108. Accepting Your Fate

Welcome to Season Three of The Modern Creative Woman Podcast!

"Acceptance is the bridge that connects us to genuine happiness and peace."  - Thich Nhat Hanh 

Transcript

 Acceptance is the bridge that connects us to genuine happiness and peace. This quote from Thich Nhat Hanh comes from his writing piece is every step starts us off today as we discuss how acceptance moves us on a path towards inner peace and greater happiness. Welcome into the modern creative woman. I am Doctor Amy Backos and I am your hostess on this audio creativity journey. 

We're doing exciting things inside the membership this month, and if you have yet to join us, what are you waiting for? Now is the time. This is your opportunity to fully engage with yourself and a community of like minded women to make your life so much better. And by better, I mean more creative, more contact with the present moment, better relationships. And all of this comes to you in the experience of making contact with yourself, your creativity, and moving towards trusting your intuition and your creative mind. I would love to see you inside the membership. You can find a link in the show notes to join. You can set up a time to chat with me and see how this might be the right fit for you. But now we're talking all about acceptance. So let's get into this. Let's get this started. If you're following along on Instagram, you already know that I was called in for jury duty, and my Friday Live chat was coming to you from the San Francisco Hall of Justice. I wanted to make sure to share with you how we can take these experiences. Of things we don't want, and turn them into a peace of mind that can only benefit us and the people around us. Acceptance and commitment therapy is really focused on this idea of accepting. It's being open and willing to experience thoughts, feelings, physical sensations without trying to change, avoid, or control them. You may have heard about radical acceptance, and it's along the same lines. It comes from dialectical behavior therapy, and it's fully accepting things as they are. Instead of trying to ignore a void or wish a situation were different. Did I want to be on jury duty? Nope. Not at all. Was I going to respond to my desire to avoid jury duty? Was I going to react to that internal stimulation? What was I going to react to being called to jury duty and in the United States? We get the letter in the mail that says you are being asked to come to jury duty, and then you call in or you check on the website every night for a week to see when they might need you. Now, sometimes they don't need you, and they'll put your name back in the hopper for next year. Sometimes they do need you, and they bring in hundreds and hundreds of people to try and find what closely aligns. To be a jury of one's peers. And so that's why they pull in so many people, is that they can find someone who is as least biased as possible. And we watched videos about implicit bias and how to avoid judging based on our thoughts, but also figuring out how to avoid Based on our unconscious experiences, there's pretty much nothing you can do when you're called in for jury duty. You can be excused if you're a full time caretaker. You can defer it to another point in time if you need. Say you're away that week. You can schedule your jury duty for two weeks from now, but everything stops. And I felt pretty sad that I canceled some of my psychology patients. I canceled some of my clients that I work with, and there's nothing I can do about it. So that's acceptance. Responding to what is you know, I realized I was going to be called in that day. I started texting and emailing the people that I was supposed to meet with, but I didn't try and control or change the situation. And getting mad would never benefit me, or it wouldn't change anything anyway. So acceptance really is recognizing and allowing the internal experience to come and go without struggling with it, even when it feels difficult, even when it feels unpleasant. I felt guilty to have to cancel. So I'm going to tell you a little bit about how you can move towards acceptance, but I want to define first that there is inner and outer pieces that we have to accept that. Example of my jury duty is an outer experience that I have no control over. I could defer it. It's not like I'm completely helpless, but I have no control over this. I need to participate and do my civic duty. It's an external circumstance that we need to deal with. If you've ever been in a car accident, sometimes people just respond calmly and they fully accept what's happened, and they exchange phone numbers and insurance and move their cars and off they go. And perhaps you've seen people in a car accident where someone jumps out and they're very angry. Or if you've ever been driving and someone in front of you or behind you goes into a rage about whatever's happening on the road, they're not accepting of what is. They're responding internally to the discomfort that the speed of traffic is going slower than they want, Or they're responding to an internal urgency because they left the house late and they want to get somewhere sooner. And so they're clearly not responding to something on the outside. They're responding internally. So that inner response is the other half of acceptance being okay with not liking how it is, but not disturbing your own peace. You can dislike the speed of traffic and get all kind of wound up emotionally, or you can dislike the speed of traffic and say, oh well, I guess we're moving slow today. Neither response will speed up traffic. There's zero things you can do. I mean, you could reroute your GPS and find another way around if it's there's an accident or something ahead, but for the most part, you're going somewhere and you're just going to have to go the speed of traffic. And I used to sit in my car and say, oh no, I'm going to be late. I'm going to be late. This is so terrible. Why am I going to be late? What did I leave late? Why is it like this? And I was just ruminate. I'd watch the clock and I'd watch the traffic and I'd start to get really upset. And I remember the exact moment when I realized there was nothing to be done but just drive. Pay attention to the road. Listen to some music. There was zero things that my thoughts were going to change. So we have the outer experiences and the inner experiences that we need to accept. And a lot of people have said to me, I don't want to accept that. That's not fair. That's an injustice. I can't accept that these things exist in the world. And so they're talking about discrimination or injustices, and acceptance has nothing to do with liking it. And it doesn't mean being passive about it. It means you accept that it exists so that you can deal with it as it is. I'm going to repeat that when you accept what is, then you can deal with what is. When we move into that spot of non-acceptance. Like it shouldn't be like this. This is wrong. Then we can't deal with what's happening because we're so wrapped up in our non-acceptance. We're navel gazing about what should be. Instead of figuring out how to deal with what is. There are some key aspects of acceptance. And they really are not complicated ideas. They require practice and observation of yourself and those aha Are moments like that moment in my early 20s when I realized being worried while I was driving was not going to change the situation, and I could arrive where I was going. I was driving home to see my parents when I was in college. I could arrive there worried and frustrated and gripping the wheel, or I could relax and enjoy. And the moment I recognized that I had a choice completely changed how I thought of my day to day just driving experience. And over time, I've applied that example in my life. It it fits. Once you have an example where you feel it, you can apply it over and over in different parts of your life. And I think because of that one moment, that's why I chose acceptance and commitment therapy as my theoretical orientation. It really resonates with what I know to be true. And I'm sure there's many things that you can think of where you accepted that something was happening and just felt better about it. So the first aspect of acceptance is distancing yourself from your thoughts and feelings. And in thinking about how to do that, it's called cognitive diffusion. And it means taking a step back from your thoughts and your feelings. For this one singular purpose, so that your thoughts and feelings do not control your actions. When your thoughts and your emotions in any given moment are driving the car, we can get into a lot of trouble. What's the alternative? You ask? Let me tell you, this is the second important aspect of acceptance. It's moving towards your value based actions. That means your values are driving the car. If you like to think of yourself as a compassionate person, then that is who should be driving your car. When you are faced with a frustration, how can you act on your values of compassion when things aren't going your way? If you have a flat tire and you react to your thoughts and feelings and you let those determine your actions, you might just sit there and say, oh, well, I guess I'm not going anywhere. What can I do? But your value of. Well, I gotta get myself to work. I better figure out how to get my tire fixed. I would like to go to work. I would like to get in the car and go to the grocery store. Whatever you're doing, you need to focus on the goal and your value of going where you're going. Acceptance encourages you to learn your feelings and your thoughts. Observe them, and just allow you to move towards actions that are more aligned with your values, not just the random thoughts that pop into your head. Okay. The third aspect of acceptance. It's not about liking or disliking. And I mentioned it a moment ago. When we get into a situation where we think, I can't accept that, I want to change it, and acceptance is a little bit different than kind of rolling over and accepting something has happened and you're not going to do anything about it. Acceptance means that you're dealing with what's happening, and that might be that it's time to go to a protest. It might be that it's time to write your senators. If you accept that there's something uncomfortable happening, then you can take action to get out of that situation. If we're pretending everything is fine, we can get into a lot of trouble. And that reminds me of a frog sitting in a pot of water doesn't complain, and slowly the water heats up slowly over time. And if the frog is not accepting that he needs to get out of the water, then bad things are going to happen. But accepting that the temperature is rising and we respond to that, we can take action that's appropriate. I want to remind you it's not about liking or disliking. It doesn't mean liking or agreeing with your thoughts or your feelings or what's happening. It's just about allowing whatever's happening internally to be present without judgment or resistance. The next aspect is just acknowledging and embracing those internal experiences. Acceptance involves recognizing all the thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations that we have. And finally, acceptance requires that we move towards psychological flexibility. And psychological flexibility means that you feel free to behave in any way, in any given circumstance, without a compulsion or a repetition, or just following old habits jumping to conclusions. So acceptance in this area is really helping you develop psychological flexibility. It pairs with being in the present moment, right? I accept right now I have to go down and be on jury duty, and it helps me act in a way that aligns with my values even when I'm experiencing some discomfort. There is another sneaky, insidious way that non-acceptance can creep into our lives. And it's the way that we talk to ourselves. You're familiar with the I'm not good enough story or the mean girl story. That story in our head, the voice that's very cruel. And it might seem like there are days when things are just not going your way, and you make it through the day. You handle so many challenges, and instead of feeling proud of yourself for overcoming these challenges, for dealing with what life threw in front of you, you may find yourself having thoughts like this. What a terrible day. I can't believe the day fell apart. I'm just disgusted at all the things that happened to me. Why do I have all of this misfortune? I try so hard. Nothing ever works out. Do any of these sound familiar? These are sneaky thoughts that we start to believe because we hear them over and over in our head, and our brain starts to think, oh, I've heard that one before. Must be true. The inner critic can be merciless. It can criticize your competence as a parent and employee, as a spouse, as a friend. Listen, everyone has bad days and life really does include a lot of difficulties. And much of life really is out of our hands. We can't control a lot, a lot of things. The idea of acceptance, though, lets you avoid falling into this sandpit of unhelpful emotions that follows a painful event or a stressful day, accepting reality exactly as it is, as imperfect as the day was, can move you towards feeling content and away from that level of distress. So at the end of the day, you're at home, the day's all done, your normally would be relaxing, and yet your mind is running a million miles a minute telling you what a terrible day you had. So not only did you have an uncomfortable, perhaps terrible day, you're now repeating it, rehashing it, and reliving it. So instead of accepting that the day happened, you're reliving the day. I hope that example gives you some clarity on how. Acceptance isn't about liking or not liking. Acceptance allows us to just deal with what is instead of doing things like ruminating. Acceptance is a way to help us regulate our emotions on the inside, and it's also a way for us to behave the way we want to behave on the outside. So if you've ever found yourself lashing out in frustration or raising your voice or rolling your eyes, that and then feeling guilty about it later or frustrated about it later, or even worse, continuing that negative emotion, carrying it with you throughout the day. The antidote to that kind of hostile action is acceptance of what is. I have many examples of things not going the way I wanted them to. Big and small. Now, if I pause for just a few moments, I can move towards acceptance and feel better almost immediately. I've talked about in the past my frustration with my own art, and I'll be engaged in making art and feeling so frustrated about it. And the moment I realize that I'm frustrated, I can take a step back and say, huh, look at you. You're doing the thing you want to do in alignment with your values, which is making art. And yet here you are feeling frustrated. Oh, you're having the thought doesn't look like you. You want it to look okay. Just listening to myself in those moments is so calming. It's the reason that we practice meditation is so that we can notice what's happening when we're feeling frustrated. If I'm taking good care of myself, I'm well slept. Exercising meditation every day, I can much more quickly move into that spot of oh, wait a minute, what's happening? Why am I frustrated? Whereas before I had a regular art and meditation practice, I think it took me a lot longer to notice when my thoughts were spinning. I want to give you a little summary of how acceptance can help you right this very moment. So if you just take a deep breath and notice whatever is happening, radical acceptance doesn't mean you approve of what's happening, doesn't mean you like your emotions, or it doesn't mean you like the traffic. It doesn't mean you like that maybe you had a bad experience in the past. Acceptance is not about giving up. It's not about sitting back and giving up. We never would say, well, oh well, why bother? Nothing I can do about a terrible injustice. We can always contribute. There is a 2019 meta analysis with cancer patients who are practicing acceptance, and when they engaged in acceptance based behavior, they had significantly less psychological distress while they were living with their cancer condition. And so the study looked at a lot of different research. And concluded that taking a compassionate, non-judgmental approach to the medical situation that they were in, as well as a compassionate approach to their emotions, just allowing their emotions to be there, whatever they were, whatever their thoughts were about their diagnosis. The the medical patients were practicing acceptance. And the research is pretty clear. These acceptance practices showed an improvement in the patient's personal experience of the quality of life that they had. They felt like their life had a better quality when they moved from a place of acceptance. So just remember, as long as our stress or sadness or frustration or grief happens and it always will, there's going to be plenty of opportunities for that. It gives us a chance to practice acceptance, and I want to encourage you to start practicing it in small ways. It's like muscle training. You work a little bit on your muscles every day and you get stronger and stronger. So if you're practicing acceptance throughout the day, it helps protect us from the bigger stresses or sadness. They don't seem as challenging. I wanted to give you one more research example. There was a 2021 meta analysis, and I've read similar studies that show this same thing. They researched a lot of different articles that were peer reviewed and studied, and what they found was that the focus on acceptance it had treatment has a more positive impact on people with depression than no treatment at all. That makes sense. But it also had a more positive impact than the treatment. As usual, the usual treatment for depression is a cognitive behavioral therapy in combination with medication. And so the people in this study, some had medication, but they all had the practice of acceptance and it had a a decrease in their depression symptoms. I'd like to invite you to consider your own acceptance practice. You can do it right now and look around the room you're in. And you can accept that this is the room you're in. You can accept that, um, you like this piece of artwork, or you can accept that there's a pile of books that needs to be put away. You can accept that. Maybe you see dust on the windowsill. Whatever you see can be accepted without judgment. Once we stop pretending that the windowsill doesn't need dusting, then we can take action and respond to it. So now have a quick internal scan. What emotions are you aware of? What vibrations are in your body, and just accepting that it exists without trying to control or alter or escape it in any way, just allowing it to be there. When we do that, our emotions will rise and fall dissipate in about 90s. You can practice acceptance anytime you want. So if you're walking on the street. And you see a piece of trash blowing across the road. Sometimes we just start thinking, well, that shouldn't be there. Who's the litter bug that's so terrible? Or you can say, oh, there's trash on their own. And then you can engage with it or not. If it's really windy, the trash is just blowing. Oh, well, if you're walking right by it and you can maybe you pick it up or maybe you don't pick it up. But the accepting that it's there without judgment, without trying to control, alter or escape your thoughts about it. It's allowed to be there without upsetting us. So see if you can find ten ways that you can practice acceptance today and make a little hash mark chart for yourself of every time you notice something happening, and just accepting that this is the truth. If your meal arrives cold, you can say, oh my meals cold and deal with that instead of say, this shouldn't be like this. Why is this like this? So if you approach it in a place of acceptance, you can figure out what to do. Oh, I need to heat my soup back up. Or I need to ask the server to bring me another soup versus getting upset and responding to our own upset. I hope you use these strategies of acceptance in a creative way. Wherever you find acceptance, I would love to hear from you. You can message me in the show notes. You know, I love to hear from everyone and just tell me some of the things that you're accepting today. It really does help to share with someone else what it is that you're trying to accept. So embrace your psychological flexibility, and we'll come to accept that this is the end of our episode. Have a wonderful rest of your week. Now that you know about how to use your creativity, what will you create? Want more? Subscribe to the Modern Creative Woman digital magazine. It's absolutely free and it comes out once a month. And I know you can get a lot out of the podcast and the digital magazine. Yet when you're ready to take it to the next level, I want you to know you have options inside the membership. And if you're interested in a private consultation, please feel free to book a call with me. Even if you just have some questions, go ahead and book a call. My contact is in the show notes and you can always message me on Instagram. Do come find me in the Modern Creative Woman on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest at @DrAmyBackos. If you like what you're hearing on the Modern Creative Woman podcast, I want to give you the scoop on how you can support the podcast. You can be an ambassador and share the podcast link with three of your friends. You can be a community supporter by leaving a five star review. If you think it's worth the five stars, and you can become a Gold Star supporter for as little as $3 a month. All those links are in the show notes. Remember to grab your free copy of the 21 Day Gratitude Challenge. The link is in the show notes and you can find it at Modern Creative Woman. Com. Have a wonderful week and I cannot wait to talk with you in the next episode.