The miracle of Acceptance

I once read the story of a girl named Annemarie Postma. She was 11 when for no clear reason she lost the ability to walk and ended up in a wheelchair.
Friends, family and medics left no stone unturned to help Annemarie to learn to walk again. She spent the next 5 years of her life in revalidation homes.

Then one day a realization awakened within Annemarie. She asked herself a question that strangely enough no one else had asked her before: Do I want to walk again?
No-one had even considered the possibility of just accepting the fact that Annemarie could not walk anymore. Years of her life were spent fighting against her disability and no-one had considered the possibility of just being “ok” with the situation.

Giving it some good thought Annemarie realized that walking wasn’t that important to her at all. She realized that she didn’t need to walk to have a fulfilling life.
I admire Annemarie for having the strength and the clarity of mind to come to this conclusion. Can you imagine the reactions of people in her surrounding?
Can you also imagine the impact that this decision had on her life?
No more constant revalidation. No more struggle to achieve something that started to seem impossible. Just go with the flow and allow yourself to focus on things that you can do.

Note: Annemarie is now 37 and has recently written her 6th book called "The Deeper Secret". In this book Annemarie reveals, what she calles "The missing link in the Law of Attraction" in the form of "The Twelve Laws of Creation". I have not read it yet, but it is on my wishlist. (To order on Amazon, click here).

Acceptance in your daily life
Acceptance can have that kind of an impact on your life too. It might sometimes be tough to reach that state, but when you do, success is guaranteed.

“Nothing that you have accepted for a 100% can ever hurt you again.”

Name anything…. it only hurts when you have not accepted. An advanced example of acceptance is Annemarie’s story, but there are throughout the day many, many little changes of making your life easier by “simply” accepting it.

I have put the word “simple” between quotes because acceptance can sometimes be a challenging thing to do. You need to be clear what you want. You need to consciously choose acceptance.
In order to make that choice it is very helpful to first get your options clear, the negative one also.
You need to create a clear vision of each of your options and realize which option gives you the most benefit. You might even like to use pen and paper for that.
When checking out your options make sure that you clearly understand what the non-acceptance option will bring you also. That way you will be more motivated to not choose that one. Also be aware of the signs of non-acceptance so you can catch them and turn them around into a more allowing version.
Lets take another acceptance example:

Acceptance in traffic jam
Few days ago I paid a visit to the doctor in my lunch break. I didn’t tell my boss because I counted on being back in time. But…. on the way back I got caught in traffic jam.  My first reaction was feeling upset: “Noooo not now! I will come late at work. My boss might ask me difficult questions about it. This is not the moment for traffic jam! I canno….. “

This is where I realized that I was getting upset. Cool, sooo good to catch an upset as early as possible. Time to take a good look at the situation and my options.

Why am I getting upset?
I am stuck in traffic jam which might get me late for work.

What are my options?
(There is no other route to my work so avoiding the traffic jam is sadly not one of my options.)
I can drive close to the guy in front of me, pushing him to move faster. In the mean time I can imagine all kinds of scenarios of how my boss will catch me and scold me. I can occasionally squeeze myself one place forward in the lineup, which could save me in total perhaps a full minute of time….. if I’m lucky. And I can sit close to my steering wheel, so at least I’ll be 10 centimeter closer to reaching my destination.

Or…. I can accept whatever is and may come and make the best of this moment. I can turn on some nice music, sit back relaxed in my seat and think of the next article that I want to write. Since the traffic is sooo slow I’ll even be able to make some notes (don’t tell the cops).
You know what? I’ll even send my sweetheart a loving sms.

Which option gives the best results?
I think the answer to this question is clear already. Usually when you give it a good thought it becomes very clear that acceptance and a positive attitude will gain you much more than it’s resisting and rebelling opposite.

In my case, I choose (of course) option 2. I arrived too late at my work, but my boss didn’t notice. As a bonus I had a nice article half ready to be written. I felt inspired and uplifted and was ready to give my work the best of my attention.
And even if my boss would have noticed me coming late and scolded me I would have realized that the same thing would have happened when choosing option 1.

Also, when taking the “law of attraction” into account, you should realize that option 1 creates a negative energy that will attract more of itself to it. Whereas the energy of option 2 is so much more positive and light.
From this point of view, the chance that your boss is going to scold you is greater with option 1 then with option 2.

The step before acceptance
There is however another step that might come before acceptance. This step is “action”. I am not implying that you should from here on just non-stop accept whatever comes on your way.
You have to weigh your options and choose the best one. Often, the best option includes taking some kind of action.

Lets say, your dog gets ill. I hope one of the options you will see in this scenario is “calling the vet”. You are not supposed to let life just glide by and watch it like a movie, not participating in it.
When your dog gets ill and you find your best option to be “calling the vet” then take that action. When the vet informs you that he can only see your dog an hour from now then it might be a good time to swap to acceptance again.

For the next hour, be sweet to your doggie, but don’t get all worked up about the fact that the vet didn’t have time when you needed him. Accept it. Also realize that other people always do the best they can from their abilities and their situation and their upbringing.
Even Osama Bin Laden did the best he could, even though it caused so many people great pain. If you could live his life and know everything about him, you would understand (I am taking Osama as a random example, this implies on everyone).
The moment you understand someone’s actions, you are on the verge of accepting and no longer being hurt by it.

To go back to your sick dog, you might feel terribly worried in that hour, afraid to lose your dog. Acceptance can help here. While you keep trying to save your dog, you can, at the same time, accept the fact that he might die. Just take a moment to look at your greatest fear in that moment: My dog might die. Then realize that you will be happy again one day, even if your dog dies. Think of all the other people who found happiness after their dog died (even though their dog wasn’t as special as yours). You can do it and you will do it when it really comes to it.

This might be a though one but to accept the wurse-case-scenario and know that you will live on is a sure worry killer.

The step after acceptance (advanced)
You can even go another step further after acceptation, though the acceptation might have given you enough relieve and left you satisfied (enough) in the moment.
For those, however, who wish to get every drop of joy out of life that is available, you could consider “loving-it”.

When I lived in India and had to register my marriage I soon accepted that in India this can be a process of weeks or months. For months I spent several hours a week in the hot and dirty cityhall, where around 90 percent was male and around 0 percent was foreigner.
Often the officers would not speak my language and my Hindi is on the level of a 1 year old kiddo.
I could have had a horror-time there, but I found a perfect balance between acceptance and persistence.

I accepted all the eying guys, the (more then) dirty loo’s, the endless waiting and the everlasting sweaty heat. Then I started to enjoy parts of it. I started to see the whole process as a game of chess. Depending on how I moved my pieces, others would move their pieces. I figured out a way to deal with all types of officers. Some could be impressed by this foreigner demanding her rights. Others would cooperate more when I would show them my Indian side. They could appreciate me wearing Indian clothes and speaking few words of Hindi could make them melt.

Can you imagine the adventure in the whole process? I really got to enjoy it, while accepting the fact that it took almost all the leaves that my boss would provide me. No holiday for me, I was spending my free time playing “real life chess” at the Indian city hall.
I made friends in higher and lower positions and I learned the Indian “Hindu marriage act” by heart. No Indian could fool me there. I was my own lawyer and felt strong in that position.
After around 4 months I got my marriage registered and felt on top of the world.

Now looking back, I can say that I loved the whole process. No matter how tough it was at times, I would not have wanted to miss it.
I enjoyed the challenge and grew stronger through it.

Going back to my earlier example of the traffic jam, I could also go beyond acceptance and enjoy the extra long break that I was being offered. Or I could have focused more on the inspiration for the writing of the article that I was writing.
In fact, my other article called “Enjoy the small stuff” could be very helpful when trying to move from acceptance to loving-it.
Every moment of the day there are joy-opportunities all around us. Just learn to catch them, focus and start “loving-it”.

To complete this article lets sum up the steps from disturbance to loving-it

-Recognize that you are feeling disturbed/upset.
-Make clear what it is that disturbs you.
-Discover and describe your options (also the negative one, just to make clear why you wont choose it)
-Choose your best option.
-If needed take action.
-Accept the situation as it is. Focus on the option you have chosen. Find the best in the situation you are in.
-Focus more and more on the good aspects of your situation to move to “loving-it”.

Wishing you a wonderful time. Let me know of any questions or share your experiences by using the comment button below.

Elisa ( Twitter-alias: Elisa_507 )

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