Acceptance
Neither
reaching
for the moon,
nor bound to
the ground.
Happy is
when I
can float
amongst
the stars.
This picture popped into my head one day as a speedy moment of clarity.
You know those!
When everything makes sense for a brief second and then everything feels clumsy and confusing again.
I made the picture to remind myself of that clear moment as it held the key to my experience of happiness.
One of the things I struggle with is change and expectations.
I can ruin an experience because it isn’t what I thought it would be or what I had originally planned.
That can make for an interesting time because life is completely haphazard and entirely built on change.
My teacher in this has been my noisy boy, who also struggles with these.
We talk a lot about transitions (that is the moment between one thing and another thing – yep it’s a thing)
and we talk a lot about expectations and how something might be going sideways because of unknown territory and / or differences in what we thought would happen. My son and I seem to feel more comfortable with a perceived feeling of control in situations, but we are learning how to negotiate our way through this by giving up the reins sometimes. Just as my little girl is teaching me piano, my boy is my lesson in feelings.
When I think back on moments that I haven’t ruined with my sulky face. Times when I have in fact let loose, chilled out, or even (dare I say it), “gone with the flow” – it feels AMAZING! I know I have it in me – I just forget to switch it on and that is my homework for May.
If this sounds in anyway familiar to you I have been playing a game with myself for the last couple of weeks called the Acceptance game. Before I explain I should note that this is not a lesson for passivity. IT isn’t about accepting status quo when status quo is truly affecting you negatively. This is more about times when you are getting in your own way of enjoyment, contentment and just plain chilling to make for a happier day. Ok back to the game. SO here are some prime examples of me.
1. I am getting completely wound up by some random person in life for some perceived thing they have done. Game on. I accept I am getting wound up right now, but I choose not to let this ruin this day.
2. The kids are hyper, I have to cook dinner and there are 6 things spinning through my head about stuff I have to do and I am going to loose my mind. Game on. I accept that all I have to do right now is cook dinner. I choose to not think of these other things I need to do right now.
3. Malaise of mood about weight, work, messiness or my general crappiness at something. I accept I feel crappy right now about (put in issue of the moment) but I choose to do something that makes me uncrappy (like make a picture, drink a tea, take a breath, take a walk, get that washing up finished).
4. Decisions. I am terrible at making decisions especially about things that I don’t really want to think about, but have to in grown up land. Once I make a decision about how I might handle a tricky situation, a business choice or a personal matter, whatever it is I will still churn it over in my mind. If it was a situation I was feeling particularly prickly about then on and on in my head it will go even though I have decided what I am going to do and already taken action. Game on. I accept that I have made my decision and I stand by that decision. I chose now to lay this situation to rest and move on.
It sounds very basic I know, but little, by little something started to shift in me. That heavy weight that joins my ears to my shoulders did actually start to lift. All I was really doing was being a kind person to myself to stop the spiraling, but because I wasn’t spending so much of my day in a spiral I was less tired, less hurt and less burdened. I wasn’t striving to change things, to “fix” these perceived problems, nor was I letting myself be dragged down by them, all I was doing was saying “oh yeah there you are and moving on”.
This is early days of course. Last week the sun was shining, a warm spring had arrived and my mood was lighter. Today a rainy day seems to have taken its toll on me and I can feel the stress rise again bit, by bit. If I can keep up my awareness though, keep up the training of these acceptance muscles of mine, I can still build a resiliency and learn not to freak out so much at change and sudden circumstance. Learn to hang back a bit rather than kick into reactive mode. Become a little more wait and see, rather than fluster and fear of fate. For my noisy boy I can do this so that more and more we will both be just chilling in the stars.
Good luck my friends with your trials of acceptance this month of May. What are the triggers that make you get the board out for your acceptance game?