One of my favorite quotes is “When I Learn to Accept, Rather than Expect, I Will Have Fewer Disappointments.” I ran across this quote is a book titled “The Knight In Rusty Armor” by Robert Fisher many years back and it is one that I have processed and referenced many times. Acceptance has always been a big word for me as I have grown through hurts in my life. Learning to accept others for who they are was challenging for me to grasp. Learning to accept situations for how they play out was difficult. Learning to accept myself for who I am, was equally, if not more challenging than the first two. So as I have looked at acceptance and how it plays out in my life it has been refreshing to know that I have come a long way over the past 12 years in the department of acceptance.
I want to look at another side of acceptance that really had escaped my radar over the years. Last night I was watching a documentary on the success of Pixar Animation Studios and there was a line from one of the Pixar movies that triggered the thought of acceptance. I’m blanking on what movie triggered this thinking, but the thought was that we have to let go of something in order to accept something else. Something is going to replace what we let go of! All of a sudden I was seeing a different side of acceptance in the matter of one little line from an animated movie.
So I started to process this thought today and thought of many things that we accept when we let go of something else. I realized that this process works in two ways. We are either letting go of something positive and accepting something negative, or we are letting go of something negative and accepting something positive. I believe that when we are embracing the negative we are truly embracing the victim role and when we are embracing the positive we are embracing the accountable role. Here is a short list of items that I came up with in my processing:
Letting go of positive and accepting something negative (embracing the victim role):
- Letting go of trust of a parent = Accepting mistrust in relationships
- Letting go of love = Accepting fear
- Letting go of faith = Accepting doubt and uncertainty
- Letting go of connection = Accepting isolation
- Letting go of passion = Accepting boredom
- Letting go of dreams = Accepting mediocrity
- Letting go of God’s will for us = Accepting a destructive lifestyle
[space height=”10″]Letting go of negative and accepting something positive (embracing the accountability role):
- Letting go of bitterness = Accepting forgiveness
- Letting go of one job = Accepting another job
- Letting go of materialism = Accepting that I’m okay
- Letting go of our past = Accepting of our future
- Letting go of a relationship gone bad = Accepting new relationships
- Letting go of fear = Accepting of love
- Letting go of emotional bondage = Accepting of freedom
- Letting go of judgments = Accepting acceptance of self and others
[space height=”10″]What could you add to this list? Which list have you spent most your time on…letting go of positives and accepting negatives or letting go of negatives and accepting positives? Have you spent more time in the victim role or the accountable role? You have a choice so I want to encourage you to make the choice today to embrace accountability! I believe that freedom can be found in embracing the right things. We were creating for freedom and I choose freedom today!
Good stuff. I find that I’ve gotten much better at accepting others for who they are, but am still way too hard on myself. Case in point…..
On my Saturday radio show, I had some very strong opinions about a certain football team. Those who know me know that I have no problem giving strong opinions. The older I get, the “worse” it gets. I used to say I didn’t care what people thought of it, but I have learned that that’s really not the case. Anyway, On Monday and Tuesday this week, a host at my station, on a different show, lambasted me, made personal insults, made fun of me, and even a few people on twitter were having fun at my expense. I knew when I said what I did, that it may ruffle some feathers, but when it got personal….man, it’s really worked on me. I was at work today and couldn’t shake the thoughts. Now granted, I don’t think anyone would like being made fun of on the public airwaves.
I really don’t have much animosity towards the guy who said what he did. As a matter of fact I listened to his show today, to hear if I was still being made fun of, and he actually made me laugh a few times. My Focus experience, along with the always wise counsel of my boy Todd Blass, showed me that his identity is wrapped up in what he does for a living, and where he came from. Once I wrapped my mind around that, I was really ok with him. Almost from a sympathetic point of view. But, in typical fashion, I began to disect what I said and beat myself up over it. I realized, that everything I said was actually true. And I gave my opinion…nothing more. Why do I allow myself to let the words of others work on me so much, when I know in my heart that I was simply stating my real opinion?
Freedom is not freedom of yourself, it’s freedom from yourself. I struggle with that every day of my life. Here’s to hoping I allow myself to move on and actually “forgive” myself for doing something I’ve always ascribed to….which is being truthful and saying my real opinion and saying what I mean, even when it’s not popular.