The following quote from Eckhart Tolle highlights an important principle: “If you are not in the state of either acceptance, enjoyment, or enthusiasm, look closely and you will find that you are creating suffering for yourself and others.” It is worthwhile reflecting on this, especially in relation to things that need to be done, but that trigger resistance or outright negativity.
Choosing how you respond to a situation can mean the difference between feeling frustrated and stressed – the suffering Tolle refers to – and feeling calm and centred. The reason is that you enable yourself to, as a minimum, accept the situation for what it is rather than resist it.
Let’s take a mundane chore like washing your car as an example, the underlying assumption being that it has to be done now, you are the one that needs to do it and you don’t like doing it. If you can’t resign yourself to having to do this, washing the car becomes a negative experience and therefore doing it will cause you to lose energy. A shift in mindset, i.e. consciously making the decision to, at least, accept that you need to do it, will prevent that from happening. You probably won’t feel energized by it, but it will not drain you. It is the simple but very important difference between “having to and resisting it” and “accepting”. Taking it a step further would mean that you would find a way to enjoy the chore. When you consider why you don’t like washing your car, e.g. because you have to fit this in your already busy schedule, you can turn the chore into a pleasant experience by acknowledging that you need to do it one way or the other, i.e. accepting the situation, and then shifting your focus from the reasons why you don’t want to do it to the potential upsides. Upsides could be getting some exercise and fresh air and having some time to yourself to think.
When applied to stressful situation, the impact of changing your mindset in this way is significant. Actively accepting the situation neutralises the stress response: it turns the ‘threat’ that triggers the stress response and that can make you feel powerless and overwhelmed into something that you can and will manage. With lower cortisol levels you will be able to put things into perspective and act accordingly. An example to illustrate this could be the following. On a Friday afternoon you are instructed to deliver a complex piece of work by Monday, 9am. This situation triggers frustration and stress. You are frustrated because you were planning to have dinner with friends that evening and the instruction causes stress because of conflicting obligations: you promised your kids to go away for the weekend. Everyone that has ever dealt with this situation will be able to relate. Neutralising the situation by taking control looks like this. Step 1: make a deliberate decision to accept the situation for what it is. There is no downside: whether you accept it or not, you need to do the work anyway and therefore accepting this fact rather than resisting it means that you are taking control of the situation rather feeling victimised and overwhelmed as a result of your mental stress response (“why is this happening to me?”). Step 2: decide when you want to (not have to) do the work and how you will rearrange your existing plans and commitments. Step 3: inform the people affected by this as soon as possible: explain and be specific. While they may still be disappointed, they at least know what to expect and most likely they will understand.
By accepting the situation, you are turning a ‘having to’, something that you have to put up with and that you are suffering from, into an ‘accepting’, as a minimum, or maybe even a ‘wanting to’ if you can see the upside. You always have a choice.