“Acceptance and tolerance and forgiveness, those are life-altering lessons.” Jessica Lange.

After two years of managing to avoid catching Covid and having had all my vaccinations, sadly I tested positive for the virus last week and have done so for 10 days now. It’s a nasty virus, which has left me feeling quite washed out and has meant that I have had to stay at home and isolate.

For someone who is used to being quite busy and always on the go, this has been a challenge. However, I haven’t had much choice and I’ve just had to accept my position. To be honest, I haven’t had the energy or motivation to do very much anyway. I’ve just concentrated on resting and drinking lots of fluids.

When there are things that are out of our control and when we face uncertainty, it can lead to feelings of stress and anxiety. This can dash our attempts to create inner calm and peacefulness, which help us to cope with challenges. Whenever I feel a little anxious about things, I remind myself of the following quotation to help calm my anxiety levels:

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.”

The past few weeks have reminded me of the great value and power of acceptance. It’s a great quality to have and is useful in a variety of situations. It’s been useful to me in the situation that I’ve experienced recently. Acceptance helps us to remain calm in the face of adversity. Developing greater acceptance brings us more inner peace.

When we are accepting of something it helps us to manage our anxiety and stress levels. It means that we accept things as they are rather than as we would like them to be. This contributes to a calmer mind. It allows us to think of possibility and opportunity rather than looking to rewrite history.

Having a greater level of acceptance lets us live in the present moment and not be hindered by the past. We start to look for solutions to challenges rather than spending time wishing things were different.

Being more accepting of other people allows us to be in a state of non-judgement and bear no malice towards them. As a result, we have greater tolerance of other people’s views and opinions. We accept people as they are rather than how we would like them to be. We start to look at their strengths and qualities rather than their flaws and weaknesses.

We can apply this principle to ourselves too and become more accepting of who we are. We can develop pride in our qualities, our accomplishments and achievements. We can expand our appreciation of the value we bring to the world and the contribution we make.

Additionally, we can accept and use our natural gifts and talents rather than spend time and energy focusing on our weaknesses and what we lack. This also allows us to stop wasting time and energy comparing ourselves to others. As an alternative approach we can become more single minded and focused on our goals and desires.

As Reinhold Niebuhr says we can accept the way things are and what we cannot change. This allows us to let go of the things that we can’t control and change. This enables us to divert our focus onto changing and influencing the things that are within our sphere of control.

Finally, we can learn to accept gifts and compliments from others and be grateful for all that we have in life.  This will help us to develop an attitude of gratitude.

This week, why not take a few moments out to reflect and consider if you need to develop greater acceptance of situations and people in your life. As part of this reflection, I suggest that you get clear on what the benefits will be to you, if you develop greater acceptance in your life.

To arrange a free no obligation consultation, please contact Stephen Pauley via the contact form or by e mail: Stephen@befirstclass.co.uk