Are you practicing acceptance? Can you Accept Things as they are right now, this moment?

That is what mindfulness is trying to help us do; to align with our current experience, to stop resisting what is happening right now.

When we are lost in our thoughts and memories, planning and worrying, we are avoiding what is going on in our lives here and now.

Sometimes our thoughts and memories are pleasant, other times they are not.

We tend to attach to those we like, Holding onto them tightly and wanting to recreate those moments.

On the other hand, we try to escape those thoughts and situations that we don’t like. We try to change them rather than just letting them be.

When you accept things as they are, you are acknowledging your direct experience.  Your direct experience is life – not your thoughts.

Focus on right now. What can you embrace?
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When problems arise, we can reframe them as challenges – indicators of where we have room to Grow. What thoughts or labels are we holding on to that are holding us back from being happy?

We become happier when we can accept situations and people as they are.

Much of the time we subconsciously try to change people’s behaviour and our life situation to fit in with how we think it should be.  We hold views about how people should behave, what they should wear, what is going well in our life, where we need to get to etc.

By trying to make our lives and others’ conform with our view of the “ideal” person or situation, we are refusing to accept things as they are now.

What lesson is life trying to teach us at this moment?
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If we can accept what is happening right now, then we can grow.  We don’t even need to like what is going on.  Instead, we just pay attention to this moment, noticing what feelings and emotions are arising within us.

Becoming aware of our resistance to any particular situation or person is the first step towards accepting them.  If we sit in awareness, then our acceptance will slowly grow, and the problem we perceive will start to fade.

Rather than trying to squeeze life to fit in with our limited views, perhaps we can work on expanding ourselves to fill the life we have now.

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