Needless to say I have a lot going on in my life. Surprisingly, I'm not feeling a lot of stress about it and I'm not feeling overwhelmed. My life is incredibly busy and I don't have a lot of time to myself to relax or blow off steam, but I'm okay. I've spent some time checking in with myself to make sure I'm not fooling myself into thinking I'm okay while I'm really ticking away, counting down to explosion and I am truly okay. So I wanted to understand where this peace of mind comes from in all of this chaos.
Some of the things I do are doing little things each day to connect to Spirit and to remind myself of the beauty of life. That certainly helps. I have friends who understand that I don't have a lot of time to spend with them, but they appreciate the time I can give them and they do what they can to help lighten my load, even if it's to go get coffee for me while I work away. I spend time being grateful for their love and support every day. I remind myself that this particular chaos is temporary and I'm always in touch with the fact that I am doing work that I love, both as a social work intern and as a research assistant, and I'm grateful for the opportunity to help in ways that matter to me and to other people.
It's easy to be grateful for the good things, so when difficult issues come up I've found that I've learned to accept them instead of fight against them. When things with clients become emotional or challenging I accept it and understand that it's going to be difficult but that I'm going to get through it. When the issue with my son came up I reminded myself that it wasn't about me and I accepted his emotional outburst and sought to understand instead of react. That was profound for both of us. No matter whether it's good or bad, I accept the situation as it is. I don't push it away, wish it was different, whine, or deny it. I take a deep breath and I say to myself, "Okay, this is what we're dealing with now." and I move forward. If there's something about the situation that can be changed then I do what I need to change it. If the situation can't be changed then I remind myself that it's temporary and I create a plan to move through the challenge effectively and thoroughly and it has made all the difference.
I think that things become more difficult when we fight against them, so accepting the situation is a way to move through it more gracefully and easily, with less resistance. That doesn't mean accepting an untenable situation and staying in it, though. Through accepting a situation as it is, it becomes possible then to see more clearly and with greater understanding. Accepting that something is unacceptable or unlivable allows us to see the choices we have to deal with the situation and if we are mindful and deliberate we can take the steps we need to make things different or better.
Acceptance can be a bit complicated. It requires an absence of judgement of the situation as good or bad and an absence of judgment of the people involved as good or bad. For example, while I might not like something that is going on, that doesn't mean I have to judge it as good or bad; it can just be. I might feel uncomfortable or unpleasant emotions, but that's my reaction to the situation, not the situation itself. My emotional reaction to the situation isn't even me, it's my reaction which is separate from me. So the first step is to get to a place where the situation just is and all of the feelings just are and none if it has to be good or bad it just is. Deciding what to do is the next step in the process, but that will have to be for later.
