By Lynn Ayoub | Staff Writer
We spend more than half of our lives wanting. Wanting to finish, wanting to be happy, and wanting a better future. We learn to pursue our dreams, to be optimistic, and to adapt to our surroundings. We learn that we should never accept the bad situation we are in. We learn how to get out of our problems and how to attain what we want. We know how to live in the past and how to live in the future, but we forget that all we have is the present, so we live our lives worrying about something we can’t control. We suppress what we’re living in the moment, push it down, and keep moving. We miss out on our life’s joys and sorrows and falsely convince ourselves that we can control what will happen in the future. To be able to tap into the present moments and rediscover freedom and peace, we need to radically accept what we are, where we are, and how we are. So, what is the art of radical acceptance, and how can it improve your life?
The theory of radical acceptance originates from Buddhism. In 1993, Marsha Linehan, the same psychologist who developed dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT), discovered that she herself had lost the ability to accept. She was trying to teach her clients the art of acceptance when it hit her, she can’t teach something she doesn’t have. This prompted her to go to a Buddhist ministry, where the basic message was to let go of your desires and radically accept everything at all times. She said that they were assigned a certain job every morning, and when the bell rang, they were instructed to leave the task they were working on regardless of their progress. Their goal was to finish their tasks on time; therefore, she had to abandon her ongoing task and move to the next one. It was a practice that relinquished your desires and forced you to radically accept it the way it is. According to Dr. Lira de la Rosa, a licensed psychologist, radical acceptance doesn’t mean that we are being passive or approving of what is happening; rather, it means that we radically accept that we are in a position where we feel pain and we can acknowledge and honor this pain. It’s rooted in the belief that when we observe unwanted experiences rather than reject them, we won’t feel the same level of shame and disappointment that we usually feel.
This concept comes from the idea that suffering does not come from pain but from our attachment to pain, we keep on holding onto something even though we know it’s hurting us because we don’t know how to let go. If you’re going through a bad period, that does not mean you’re a weak person. You mustn’t necessarily snap out of it and just focus on your future. You can live in the moment, feel the pain, and understand yourself. You don’t have to think about what happened in the past because it already did, whether you wanted it or not; you can just accept it as it is. “Radical acceptance is the process of letting go of the illusion of control and embracing a willingness to notice and accept things just as they are, without judgment,” says Rebecca Minor, a licensed psychotherapist.
You should learn that suppressing your lust because you are incapable of achieving it is not the way to go; you must radically accept that you want something that you don’t have, and it’s not a catastrophe. You don’t have high grades right now, that’s fine. You’re not with the person you love, no big deal. You don’t have the car or the job you’ve always wanted, it’s not the end of the world. Instead of drowning in what you want but can’t have, you should focus on radically accepting it because that will change you. To radically accept your situation doesn’t mean that you give up. You only have to accept the moment you’re currently in and the past, but you can try to change the upcoming moment. You can’t change something that you don’t accept. You must accept the reality you’re in, and if you want to change it, you can work on that, but to change something, you have to acknowledge and accept it first.
Radical acceptance won’t only teach you how to live in the moment. According to Minor and Dr. Lira de la Rosa, it can help you regulate your emotions better, learn better coping skills, and show you the capacity to stay within your window of tolerance, which is the ability to regulate your arousal level to match whatever situation you’re in. Moreover, this practice can improve your communication skills and your psychological well-being. It can also help you maintain healthier relationships with others, and most importantly, it will give you the ability to accept that life can be both painful and worth living. No tree in the forest wishes to change its position. Its full potential has been present in its core from the time it was a seed in the ground, it simply reached higher and higher, accepting itself and its circumstances. It adapts and grows in its own time while continuing its journey to the sun, trees don’t only offer the planet life-sustaining energy and nourishment, but they also provide us with a mirror, so why don’t we try mirroring trees while adapting their way of living?