Love in the Blizzard of Life – Day 25 – ACCEPTANCE
ACCEPTANCE is the quality most us are seeking to receive and longing to feel in all of our relationships. The opposite, rejection or dismissal, can be the most painful and self-demeaning experiences in our lives. When we feel put down, ignored, invalidated or unnoticed, our world as we know it can collapse. It doesn’t matter if we are the most intelligent, most attractive, most talented, best performing athlete, highest paid speaker, most accurate scientist, or most sensitive lover, our sense of ACCEPTANCE can greatly influence the way we view our self, our life, and our actual performance.
You may have a strong INCENTIVE, INTENTION, PRESENT MOMENT awareness, DRIVE, inner ARCHITECT, PATIENCE, ability to SURRENDER, COMMITMENT, TRUST, DISCERNMENT, PASSION, DESIRE, CREATIVITY, SENSUALITY, SEXUAL EXPRESSION, COMPASSION, and COMMUNICATION. You PRACTICE relationships skills, you balance TOGETHERNESS and AUTONOMY, your SENSITIVITY. UNDERSTANDING, RECEPTIVITY and FORGIVENESS are readily apparent. But are you able to allow full ACCEPTANCE of your relationship exactly the way it is at the current moment without feeling the pressure to deny, suppress or change something immediately.
Today’s question is: How strong is your emotional capacity for full and unswerving ACCEPTANCE of the current reality in your business, professional, and personal relationships?
- Are you able to receive the gifts that others are willing and able to give, even if they fall far short of your desires and expectations?
- Can you tolerate differences of opinion, lifestyle, values, behaviors and attitudes and even acquiesce in support of another person’s agenda?
- Can you freely recognize, acknowledge, and approve of others even when their beliefs and actions directly conflict with your own?
Ask yourself NOW: How easily and readily can I allow ACCEPTANCE to overrule my need to be right, my desire to make changes, and my fear that I am losing control in a relationship?
ACCEPTANCE may be the glue that holds a relationship together. After many years of shared space at home or in a work environment, ACCEPTANCE of each others temperament, needs, and style of behaving can lessen the stress and expand the love. Love and ACCEPTANCE is the honey that soothes old wounds, bridges gaps in communication, and feeds the process of bonding in any relationship.
Relationships are built upon the complexity and interactions among all the different possible qualities, both positive and negative, that we can bring. Every quality is important, to some degree. It is really the balance among all the different possibilities that can lead to joy and happiness or sadness and emotional devastation.
PLEASE JOIN MY RELATIONSHIP HEALING MASTERMIND COMMUNITY AT GOOGLEPLUS.
Find a Healing Book or Kindle Book
Schedule an appointment DrEricaWellness.com
Love in the Blizzard of Life. A Romantic Love Story stepping into the blizzard of life. Available at Amazon.com
Warmly,
Dr. Erica
January 29th, 2013 at 2:46 pm
Hi Dr. Erica,
as you say, “acceptance maybe the glue that holds a relationship together.”
We can be aware of when we find it difficult to accept something about another and then in our private time explore what it is within ourselves that we find difficult to accept.
Just like loving others is not easy to do when we don’t love ourselves, accepting others is a reflection of how much we accept ourselves, including our shadow.
Thank you so much for your insightful post.
Love and Light
Yorinda
Yorinda recently posted..Making Changes and the Limbic Lag
[Reply]
Dr. Erica Goodstone Reply:
January 29th, 2013 at 7:54 pm
Yorinda,
You are so right. We need to accept ourselves first before we can truly accept another person, especially the side that we don’t really like. And that amounts to accepting our own shadow. That leads to deep humility and greater acceptance of others.
Warmly,
Dr. Erica
Dr. Erica Goodstone recently posted..Love in the Blizzard of Life – Day 25 – ACCEPTANCE
[Reply]
January 29th, 2013 at 3:14 pm
Hi Dr.Erica,
Thanks for sharing these insights. Acceptance provides such relief from struggle and such peace of mind! Acceptance can remove barriers to appreciation for each other’s likable qualities.
I have noticed that over the years of marriage I have come to accept behaviors (on the part of my wife and myself) that used to be more annoying. I used to be frustrated by inability to change them. Through the lens of acceptance they now seem relatively insignificant. Now I “don’t sweat the small stuff.”
Buddy Hodges recently posted..Are You Wasting Your Time Making Contacts?
[Reply]
Dr. Erica Goodstone Reply:
April 18th, 2013 at 12:56 am
Buddy,
That is exactly what acceptance is. You may try to get someone to change something but when they don’t, can’t or won’t, you have a choice – either be with this person and accept him or her fully or break up, sever the relationship and find someone else that you can accept. It is easier to accept another person when you focus on and appreciate the qualities and actions you do like Then the annoyances are less bothersome and more easily tolerated.
Warmly,
Dr. Erica
Dr. Erica Goodstone recently posted..Who’s Bullying You?
[Reply]
April 17th, 2013 at 11:40 pm
Dr. Erica, thank you for another beautiful and insightful article. I agree, to a point, with most of what you’ve said in this article. In fact, I’m able to be very accepting of others who are different than I am. The flip side, though, is that I have had to learn to be stronger with my own personal boundaries, and learn to speak up for what I stand for and believe. Does that make sense?
Steve Borgman recently posted..Stress Free Decision Making for Aspergers Relationships
[Reply]
Dr. Erica Goodstone Reply:
April 18th, 2013 at 12:52 am
Steve,
There is no conflict in what you are saying. Learning to accept others, as they are, is very different from setting your own boundaries. You also need to accept your own self as you are and insist that other people honor your boundaries and accept you, just as you are willing to accept them.
Warmly,
Dr. Erica
Dr. Erica Goodstone recently posted..Who’s Bullying You?
[Reply]