“Accept, then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it.”
Eckhart Tolle
Once I acknowledged that I was struggling, I knew it was time to start accepting what was happening. This wasn’t easy. To accept what was happening, I needed to understand what exactly acceptance meant. The definition I was searching for was not the same as Webster’s Dictionary definition but rather the psychological aspect of acceptance. According to Psychologist Cheryl Gale, psychological acceptance is the process of embracing thoughts, emotions, and other internal experiences without judgment and without trying to change them. It was the judgment part that made this process much longer and harder for me to reach. I have always judged myself. I never felt like I was worth the effort to put into myself. I lacked self-love, self-confidence, and self-worth. There was nothing to accept. It wasn’t until after I started therapy that I began to understand that I was worth way more.
There is no time limit on how soon acceptance will become present. It depends on what you are working through. There will be many times that we will have to embrace acceptance throughout life. As we continue to learn and experience this stage, the feeling becomes familiar, and we can adapt when acceptance is present.
