2020 was My Year of Radical Acceptance

My Year of Radical Acceptance…

Today I want to share with you about my year of acceptance in 2020. I started the year as I usually do, creating my word for the year. In 2020 (and 2021 and 2022) I chose acceptance (and how appropriate that was).

The quote I used to support me with my word was –

“Accept, then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it. Make it your friend and ally, not your enemy. This will miraculously transform your whole life.” ~ Eckhart Tolle

There were many up’s and downs throughout the year (as we all witnessed) and yes some days / weeks were easier than others. When I was challenged, I remembered my mindfulness and self-compassion practises. It also helped coming back to the 5 stages of acceptance from Christopher Germer.

The 5 Stages of Acceptance

In his book The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion: Freeing Yourself from Destructive Thoughts and Emotions, Germer shares his 5 stages of acceptance. The stages are –

1. Aversion – avoiding or resisting what is going on,
2. Curiosity – starting to turn to the discomfort with interest and curiosity,
3. Tolerance – safely enduring,
4. Allowing – letting the discomfort (feelings) come and go,
5. Friendship – seeing the value of all experiences and befriending your experiences of life (i.e. sitting down with the guest and listening to what the guest has to say).

It is important to note, this is not a linear process – it is dynamic. The stages are about learning to have a new relationship with life and the feelings/emotions and thoughts associated with it – moving from resistance to acceptance. As resistance creates suffering and acceptance alleviates it.

Throughout year, I experienced a deeper connection with nature and life as a whole. Life started to flow more, I developed a deeper sense of trust and faith. And this year, I sense I am dropping deeper in to that nature, which is part of the reason I have tweaked the Yearly Adventures to 28-Day Circles and then in 2023 they are now tweaked again to weekly circles (previously yearly courses were 2018 – Gratitude, 2019 – Self-Care and 2020 – Whole-Heartedly You).

My “Why?” Behind Tiny Tweaks…

When I first had the idea of Habits for Wellbeing, I was working in a National Mental Health and Wellbeing Project. I had just completed my first 10-day silent meditation retreat and got a very clear seeing about how and where I was holding back in my life as where I lost parts of my self.

If I use a metaphor, I felt like a caged bird. I thought that if I was fully myself and truly flew, I would be too much for people, so I stayed inside the cage. I learnt it was easier at the time to be “who I thought I was”, to stay quiet, almost invisible and under the radar. Until the day came, when the pressure became too much to bare any more inside the cage and I started making conscious changes.

I remember one of those changes like it was yesterday – the day I uttered the word “no” to my manager at the time. It was BIG for me. So big in fact, that I spent the next week in bed. As a “people pleaser“, I had a lot energy attached to the word “no”. The energy was a story I had learnt over time and consisted of thoughts, feelings and body sensations. For that story, I needed a week for the energy to untangle and come back in to my body and unify.

Since then, I have continued to show up and do the work for the many other stories I had learnt along my adventure of life. I have done this work with a number of mentors and coaches, whom I am deeply grateful for. Over time, I have found many places where I was giving my power away and not showing up as the real me.

And, still today, I continue to untangle from draining habits (as I am not perfect). I also continue to untangle from the places where I was not fully committed and engaged (i.e. the places where I wasn’t expressing and showing up authentically as me) to living a whole-heartedly connected life and the work will continue as I want to leave my legacy and live a full and meaningful life.

Ready to Reconnect to Your Own Power and Sovereignty Over Your Own Life?

Ready to reconnect to your power and BE the sovereign of your own life? Continually take the time to come back to you in as many moments as you can, so you can consciously decided the direction your life is going to take and live your purpose 🙂

Is it time to make tiny tweaks in your life over the next 11 months? Yes, truly show up and express your authentic, whole-hearted self to the world?

Over to You…

If this sounds like something you are interested in, you are invited to join us in Tiny Tweaks? Each day we move from knowing these things are important to taking action and BEing more of them.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” ~ Theodore Roosevelt, “the Man in the Arena”. Delivered at the Sorbonne (Paris) on April 23, 1910.