Why Acceptance is Freedom
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Let's get 512-580-9305. Today, we're going to be talking about acceptance. And that doesn't sound very sexy, but we're going to talk about what I believe is probably the main problem with the majority of people in the world, including myself. And this is something that I have been working on for a couple of years now. It has completely changed my

First off, the way I feel every single day. But second off, what I focus on in my journey of self-development. You know, I find in self-development, the journey of personal growth and transformation, it's filled with tools and strategies and books and routines and all of these things that you need to quote unquote do to fix yourself, right?

It's all about fixing yourself. For me, I would say the first 16, 17 years of me being into personal development was me trying to fix my problems or what I perceived as my problems. And I was trying to fix myself and I'm broken and I'm not perfect yet and I need to fix myself. And if I'm being honest, the most profound and transformative approach that I have found in 19 years now of working on myself is...

It is not something to do. It is more of a state of being. And so, you know, if you look at it, you're not a human doing, you're a human being. And the approach we're going to talk about is the practice of acceptance, which is already triggering to some people because you're like, yeah, but I want to change this thing. I hate this thing. I don't like this thing about her. I don't like this thing about him. I don't like this thing about myself. I don't like this thing about the world. It's this state of trying to get to radical acceptance.

And acceptance is the key to unlocking this feeling of freedom, of peace, of fulfillment. And now I get it. It's too basic. It's too easy. Like there's literally a part of me that's like, it's too basic.

And let me reframe that. It's not too easy. It's actually not very easy at all. But go with me and let me show you how this will help you have more peace in your life. You know, when you look at Michael J. Fox, who has Parkinson's disease, he says this quote that I love. He says, acceptance doesn't mean resignation. It means understanding that something is what it is and there's got to be a way through it.

Like, I love that because you're looking at somebody who could fight and say, I hate that I'm this way and I hate that I have this disease and I hate I have Parkinson's. But what he says is acceptance doesn't mean resignation. It means understanding that something is the way that it is and there's got to be a way through it. And so, you know, religious or not,

you can take this serenity prayer and you can kind of see it in here as well. So there's a serenity prayer. It says, God grant me the serenity to accept the things that I cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardships as a pathway of peace. And so really what's disturbing your peace is not the situation that you're in,

It's not. What's disturbing your peace is that you're resisting that reality is the way that it currently is. Do you get that? Let me say that again. What's disturbing your peace in this moment right now is not the situation of your life and the situation that you're in. What's disturbing your peace is that you are resisting that reality that you're currently in. And that resistance is what is causing you to be disturbing in your peace.

Do you see that? It doesn't mean that you don't change your circumstance or that you don't work to make your life better. You can and you definitely should, but it means that in order to do all of this, you must first accept it before you can change it. And if you accept it, at least you're at more peace while you're trying to change it versus being at some internal resistance or internal turmoil. It helps your mental health way more than you know.

And so when you understand the nature of acceptance, the first step towards embracing acceptance is understanding its true nature. It's my belief, and you can take this belief if you want to, or you can hate this belief. I'm completely cool with it. It's my belief that everything in this universe is absolutely perfect. Now, when I say that it's perfect, I do not mean that everything is as I want it to be.

There are many things in this world that are not the way that I want them to be. Many things that are happening in this world and happening in governments and happening to people that are not the way that I want them to be. But I accept that I am not intelligent enough to understand why things are the way that they are, but I do trust that it's all happening as it should right now. And then eventually it's all going to work its way out.

If I look back on my life for some sort of wisdom, there are many things that I did not want to happen how it happened. I didn't want my father to be an alcoholic. I didn't want him to go to jail multiple times when I was a kid. I didn't want him to get drunk and forget about me. I didn't want him to die. I didn't want to have to go through all the hardships of after him dying. I didn't want to have to go through all the hardships that I went through to get to where I am in life now.

But now that it's been 24 years since my dad passed away, I do see how everything was perfect. It wasn't what I wanted at the time. But now that I've gone 24 years since all that stuff happened, I can look and I can go, oh, I can now see the perfection in it. It's like they always say, you can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect the dots looking backwards.

right? I would not do what I do now. I wouldn't have the life that I have now had all of that stuff not happened to me. I would not have the strong desire to help people out of their suffering if I had not been in my state of suffering in my own mind. I would not be able to teach people how to get out of their suffering if I did not have to do it myself. You know, if you fast forward long enough, you can see how it all works out to be perfect, right?

The problem is we as humans, we think too much in the short term and we think that we're supposed to know how it should go. So if that's the case, not accepting reality as it is, is mental and emotional blockage. And these are the mental and emotional blockages in our lives that restrict this free flow of life.

Our past experiences and judgments and likes and dislikes all create this constricted version of ourselves that limits our ability to fully experience life as it is. And if you can't get past those blockages in what you want to actually happen in your lack of acceptance, you can't become the greatest version of yourself. You're only going to become the greatest version of your limited self. And so when you recognize that you're the one that's blocking

All of these different flows in your life because of this resistance here and this resistance and wanting it to be this way and thinking that it should be this way and being pissed off that they're not acting this way and being pissed off that that person didn't do what you wanted them to do. And we will be right back. This is a message from sponsor Intuit TurboTax. Taxes was getting frustrated by your forms. Now Taxes is uploading your forms with a snap and a TurboTax expert will do your taxes for you. One who's backed by the latest tech.

which cross-checks millions of data points for absolute accuracy, all of which makes it easy for you to get the most money back guaranteed. Get an expert now on TurboTax.com. Only available with TurboTax Live Full Service. See guaranteed details at TurboTax.com slash guarantees. And now back to the show. Then you have to recognize that all of these little blockages and you understand the impact that they have, all of them, if you just decide to accept them,

it's a little bit less weight on your shoulders. So all too often people, when I talk to them and they talk about their life experiences and what they're going through and things that are their hardships right now, it's almost like their body's in a straitjacket. Like they're just, their mental state is so tight that their body reacts to it. And you can see that they're just, they're just ready to burst at the seams.

But the problem is almost never the situation. The problem is almost always the way that we're thinking about the situation. There are many people in this world who have been through what you've gone through and what you might be going through that didn't have near as much stress and anxiety when they were going through it. And maybe they accepted it better. If they can accept it, can you accept it?

I want you to understand one of my favorite quotes comes from one of my first mentors when I was younger. And he said, the amount of stress and anxiety that you feel will be in direct proportion to how much you are resisting the way that the world is. Think about that quote for a second. There's so much wisdom to it. The amount of stress and anxiety that you feel will be in direct proportion to how much you're resisting the way that the world is.

You cannot change anything until you fully accept it first. And when you fully accept it, you can breathe a little bit easier. And so we've got to learn to accept the present moment. At this moment, the only thing that we ever have is a present moment. All of your past moments were once a present moment and all of your future moments that will come to you will be a present moment.

And yet we often find ourselves in this conflict of like what we want versus what we currently have and how we think things should be. And this conflict creates this resistance and this suffering within us. And so if we can practice more acceptance, acceptance of the present moment, we align ourselves with reality and we can actually start to work through it. And this alignment brings this really powerful

deep sense of peace. Like when you can really actually not think about accepting, but just feel, you know what? I'm just going to accept this. This isn't the way that I want it to be, but I'm going to accept it. And if I want to change it, I can change it. And when you do that, it brings this sense of peace because you're no longer fighting reality. You're kind of jumping into the stream and getting into alignment with reality.

So many people are just fighting reality right now versus accepting it, going with the flow of life and making a plan to change it and to take action. Fighting is what causes this internal tightness. It's like this mental straitjacket that you're in and it manifests in physical ailments and it can be soreness, it can be tightness, it can be your body at dis-ease. And so I want you to understand that.

You're an incredibly powerful being. Like you're way more powerful than you could possibly comprehend. I believe that humans are probably a million times more powerful than we actually think that we are. And when we use this mental and physical energy to resist, and we're resisting something that we can't change in this moment. But when we, like think about that, we're using so much mental and physical energy to resist what is. And when you do that, you're blocking and restricting everything

all of the stuff that you could create. And so what I want you to do is I want you to notice your mind's resistance sometimes. In the mind, it has all of these different patterns. It has all these different habits. It has all these different preferences. And it wants to restrict and resist change. And your brain might argue against the practice of acceptance. Oh, this isn't going to work. You don't want to accept it. He doesn't know what's going on in your life, though.

But it's essential to recognize that the resistance is just another pattern of the mind. And so you have to learn to challenge your thoughts. You know, in cognitive behavioral therapy, they teach to test the validity of your thoughts. If you have a thought come in, test the validity of it. If you're thinking negative, is there a chance that there might be a positive way of looking at this, but you're just not allowing yourself to see it? Is there a chance that you're focusing on

on getting data that you want to prove yourself right versus there actually might be some other scenarios. Your mind will find whatever you're searching for. And this is really important.

Your brain, I always say, is like cosmic Google. If you go online right now and go to Google and type in, is coffee bad for your eyesight? There is a ton of articles that say coffee is bad for your eyesight. If you go on Google and say, is coffee good for your eyesight? There's a ton of articles that say coffee is good for your eyesight. Which one's real? I don't know. But whatever you go in and you type into Google, you're going to find the answer to.

So if you go into your brain and type in how you're not good enough, how you're not smart enough, how you think the world should be different, you're going to find all of the reasons why everything should be different, why you should be pissed off about somebody doing that, or why you should be pissed off about the way the government is or the current state of the world, because that's what you're going into your mind and typing. But if you go into your mind and type, is there anything to be grateful for right now? Is it possible for me to accept and feel good in this moment, accepting my circumstances and

but then also deciding to myself, I will take action to change. Because what I'm talking about is not about just, once again, resigning to the way that the world is. What I'm talking about is how to feel more at peace right now in this moment. Most of us are not at peace because we are in constant battle with what we want reality to be. And what I like to do is just

Can you pretend that you're on the debate team and once you notice a thought that is not accepting, can you go on to the other side of the debate table and debate the opposite of what you're thinking? Reminding yourself how everything works out perfectly, how many times things were not what you wanted to be, but now that you're 10, 20 years, 30 years down the road, you can see, ah, the universe did make it perfect.

I usually think too much in the short term, but now that I'm looking more long-term, this makes sense. And the long-term might be longer than your lifetime. We might look at reality and say, this is not what I want it to be, but in 400 years, it might be exactly what it should be. Even though it's not what we want it to be, we can still accept in this moment. And so that's a challenge that I have for you today. Is it possible for you to embrace total acceptance? What would it look like

for you to just accept everything and let nothing piss you off. You know, if somebody cuts you off in the middle of the road,

Hey, okay, no big deal. Total acceptance. I don't need to honk. I don't need to try to run them off the road. I don't have to make them feel bad about themselves. They cut me off. No big deal. Someone decides to take the last croissant when you wanted that last croissant. Hey, no big deal. Total acceptance. Because what we're usually doing is we're usually fighting reality, aren't we? We're usually fighting it.

And so this strategy of just total acceptance is what would it look like for you to just totally accept everything just as a practice and see how it feels for the next 24 hours. If you hate it, you can write me an email about how much you hated it. But just try it out because acceptance is like a muscle. It gets stronger the more that you work at it. You just might have a very weak acceptance muscle right now. You might have a really, really strong resisting reality muscle right now.

And this means accepting all areas of your life if you're going to try it out. Your thoughts? Okay, I'm just going to accept my thoughts. My emotions? I'm going to accept them. My physical sensations? I'm going to accept them. The external circumstances? The way that I'm being treated at work? The fact that I just got fired from my job? I'm just going to accept it. And in that acceptance, because I'm not resisting and I'm not fighting reality, in that acceptance is just a little bit more peace.

And by doing so, you're allowing life to flow freely without all of these barriers of resistance. And this practice, if you can really start to master it, can become transformative in your life. And it can lead to a whole lot more peace and freedom. And now instead of fighting reality and fighting life, you're kind of in the flow of life. It's going to help your mental health, I promise you, more than you can possibly understand.

And once again, acceptance is not about being passive or just full-on silent resignation. It's about accepting this moment, feeling better in this moment, and in the future, still taking action towards creating the life that we want. It's more about personal freedom in this moment. It's more about peace in this moment. That's what it's about. And you accept this total acceptance and you accept the present moment

and you challenge the mind's resistance to it, then you can actually feel better in this moment than you've ever felt. And you can make a change in your future while still feeling good in this moment versus having to feel like shit while trying to change what your future looks like. And as we go on this journey of self-development, why don't we just try to accept a little bit more and realize that acceptance is the real key to true transformation.

So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on Instagram stories. Tag me in it, Rob Dial Jr., R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. Once again, if you want to get some inspirational and mindset strategies texted to you throughout the course of the week, text me right now, 512-580-9305. Once again, 512-580-9305. And once again, I'm going to leave you the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you, and I hope that you have an amazing day.