Learning to Accept What Is

“Our resistance is triggered whenever we make ourselves, others, or the world wrong,” writes Debbie Ford in her book, The Secret of the Shadow: The Power of Owning Your Whole Story, an interesting resource for leaders who want to support their ability to deal with the inevitable ups and downs of their work lives (and personal lives for that matter).

“The internal belief that sets up our resistance says, ‘It shouldn’t be like this.’ We then spend all our energy trying to change the reality of our circumstances…Most of us believe that if we resist the unwanted conditions of our lives long enough or hard enough, they will go away. One thing I can promise you with absolute certainty is that resisting what is will never make it go away…

Anything we want to change, anything we’re afraid of, anything that we are angry about or refuse to accept will keep us glued to the past…Surrendering to what is requires us to soften our hearts…And we will take an important step toward taking responsibility for our lives and our happiness.”

On the same note, but related to our work with children, Ruth Wilson, in an Out of the Box Training Kit, “Honoring the Essential Self,” writes: “Once we’re rooted in our own identity and integrity, we can then look for ways to support both the social self and the essential self of the young children in our lives…An early childhood classroom might be compared to a flower garden. Each child is like an individual flower with its own unique expression of beauty…The healthy blossoming of each flower adds to the beauty of the whole.”

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