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Living a life and creating an organizational culture that values “completion” as a norm doesn’t only impact your relationship with other people. It involves your relationship with yourself too.
When incompletion or living unresolved or holding onto resentment is a standard practice in your personal and professional life, you’re choosing to double down on resistance. You’re going against the flow of life and you’re operating inside of a context that suggests you know the right and best way and whatever is happening isn’t that!
Resistance is the fast track to suffering.
Oof, that’s rough. I’ve been there.
Incompletion, resistance, loss of integrity—those ways of being keep you stuck. When you are stuck very little can move forward.
Bring to your awareness an area of your life where you experience recurring discomfort, irritability, or you can hear yourself complaining. Perhaps it’s an underperforming team member. Perhaps it’s a number on the scale that is outside of your preferred range. Perhaps it’s the state of your son’s bedroom. Maybe it’s the value of your retirement savings or your company’s net profit percentage at year’s end.
What are you resisting?
Consider that anything in your life that you are resisting is being amplified or made more potent by your resistance. Oftentimes when clients realize that the very thing they don’t want is being supported by their irritability or frustration they will swiftly swing the pendulum and go hard on positivity bias. We often call this “turning lemons into lemonade.”
While there is great value in having a positive attitude, that’s not what I am talking about here. The risk of jumping to positivity is that you miss all the juicy learning that comes through the practice of acceptance.
Shifting from resistance to acceptance is a process that delivers so much awareness. Don’t rob yourself of that growth and expansion by skipping over it.
In order to be the most potent version of yourself and to launch powerfully into your next business, relationship, or goals, you want to let go of resistance. In order to let go of resistance, you want to get good at acceptance—of yourself and others.
Acceptance is a powerful practice that keeps things working.
Acceptance is the practice of nonresistance, allowing “what is” to be, as it is. Acceptance is getting “with reality.” Acceptance is sober living. It means being with life on life’s terms. Not numbing out. Not avoiding. Not denying. Not resisting.
Acceptance is not rolling over. Acceptance is not condoning harmful behavior. The experience of acceptance doesn’t happen overnight. It isn’t a cognitive exercise. It is a whole-body practice.
I get why people do not want to practice acceptance. It requires feeling. And we generally would prefer to avoid feeling. It can be painful.
But guess what, living a life of denial and avoidance is far more painful in the long run. It robs you of real joy, aliveness, and connection. And you deserve that. You can have that.
You can access a reservoir of creativity, inspiration, purpose, and power when you live a life of acceptance that you otherwise would never have access to.
Here is a step-by-step process for acceptance. Try this out with any area of your life where you are experiencing irritability, frustration, judgment, or resistance.
My 10 Step Process for Acceptance:
- Be willing to acknowledge the issue that you’re resisting. Distill your complaint down to one issue so you’re really clear. You may have many issues. Take each one on independently.
- Get honest with yourself. Say out loud or write down your issue using a simple sentence stem:
- “I am not ok with…”
- “I am resisting…”
- “This __________________ shouldn’t be this way.”
- “I feel furious about…”
- “I can’t move on because…”
- Give yourself permission to feel your feelings around what you’re resisting. Notice what feelings are present—anger, sadness, or fear. Stick with these three feelings. This may be the toughest part of the process.
- Do not indulge your tendency to explain or justify why “it is as it is.” No excuses. Be with your discomfort.
- Identify everything that needs or wants to be fully expressed to feel complete. You might write this down or say it out loud. You may also choose to make nonverbal body movement and sound to express any stuck energy on the topic.
- Once you’ve said and felt anything and everything that needs to be known take a deep breath (don’t skip this step). This is a whole-body practice, not a cognitive exercise.
- Ask yourself if you’re willing to let go of “being right” about your point of view. If you’re not ready let that be ok (micro practice of acceptance here). Let yourself be where you are.
- When you’re ready to let go of “being right” get curious about what the gift lesson or benefit of the issue has been, for you. Write down what you’ve gotten out of “being right” or being in resistance.
- Consider appreciating yourself and anyone else involved for what you’re learning. This does not need to be shared. This is a practice for you.
- Check-in with your head, heart, and gut. Do you feel aligned, congruent, and in integrity with yourself? Do you feel complete? Are you in acceptance of the issues that have had you stuck? If not, start again when you’re ready.
Acceptance is your portal into greater peace and power. Transformational leadership involves a profound practice of acceptance. When you develop the discipline of acceptance you learn to be with anything. You move beyond resistance and reactivity.
“Have dominion over your awareness and you will have dominion over your destiny.”
-Michael Beckwith
It is not always easy or accessible to do this work on your own. I work intimately with my clients to do the necessary work to give them real influence and access to the impact that they desire. Sometimes our work together looks like reviewing an org chart or a P&L. Sometimes our work together looks like digging up the stubborn patterns that are getting in the way.
If you’re ready to transform your leadership and your life schedule a Chemistry Call with me. I’d love to support you.
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