Accepting Your Current Situation | Self-Acceptance Mindset

This episode covers a wide gamut of topics from our current global socio-economic-political situation, to our culture, to accepting our unique view of the world. This episode is about accepting yourself within the confines of these paradigms and learning to live in alignment with your unique values, perhaps despite what our current culture is telling us.

I also dive into what true acceptance looks + feels like about our unique personal development journeys and within our relationships with others.

If you'd like to connect more with me about this topic (and others!), please join the ⁠Wild Free Well Space⁠ on Insight Timer!

Transcript

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Wild Freewell podcast.

I am here today to talk to you about acceptance.

And I feel like this is going to be a very heartfelt episode because I feel like what I'm sharing today is the exact medicine that I need to hear and take myself as well.

But I really wanted to talk about truly and deeply and I mean physically,

Emotionally,

Mentally,

Spiritually,

All of the above,

Really accepting wherever you are.

Truly and deeply accepting that space.

So whether you would label where you are right now in a positive way or a negative way,

It doesn't really matter.

It's about really diving into the way that life and the world is unfolding for you right now.

And we're not trying to necessarily shift any of those things.

This episode is about really just kind of being with it,

Which is often the hardest part.

It's usually the most challenging part of accepting things is because usually when we have to accept something,

It's something that we don't necessarily want to accept because we're perhaps living in a moment or in a situation that we don't necessarily want to be in,

For example.

So let's talk for a second about why accepting a situation is really important.

I think it's probably the hardest step of the beginning,

The process of making change is really accepting whatever is currently unfolding in your life.

And the reason why,

Again,

It's hard is because it's often if we want to change something,

It's likely because whatever it is that we're experiencing is triggering us in some way.

And so if we,

You know,

If we were to accept it,

I think that that triggers a lot of fears.

And that's actually kind of the first question that I want to start out with for everyone listening is,

What is kind of holding you back from accepting the situation that you find yourself in?

Whatever that situation may be,

Right?

Maybe you're having a challenging moment in your relationship.

Maybe you're having a challenging moment at work.

Maybe,

You know,

Your kids are driving you crazy or maybe you're,

Oh,

This is a really good one.

I'm going to cry.

I'm so emotional today,

Guys.

I'm sorry.

But maybe you are having trouble accepting the current situation of the world at large,

The societies that we find ourselves in,

The political climate,

The environmental climate that we find ourselves in.

Maybe you are in a position of being quite often triggered by these things.

I know that the political,

The global political situation,

It does sometimes get me down as well.

So that I think that's actually a very valid one that I didn't really necessarily think about before I sat down to record this episode.

But I think that whether or not we engage with the mainstream media or the information that's kind of being thrown our way,

I still think that we're kind of feeling this global energy of,

I think,

Confusion.

Perhaps we could even say like low-level panic,

Which is really,

I hate having,

I hate saying that to be honest with you.

But I do think that there is a little bit of like fear that we're kind of in right now.

And so like,

Regardless of what the situation is,

What is holding you back from truly just being able to say,

Okay,

This situation,

It is what it is.

And not that there's nothing that I can do about it,

But just kind of being in a space where,

You know,

You accept the reality of the situation,

You accept the other people or person involved in the situation,

And you accept yourself in the way that you're feeling about the situation.

I think that what comes up for most people,

And I see this a lot with clients,

Is,

See,

We're in,

We're in a loop,

I think.

We are often taught that we need to be the best.

And in order to be the best,

We need to work really hard.

And working really hard necessarily means sacrifice.

And there's this kind of collective narrative that kind of exists within each of our lives.

And I think it's irrelevant what society you come from,

Or what culture you come from,

Though I think that in some cases,

Certain societies or certain cultures can exacerbate this kind of idea.

But there's this sense of like,

You know,

I need to be on top of things all the time.

And so we get into this very punishing sort of habit with ourselves,

We come at ourselves from a space of,

I need to be fixed,

There's something wrong with me when I don't behave the way that someone else expects me to the way that society or my culture or my family expects me to,

There are all these kind of expectations.

And we take a lot of that on board.

And we build up this habit,

Likely from this idea of like even going to school,

I think like I was talking to a client about this the other day that like,

You know,

When we go to school,

You know,

Our parents say like,

You know,

Do your best,

Do your best.

And they want us to succeed.

And they want us to be like at the top of the class.

But the reality is that only so many people can be at the top of their class,

There is always going to be this sort of hierarchy,

Because we're giving power to the hierarchy,

Not because we necessarily have to not because it inherently needs to exist.

But it's,

It is something that we value in our society.

So when we are in this kind of system,

We learn to kind of work harder and then punish ourselves when we don't work harder.

And then when we take this,

When we when we begin to focus on other areas of our lives,

We tend to approach it with the same process or system that we did when we were going to school.

So like,

Perhaps we go to our friendships.

And you know,

We're in a situation where we made a mistake,

And we said something wrong,

Or we didn't treat somebody exactly the way we wanted to.

And we begin to like,

Overthink.

And it's like,

No,

I shouldn't have said that I shouldn't have done that.

And we get to punish us,

We begin to punish ourselves.

And we say,

Like,

You know,

I should do better,

I should know better,

I,

I need to behave differently.

Oh,

What's wrong with me.

And there's this very punishing attitude around,

Like various situations that we find ourselves in,

Including our personal development.

Yikes,

Right?

Like,

That's a little bit scary.

Because the whole point of personal development is that we're coming at ourselves with like a really loving perspective.

And we're trying to be the best us that we can be.

The best us that we can be,

Though,

Doesn't mean perfect.

It doesn't mean that we're never making mistakes.

It does not mean that we always have things figured out.

It's this idea that like,

We are constantly approaching everything we do with love.

And with acceptance,

Which brings us back to the topic for today.

I do feel like when people are struggling to accept a situation,

It is often because they are afraid that if they accept the situation,

It will remain the same.

Is that a possibility?

I yeah,

Sure.

I suppose so.

It is a possibility that in accepting something,

It could remain the same.

But I don't think that that is honestly very likely to happen.

Because if you're noticing that something is wrong,

Your desire to change it is inherent in the noticing.

Like,

If you didn't notice something was wrong,

Or if you didn't want to change something,

You wouldn't even notice it to begin with.

Does that make sense?

So I think that if we're already noticing that something is triggering us,

There is some level of discomfort,

There's something in our lives that doesn't look or feel the way we want it to.

And we begin to kind of fight against it.

Because we're like,

Nope,

This has got to change,

It's got to be different.

There's a lot of kind of,

I'm going to say masculine energy,

There's a lot of pushing energy,

Forcing energy,

Which tends to be more on the masculine side of things.

And this is regardless of whether you're a woman or a man,

I don't think it's relevant.

It's the energy with which we are approaching a situation,

Not our inherent energy,

Like as people,

For example.

So this idea of like,

Now we've begun resisting this,

Because we have,

We've built up layers.

I'm going to take you through that again,

In case you haven't seen it.

But you know,

We have this situation,

We are triggered by the situation.

So it's bringing up some kind of an emotion,

Most likely a negative one,

Okay.

And from there,

We are building kind of layers on top of that,

Because now we begin to feel perhaps wrong for being in that situation to begin with.

We're afraid of being stuck in the situation.

And we begin to resist against it,

Which PS,

I will say,

Tends to make everything worse.

When we are swimming upstream,

I cannot speak today,

I'm so sorry,

Guys.

When we are swimming upstream,

We are putting in double the amount of effort,

We are wasting energy,

We are wasting time likely going against the flow and the direction that life is trying to move us in.

And it's all because we are kind of being run by fear instead of being run by love,

Right?

We are not being moved in a way that feels good to us,

That feels,

We could potentially use the word comfortable,

Because I'm going to say that like love feels like a hell of a lot more comfortable than fear does,

Obviously.

We're not being,

We're just not kind of,

We're not present with the facts.

We are lost in the story,

Because fear is the story that we're telling ourselves about the situation.

Okay?

So if I was to take an example from my current reality,

I would say that something that's kind of coming up for me is not,

How can I word this?

Give me,

Give me one second.

I feel like I'm kind of spoiled for choice for examples on this to a certain extent,

But like one of them is,

Okay,

I haven't been feeling super connected to myself.

There have been periods of time or moments,

Maybe even like in a day,

Not an entire day necessarily,

But there's also been like periods of time like that as well,

Where I felt a little bit lost and I haven't been totally clear on what exactly is missing.

Okay?

And some of how I deal with this is to,

At first I have a very human reaction.

Okay.

I know that,

Um,

Like I,

I'm a coach and I do this for work and I help people with this,

But I'm also just a little human,

Just like you.

And so sometimes my gut reaction is to freak out and be like,

Oh,

Why am I here again?

Like,

I'm so sick of feeling like this.

And,

And again,

All of those things,

All of those stories that I'm telling myself,

Like those words that I'm speaking and the reality that I'm creating with those words is all resistance.

I am pushing against the reality of feeling lost because sinking into that feeling is scary.

It is scary.

I think because humans in general,

We tend to avoid the void.

We do not like being in the fallow period in the nothingness in the dark.

We are just not a fan of that.

And,

And,

And our culture is obsessed with experts obsessed with them.

So we get this feeling of,

I always need to have an answer ready.

And that I just think is not how nature works.

I don't think that's how the world works because I think that obviously before there was us,

There was nature.

And so I think that's where we should probably be taking a lot of our cues.

Cause like she knows best.

Um,

But yeah,

Nature doesn't kind of push for an answer.

It's not like when nature is in winter,

It's not like,

Uh,

Wish it was spring.

Do you know what I mean?

It's not having that kind of conversation with itself.

And yet we do,

When we find ourselves in these either external or internal seasons of winter,

And it doesn't matter how long they are.

And it doesn't matter if they coincide with the actual seasons,

That's not the conversation that we're having,

But like when we find ourselves in this void or in this kind of liminal space,

It tends to scare the living shit out of us.

And when we have a negative emotion that is somehow connected to this void,

When we lack clarity,

Let's say,

Okay.

When we're experiencing a wintering emotion,

Let's say,

Um,

We tend to be afraid to sit with it because I think we are afraid that we will get stuck there above all.

But I think too,

We are also afraid of what we might find because oftentimes hiding in that void is the answer that we're desperate for,

But that we're not necessarily ready for in some way or another.

I'm going to share another like ultra personal example because apparently today is that day.

Um,

I do not love the city that I'm currently living in.

I love my partner.

I am grateful that we are together,

But this city is not for me.

I knew it before I came here and I came here for love and that's beautiful and wonderful and whatever.

However,

I don't love this city at all.

And there,

There has been a lot of fear around accepting it for all of the same reasons that I've said,

Because my fear is that kind of,

If I accept that I live here and I have,

And I haven't right,

Like I accept it some days and then other days it kind of comes around and kind of bites me in the bum again.

And it's like,

Hey,

I'm still here.

I still don't like this place.

Um,

I think that like the,

The fear is that if I accept that I live here,

I will somehow end up being stuck here and I won't be able to change my situation.

Now,

Nothing about my past experience supports that idea.

There is nothing that I have lived through having lived literally everywhere.

I've lived in Vancouver,

Montreal and Halifax.

I've lived in Florence,

Rome and Luca.

And now I live in another city near Florence.

So like in Italy,

I've lived all over,

I've traveled all over.

So like,

There's nothing about my experience that says I'm going to be in this place forever.

I haven't been anywhere forever.

You know what I mean?

So why would this now somehow be the case where I'm stuck here?

But there is a fear in like sitting with this.

And when I do sit with it,

When I do sit with this,

I really don't want to be here.

What comes up is like just how much I don't want to be here,

How much I know that this city isn't aligned with me.

And the fact that this is where my partner has a physical business.

And this is where for the time being,

Our family really does need to be.

So there's also like a step here.

So I'm accepting that I don't want to be here.

I'm accepting I need to accept that I am here.

And I need to accept that this is the right decision for our family for this season of life.

And kind of being in a space where I'm,

I'm in constant acceptance,

I'm going to have to have this conversation with myself,

Probably fairly consistently until we move to another space.

Because I know that like this is not,

This is not the space,

This is not the city that is most aligned with my energy and my values.

And like when you know your values,

And when I talk about this all the freaking time,

When you know your values,

It makes all of these other decisions so much clearer.

Like you understand right away what is and isn't working and why.

And you understand also like a huge portion of the reason why.

So there's a lot of different layers of accepting in this situation too.

It's not just that I need to accept the city itself,

Which I do.

I need to accept where I live.

But I need to accept how I feel about it.

I need to accept that it may not change.

My feelings about being here may not change.

I need to accept that I'm in a season of being here,

Right?

And that this is like the best decision for my family.

And I'm doing that from like a loving place and not a suffering place.

And I'm gonna be honest with you because I'm always honest with you.

I have been in a suffering place.

Not the entire time that I'm live,

I was living here.

I came here with like you know an optimistic attitude.

And then last year was very challenging.

And like as things got more challenging,

Then I became like saltier and saltier towards having to be here.

And there are aspects of my life in the city that I was living in before,

Which was Lucca,

Which I really deeply miss.

But I will also share that it took me a really long time to settle into Lucca as well.

After having lived in Rome,

And I've lived in Florence too,

But Florence doesn't do anything for me.

So there's no like there was no,

I was not comparing anything to that.

But after living in Rome and the way that I felt there,

Even living in Lucca,

Lucca felt quite small.

It felt kind of you know,

Not really necessarily aligned at the beginning until I began to see the good things.

And that's another thing too.

So like when we begin to accept a situation,

All of a sudden our perspective begins to change.

When I began to accept Lucca,

Which and this is something I feel like I have not currently done with the city that I'm living in now.

I'm in the process.

I'm taking steps towards doing it.

And I'll explain those in a second.

But like when I when I really started to accept Lucca,

I really fell in love with the pieces of it that at first maybe didn't feel great.

So,

You know,

The I was living in the city center,

There are very few grocery stores,

I was like mostly on foot,

The bigger grocery stores were farther away.

So sometimes it was hard to get certain things.

So like at first,

That was really difficult.

But then over time,

I began to love that the smaller grocery stores were the way they were because they began to feel like home.

And I knew all of the people that worked there.

And they knew me and they knew Mila and they loved her and they and they got excited when she came into the store,

Not me because nobody's excited to see me.

That's totally fine.

But like they are excited to see my dog.

And I think that's fair too.

So like,

Yeah,

They were excited to see her and it became this really it gave me this huge sense of community.

There's also something to say for the fact that like Lucca is extraordinarily beautiful.

It's just incredibly beautiful.

And there wasn't a day that I lived there,

Including when at first I felt very uncomfortable,

That I did not awe in the beauty that surrounded me.

I really was in a constant state of amazement and fascination.

Every time I walked out my door,

I remember that I used to take Mila for walks in one of the main squares in in this in the city,

Because it was pretty close to where I lived.

And every it was my favorite place on earth.

And I and I still think it is it's one of my favorite places on earth,

Because every time I walked by that place,

It was beautiful.

Every morning.

It wasn't some of the time.

It was every single day that I left my house.

I felt that way.

And so there's some advice too that one of my friends gave to me about this discussion of being in a new city and accepting the new city is beginning to find the beauty in what is surrounding you.

So I've begun taking Mila for walks and the environment where I live in now is much more countryside,

Much less kind of renaissance or historical.

So I'm beginning to appreciate like the view of the mountains that I have from my house,

Which has been one of my favorite things since we moved in here.

I can see the Apennine Mountains from my house,

Which is phenomenal.

And in the morning,

They're pink with the sunrise and it's absolutely stunning.

And there are fields and,

You know,

Animals and birds around where I live.

And that's really lovely,

Too.

And there's nothing to I understand that I'm painting this as a very idyllic sort of situation.

So it's like,

Well,

Why don't you like it?

I live in a context now that where my life is no longer walkable the way it was before.

And walkability for me is something that is very closely tied to an Italian lifestyle.

I don't want to be in a situation where it's like in North America and I have to get in my car all the time to go do something because that's not why I came here.

I came here to live in Italy,

Not to live in another sort of like a version of a Canadian town,

If that makes sense.

So I feel like my city now lacks a little bit of that like Italian-ness I was very much like absorbed in when I was living in Lucca.

So but it's about this slowly beginning to kind of look for the things.

And the more that you look for the things,

The more you see the things that are moving you towards a space of accepting whatever is going on in your life.

So I've told you a personal story,

But this could be about anything.

And really releasing the fear.

You are not going to get stuck in this emotion.

I understand that that's a like it's a fear and it's a valid one.

And like whatever you feel is always valid,

Always true for you.

But then you have to get to the point where you decide like do I want this to be true for me?

So do I want it to be true that I'm afraid?

Do I want fear to run my life?

And you have to begin to slowly make another decision.

And it's not necessarily easy,

But it is about constantly having these conversations with yourself like really being in communion with yourself and your higher power perhaps too if that's something that speaks to you.

So really being in a space where you are accepting what is unfolding before you and when you can't get to that space you are at least choosing to move closer towards it.

You will not get stuck here.

But if you are really struggling to accept something,

I think that you need to begin by having the conversation of asking what it is that you are afraid of and getting really clear on that.

Like what's holding you back?

Probably fear and probably a sense of not feeling good enough in some way or shape or form,

Okay?

So once you get to the root of those things,

Why are you afraid?

Like what are you afraid of?

Are you rolling through some kind of worst case scenario?

I would say that that's something that I've also been kind of in a habit of doing recently.

Also because I've like been a little bit under the weather and so like just kind of my energy has been a little bit like off because of some kind of like external circumstances as well.

So like getting sick and whatever.

And yeah,

But like,

Oh I lost my train of thought.

Hang on.

Yeah,

Okay.

So have you been in a situation where you have been kind of jumping towards the worst case scenario and kind of again building up these stories and everything about our lives,

Everything,

Everything is a story.

Everything is a story.

Every problem that we have is a story but all of the good things are stories too.

Like if we really want to believe it that way,

That's a choice that we can make too and it's something that I do really believe in.

Like we are telling ourselves a story about whatever it is and we are telling ourselves a story about why we can or can't accept something and so really getting clear on that story so that you can begin to rewrite it,

Right?

So like the story that we could say about living here,

Like I'm telling myself a story that like I don't want to be here.

I could begin telling myself a different story like and it's not,

The story is not going to be I want to be here.

We're not going to lie to ourselves.

Your body knows it won't buy that crap.

It won't buy it.

So you have to say something that feels true.

It's like the next closest thing.

So like something along the lines of for me it would be I'm willing to accept that I'm in this space for now and I'm willing to accept that this is just a season and I'm willing to accept that things can change,

Right?

Things always change.

I'm willing to believe that this is not forever.

Like I choose to believe that this is not forever.

This,

This location.

I mean my relationship,

Yes.

My relationship,

Yes.

This city,

No.

And like just kind of getting yourself to this space where you're telling yourself a more positive and empowering story that gets you closer to the reality that you want to be living in and that doesn't exacerbate the suffering that you have in your life because a lot of times again when we feed into the fear,

When we're in that kind of space of resisting and not accepting a situation,

What we're actually doing is increasing our own suffering.

We're making the situation much worse than it has to be because we are giving fuel to the story of whatever thing is that isn't working that we're not accepting.

Whereas if we could just get into a place of okay this situation is what it is and no matter what happens,

I am okay.

My loved ones are okay.

We're all going to be okay and I can figure this out because I am a powerful and sovereign being.

I am capable and I am intelligent and I can make different decisions to lead me to a different place but first I need to just be okay here.

I need to be okay here because from the accepting,

From the being okay here,

That's where the clarity comes from.

It's very difficult to find clarity when you are in a situation where you are resisting against what is because your mind is focusing on what you don't want.

Your mind is focusing on what's wrong,

What isn't working,

What you don't like about the situation,

What you don't like about the person,

What you don't like about what you did,

What you said,

How you behaved,

Whatever.

It's focusing on the negative.

It's focusing on what isn't working,

What doesn't feel good,

So on and so forth and so in that fighting against,

It's kind of bringing more of that towards you and you're not necessarily moving yourself in the right direction whereas acceptance gets you to that neutral space which is the launch pad for you moving forward in a more positive way and again we haven't really talked about changing.

We're talking about being here despite the fear,

Despite the discomfort,

Being with whatever it is that makes us feel uncomfortable.

We're not running away because all that is is bypassing.

We're just,

If we're trying to pretend that we don't feel the way that we really feel,

We're just kind of shoving it down,

Repressing and it is gonna like we are gonna explode that shit all over somebody right and we don't want that.

We want to be in a place where we are really calm,

We're really clear,

We're okay no matter what and from there we can begin to take action because we will have so much more clarity,

We will have so much more energy as well because we're not using our energy to feed the situation that we don't want.

We're using our energy to move towards what we do want.

Like there's a huge energetic shift in this.

Can you see that?

Does that make sense?

So yeah,

I think this is where I leave you.

My biggest piece of advice to kind of summarize this is allow yourself,

Give yourself permission to be with the uncomfortable situation,

To be with the uncomfortable emotions and just kind of acknowledge them and like if you can,

Feel into them.

A somatic practice that I do when I'm in this situation is I close my eyes and I breathe in to where the emotion feels in my body and I just let it come up.

I just let it bubble to the surface and usually my eyes start to tingle and maybe water a little bit.

Sometimes the space where I feel the emotion is trapped,

It feels like it's tingling.

You can also like use colors,

Like you could imagine a color that's calming or soothing to you in that space.

You could choose golden light,

White light,

Whatever works for you and just you can breathe into that space,

Which is what I do.

Just kind of be with it and allow it to come up to the surface and what you'll likely notice is that when you're paying attention to it and you're giving it air time,

Like you're just letting it say what it needs to say,

The emotion,

You're letting it just say the ugly thing,

The hard thing,

Which is what I always say to clients.

When you let the emotion speak to you and just kind of present itself and like present its case,

Oftentimes it goes away.

It just completely dissipates and so this is kind of the first thing that I would do to move through to a space of acceptance and from there you're automatically going to feel lighter and everything is going to be much,

Much simpler.

Yes,

The end.

So I hope you loved this episode.

I hope it was useful.

If you would like to connect with me more,

I have a group on Insight Timer and I would love to be able to interact with you.

There are some fun reflection prompts on there and as the community builds,

I'm sure it will evolve.

It's also a really good way for you to submit ideas or questions for the podcast if you'd like me to answer them.

Otherwise,

I can also answer them in the group.

Really looking forward to connecting with people in a new way,

Connecting with you guys and just kind of continuing on this path together.

So I hope you have a really good weekend.

If you need me,

You know where to find me and I will see you on the next episode of the podcast.

Ciao!