Category: Trust

Accepting what is

Acceptance, according to Buddhist principles, is the belief in accepting what is. Accepting life as it comes. Accepting one’s responsibility and action. Accepting one’s personality and qualities, both positive and negative. It is a concept that embraces karma as well as fate. It is a way of going with what is rather than resist and become distressed with what is not. It means surrendering control and power to the unforeseeable forces of nature and the universal laws of cause and effect. It can be an unfamiliar and challenging notion to practice if you have strong precedence to control your life. To begin accepting what is means letting go of the locus of control. Letting go of what you think you have control of in your life.

Acceptance is a concept of belief that recognises the validity of a thing or situation as it is. It is a conscious act with a positive intention for open-mindedness. It is to perceive something or a problem with a realistic view without judgement, assumption or supposition. In Psychology, acceptance is a catharsis, and it is a process of healing our cognition and emotion. But, if we can extend acceptance to all aspect of our lives and ourselves, we can come to a place of peace.

However, to accept something or someone, we need to understand ourselves implicitly. It means looking within to check our belief system, mindset, prejudices and judgement that we hold from our lived experiences. It is about observing our ethical and moral values. As social beings, humans are generally easily influenced, and our actions impact those around us. As we are influenced by others, we believe some of the things others say, especially those we idealised. As we accept those individuals, we are shaped by those in our environment in conformity. If something that we received differs from those we already believed, there will be an internal conflict. If we are stifled by others for our unique thinking, we may become a scapegoat or an outcast, which also causes inner dissonance.

To be able to accept what is, here are a few tips that I have tried and tested. They are the tools and strategies that work for me over the years in training and practising as a therapist. They may seem like common sense, but sometimes the simplest things are most effective.

“The greatest gift of enlightenment to give to anyone is to share it.” – Buddha.

Here are some helpful tips to accepting what is

  • Letting go of things (and people) that are unhelpful to you for the moment while you work through your processes and learning how to accept what is. This could mean walking away from a difficult situation without a resolution. It could also mean physically letting go of your attachment to those things and people, and you will need to be disciplined in sticking to your decision. I found it most challenging to let of an unhealthy friendship. Even with positive intention, you cannot control the reaction that will be present in the other when they feel rejected as you let go of the relationship.
  • Recognise that you can change the thing that you can and cannot change the thing that you cannot. This is about realising what is within your control and boundary. You can change your behaviours and your actions, but you cannot change those in others.
  • Acknowledge the loss of letting go. When you consciously acknowledge something, you have an understanding of it happening, even if you have a belief around it. You might believe that you needed some space to work through an emotional reaction to something that a friend has said. As you let go of the relationship to process your response, you will experience a loss. The loss needs to be processed, and by giving yourself time, you are working through forgiving your grief.
  • Find your pleasure and soothe yourself in the learning process and in the grief. We often take self-care for granted, but it is now one of my favourites. Finding what makes you happy and joyous is a way to appreciate ourselves. You can easily build a self-care ritual into your daily routine. The trick is to find that joy. In the learning process, you can explore what makes you smile. In the grieving process, you can find what will comfort those tears. In the anxieties of facing the unresolved situation, you might discover that mindfulness help. Use your inner healer or go on an inner vacation with these meditations.
  • See, feel and know that it is not personal. Set your intentions to honestly look at the situation. Feel and experience the tension so that you can learn from it. Acknowledge what happened has a reason, even if this reasoning is not yet clear to you. Even if you suspect ill-intention from others, you can say to yourself internally that this too shall pass. You cannot change the way other feels. You can only change your perception.
  • Adopt a self-forgiveness policy. Forgiveness is a process or action that pardon someone, something or ourselves. It can be difficult, but with practice, you can learn it too. Forgiveness is about removing the blame from the other, including yourself. It is about having compassion for your action, response and those of others too. Forgiveness works well with love and understanding in conjunction with a compassionate mind.
  • Surrender. When you stop resisting, you will become receptive to the situation, a thing and people. To surrender means to let go and submit to what is. This is not the same as giving up, however. When you surrender to what is, you are opening up to spirituality and faith. This is a soulful experience of relinquishing control and trusting in life and the universe. The intention is to release the embodied experience and free the spirit to the constraint of the existential dilemma. It is similar to letting to, but you are doing it at the soul level. Try meditation and work on developing trust.

Accepting what is is a personal challenge that I sometimes struggle with because mistakes happen in the reality of a situation, especially in a relationship. It is an ongoing process, and one should not place emphasis on achieving and then forgetting it. It is not about ticking the box, and you are done with it. But, the more you practice and adopt this way of being, the more familiar you will become with accepting things, situation, people, life and yourself.

“Peace comes from within. Do not resist it.” – Buddha.

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Who can you trust – if not yourself

Trust reliably builds self-confidence, self-esteem physically and emotionally-how well do you trust yourself?

Trust is a process that builds relationships, whether that is with oneself, with others or with the world. It is the ability and willingness to risk being vulnerable. It is the proposition that depends on equality and respect. It is undeniably rewarding, altruistically and self-serving.

There are three distinct types of trust; Physically, Psychologically and Emotionally.

Physical trust is having the presence of another who were reliably present. Physically being there for you during your time of needs. This person will catch you when you fall, literally.

Psychological trust is a deep mental construct build in early childhood. Depending on your experiences in the early environment, this process may be arrested or undeveloped. Thus, you grow up to become a distrustful person, distrusting yourself and your abilities, distrusting others and their competencies and distrusting the world and its hostility.

Emotional trust is having confidence in yourself and another. It is the feeling that builds a bond in relationships. It is you decide that you can be emotionally available and trust in the other person to hold your vulnerability in their hand, without judgement, without intervention without restriction.

How well do you trust depends upon many factors. It is something that you learn, nurture and develop. It forms a set of behaviours and personality traits. It is also a belief with you hold as values and it determined your interaction with an individual. It is a sense of security within the relationship or process. It is dynamic and engaging. It is both benevolence and integral to all relationship within oneself, with others and with the world. If you have trust in yourself, in another and in the world, predictably, there will be cognizant.

“Trust takes years to build, seconds to break, and forever to repair.” – Unknown.

If not, fear not, you can learn to nurture and develop trust within yourself, with others and with the world. You would have to begin trusting yourself first. Here are some helpful tips to get started;

    • Honesty. You will need to be honest and reliable with your needs and desires. If you promised yourself a break from a hard day’s work, you would need to carry out the promise that you’ve made. Small acts of successes will result in optimism toward self-trust.

“Trust starts wtih the truth and ends with the truth.” – Santosh Kalwar

  • Reframing self-belief. You need to have the self-belief that you will do something for yourself. If you plan to take a new hobby, you need to follow through.
  • Discredits insecurities and mistrust. You will need to address and disregard any insecurities and mistrust within yourself first. As you work through your own insecurities and mistrust, you will find that you naturally will expand your perceptions to opening up to trusting others and the world.
  • Address psychological and emotional impact on trust. You need to address the psychological and emotional disposition to trust or mistrust. Do you trust being yourself, even if you made mistakes saying the wrong thing or doing the wrong thing? Do you allow yourself to be vulnerable? Do you believe that you can achieve anything you set your mind to? If you get jealous of your partner talking to someone else, you need to address the emotional and psychological impact of your feelings.
  • Openness. You need to be opened to failures without criticism and negative self-talk. A trusting relationship is an openness towards ourselves and each other. Are you an open or close book?
  • Be patient. Trust takes time to mature and grow. It is through time that you will feel the benefits of trust within yourself, with others and the world.

“Trust takes years to build, seconds to break, and forever to repair.” – Unknown.

Do you find this blog helpful? If you like this post, I love to hear from you on my Twitter Page.