Change, Accept, Or Let Go: Navigating Difficult Situations

What do you do when you’re facing a difficult situation and don’t know how to move forward? Sometimes there is something you can change. Sometimes a situation is outside your control and calls for acceptance. And sometimes the most helpful choice is to let go and move forward.

In this talk, you’ll learn a practical Change, Accept, or Let Go process to help you gain perspective, challenge unhelpful thoughts, and decide what may be most helpful right now.

Drawing from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) principles, we’ll explore how your thoughts, emotions, body sensations, and reactions are connected—and how the meaning you give a situation can influence how you feel and respond.

You’ll be guided through questions to help you identify what is within your control, practice acceptance when something cannot be changed, and consider what you may be ready to let go of.

Ask yourself: What can I do right now that will best help me, others, or the situation?

Transcript

Hi there, This is a discussion on how to change, Accept, Or let go in any problem situation that you face. Before we get to that, I wanted to talk about a little bit about kind of behavioral therapy. Which is the belief that our thoughts impact how we feel and what we do, Our behavior. So what does this mean? That you have the power. To change your thoughts, Which means you can impact your feelings. Which means you can also impact your behavior. Let me give you an example. So let's say that you have anxiety about doing a presentation for work. Maybe a thought comes up, What if I fail? What if I can't do this? What if I forget what I'm going to say and I embarrass myself? And you can imagine having those thoughts will bring you more anxiety, More worries. And the behavior may be, You may avoid preparing for the speech, Because even thinking about it may bring more anxiety. You may have a lot of anxiety symptoms, Sweating, Heart racing, Tension in your body. So how can we look at this a little bit differently? Instead of the anxious thought of what if I fail, What if I forget, What if I embarrass myself, What if you say to yourself instead, I'm going to prepare as best I can and do whatever it takes to make it work. Would that feel in your body as compared to some of these more anxious thoughts? My guess is that you'd feel more calm and more confident. Your behavior is you're more likely to be successful to give the presentation. You're going to feel calmer. To get your ideas across and hopefully knock it out of the park and feel successful and have that sense of accomplishment and job well done. Does this make sense? And remember. All challenges we face, All problems we have. We can look at it in three ways of addressing the issue. We can change it, Accept, Or let go. Let's dive in a little more with these. So if you start first to ask yourself, Okay, What am I reacting to? What is happening right now? And my thoughts, What thoughts are coming up? So this does take some self awareness to really tune in. And sometimes you have to get quiet for this. Because if you have a lot of interruptions where you are, It's the middle of the workday, That may not be the best time to do this exercise. But if you can get some quiet and ask yourself some of these questions. What thoughts do I notice popping up in my head? And at that point, You could also write them down if that's helpful. What emotions are coming up for me? Sometimes it can be several emotions. If you're not sure what the emotion is. What does it feel similar to? Or you could look up on Google the feelings wheel and that will give you. Especially if you look under the image. For feelings wheel, That'll give you a whole lot of different kinds of emotions that you can choose from. And then the third question, What are the sensations? So. With this problem I have or situation, What do I notice in my body? Is it a heavy sensation? Is it tingling? Is it light? What do you notice? And also, What meaning am I giving it? Because perception is the other part of this. So the same thing can happen to two people, But they may have different results based on their perception of it. So once you figure out the answers to those questions, Here's some thought questions for you. And it also can help to write answers out to some of these. Is this fact or opinion? A lot of times it can be just opinion and not based on facts, Especially if we go based on our emotion about the situation. How important is this? How important will it be in a year from now? What would someone else say about this? Maybe someone important to you, A partner, A friend. Can you take the helicopter view? What that means is pretending that you're in a helicopter to take the wide lens view. Of the situation. Because a lot of times, If we're in the midst of a problem, It's right in our face and it's hard to see around it. We can struggle to get the big picture. Will this matter in a year? Or even a month? Or is this just a temporary difficulty? So once you can reflect on those. You can ask yourself. What are my options? So change is the first option. So we can look at what can you change? In your reaction. Is there anything else you can do to problem solve the situation? How can you make those changes? What do you need to make those changes? Or do you need to ask for help? To make changes. And if that's not possible to make changes. You can move to acceptance. What does acceptance mean? It means you don't have to agree with it. Judge it good or bad, It is as it is. So maybe you don't like your mom's opinion of you. Dating this person, But it is as it is Accepting that that's that's how it is. It's okay Or acceptance can mean, You know what, I'm just going to come back to it later, Put it on the shelf. And just remembering this two-shell pass, Another way to look at acceptance. And remember what we resist persists. So acceptance can bring a sense of relief to ourselves. But if that doesn't feel possible. . . We can move to letting go. So letting go means releasing. Really getting on yourself to ask, Is it worth it? To still work on this problem? Or can I just let this slide off me and not deal with it? Can I move away from this onto other things? Oftentimes acceptance and letting go go hand in hand. So you really have to figure out what works best for you in this situation right now. And if there's other people involved. What can you do that would best help you and the other people? And do you need help? Because sometimes that can be an option. Finding others that could assist you with your decision if you're not sure what to do. I hope this was helpful for you. This might be a talk that you could listen to while you have a journal out just to write out answers to some of these questions as you still reflect. On. What you could do about the situation. And to really look at is it factor opinion, Those kinds of questions I mentioned before. And I wish you best of luck with whatever it is you're dealing with. And hopefully you can use this for future issues that arise for you to help you have more tools for your coping toolbox. And again, This is Chris McDonald, Wishing you the best.