You have a mortgage, no savings, and would be nice to eat.

The situation is stressful.

You have to find a solution. Let’s describe possible mind states you can be during the search.

Resistance

The first state is the one we fall into when we don’t accept the situation.

We go over and over things, thinking about why me, what have I done, etc. Quoting myself feels weird, but here we go:

You’re not good enough.
You’re your biggest enemy.
No one understands you.
No one knows you.
You’re alone.

This happens when we resist the change.

The problem is that the change already happened.

Rumination won’t help us. It’s going to lead us further along the line of thinking “not good enough”.

It’s hard to think and exist in this state for too long.

Prolonged stress, which is often the outcome of resisting reality, inhibits our creativity.

Not useful.

Acceptance

The second state is acceptance. What happened, happened. Nothing we can do about that. Fine. Life.

The situation itself is exactly the same. Not resisting it makes us calmer. We can think clearly.

This is not a solution to a problem. This creates space for the solution.

We can use our brain. This is what it’s for. Acceptance is not about surrendering. It’s about understanding we can’t affect the past event, but we can change how we think of it.

This state makes our brains ready for creative thinking. Acceptance lifts the weight of the past from our shoulders. Without that weight, we’re ready for action.

Action is what we need.

Useful.

You’re the mind and the body

The important thing to realize is that there is no separation between the mind and the body. You’re one. What’s more there, is a bidirectional connection that allows you to affect your mind with your body and vice versa.

Acceptance may be the better state, but resistance and rumination are human thing. It’s normal to fall into that and it’s useful to know what to do then.

Use your body to influence your mind.

If you have time, you can try yoga nidra, meditation, or any non-sleep deep relaxation technique (NSDR — term coined by Andrew Hubermann). They really help to calm the mind and rest the body.

Go for a run or a walk, hit the gym, do the activity you feel good after. Let the endorphins do their magic.

There are some cases when you don’t have time for 10 minutes of deep relaxation or physical activity and here is where breathing comes in.

Controlling your breath is the quickest way of controlling the mind.

Want to relax? Take deeper breaths, focus on inhaling.

Want to be alert? Take shorter breaths, focus on exhaling.

If you find yourself in a stressful situation and you know this is not a motivating kind of stress, try this technique which I know from Andrew Hubermann and his appearance on Tim Ferris Show.

Do an additional inhale after the first one. Inhale and then try to inhale a bit more air into your lungs.

For more info check this

Be prepared

No joining others in their wailing, no violent emotion.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7.43

We don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. Whatever happens, we’re going to face it with the best attitude we can.

We can transform our defeat into victory, as life is not one battle, it’s a series of battles. Our goal is to win the war.

Accept the current moment

We only have this one moment, nothing else.

In his book The power of now Eckhart Tolle repeats many times that the past and the future don’t exist, there is only now.

Agree or not, this is a useful mind-tool for me. Allow the moment to be as it is, don’t resist its coming and going.

Embrace it.

If you choose to do only one thing based on this article, accept the now. Why?

Because doing anything else in the state of resistance will cause actions motivated by that resistance.

Accepting now, accepting your fate, your feelings. Everything is an act of courage.

When you accept the now, you can take action to change your situation in the best possible way. The best possible intentions would motivate the change.

Acceptance of the self and others

Accepting yourself is more profound.

You made a mistake. Nothing can change that. Would it be useful to sit and cry? To show remorse? To sit and explain to yourself how it’s not your fault? How bad the world is?

It was your fault.

This is great.

Accept that, accept your fault. You’re human, you make mistakes.

You lost your job; you have no savings.

Is lingering about the market going to help you? Is anyone going to hire you with that attitude?

It was you who lost the job.

You don’t like the market? Show others how you think it should work. Prove them wrong.

Accept your life as your responsibility.

Accept yourself as the one who makes mistakes. Don’t be too harsh on yourself. You want to be in the best shape possible.

Your brain has limited resources. Try not to waste them on blaming others and the world. Use them to fix the issue or live with it in peace.

Therefore, self-acceptance is so useful. You no longer need to blame others or reality because you accept yourself as flawed. This results in compassion for others. There is no need to beat yourself up, there is no need to be angry at people so often. You can see things as they’re, you can have no opinion.

You always own the option of having no opinion. There is never any need to get worked up or to trouble your soul about things you can’t control. These things are not asking to be judged by you. Leave them alone.
Marcus Aurelius

Learn to accept

I treat acceptance as a skill.

If I want to get better, I need to practice. To practice, I need to know what to do.

Here are the things that work best for me:

Meditation

Controlled breathing, double inhale

Self-authoring course by Jordan Peterson

Weekly review of answers to the most important questions for me

Why do I eat so many sweets?
What would I do if I have everything in the material realm?
What do I do which sabotages my life?

Journaling

Makes it easier to revisit situations in which I was resistant to reality
Frees your mind from ruminating

When I know what to do, I need to know how to do it.

Here I have only one piece of advice.

Start and keep going. Results are on the way. The beauty in all of this is the process. Focus on it.

During the journey, you’re going to know more. You’re going to see what works for you and what doesn’t. You won’t understand everything at once, you won’t be able to accept everything (maybe ever), this is fine.

It’s how learning looks like. You start without knowledge, without understanding, you work to learn. Do the work. Learn.

Takeaway

You can treat acceptance as a useful mind tool that allows you to get expected results more often.

When you encounter a stressful situation, all boils down to the way you handle it. You can resist the change, which makes it harder to find a solution, or you can accept the change which frees your brain resources and allows it to work optimally.

The mind and the body are linked bidirectionally. You can use your body to influence your mind. Try exercising, meditating, or breathing to calm your nerves or get focused.

We are humans; we make mistakes. Accepting this is freeing. Life is hard enough without us beating ourselves up. Accept how flawed we are and feel compassion for others.

Accepting yourself needs training. You can approach it like any other skill you’d like to acquire.

What to practice