Category: Acceptance

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Acceptance Doubt Emotional Growth Life Lessons Meditation Perspective Stress

How is Your Patience Going? Want More?

So…

How is your patience?

If you are anything like me, then at times it is crap.

I was just talking to my partner – Ferry – about ‘having patience’ the other night, as we transit between our farm and our ‘main’ house, waiting for the sale of our ‘main’ house, before we finish building our other ‘main’ house on our farm.

I don’t like mortgages, so I need to exercise the ‘patience’ to wait for the sale of our house, which is dragging on, and on and on…

So I have spent intimate time face-to-face with the thing called patience of late and I – as always – want to figure out how I can do it better.

At first I thought you can’t ‘force’ patience.

As in, you can’t DO stuff to make ‘more’ patience.

Because it is more about surrendering, letting go, and stepping back.

BUT…

Then I sat with and went deeper to understand patience from all angles and this is what I came up with.

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Acceptance consciousness Emotional Growth Perspective

Struggling to Find Acceptance? Here’s a Solution.

WHEN YOU ARE STRUGGLING TO FIND “ACCEPTANCE”, HERE’S WHAT TO DO

I think we all realise that it is more spiritual, saintly or virtuous, to be able to ACCEPT that which is.

There is also a difference between knowing this ‘principle’ and actually trying to apply it to real life.

Especially when life can be pretty horrendous at times.

Or people can be so ‘bad’ at times.

We are forever hearing of terrible things (personally or collectively), and the idea of Acceptance (of these horrible things) is a pretty bitter pill to swallow.

Again, we might know that Acceptance is a higher path, but boy oh boy can it be friggin hard to get to at times!

And again there is a difference between telling ourselves we have accepted something in our lives, and ACTUALLY accepting it all the way down into our bones.

When we intellectually accept things (“Yes, I accept X”), often our emotions and behaviours just don’t get the ‘Memo’.

So…

What to do?

Continue reading “Struggling to Find Acceptance? Here’s a Solution.”
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Acceptance Choice Decision Making Life Lessons Perspective

Knowing Thyself is Not Enough, You Also Need to…

We have all heard the philosophical maxim, “Know Thyself” attributed to the Greek Temple of Apollo in Delphi.

It sounds pretty cool.

And it is a bloody great idea.

But there is a catch.

“Know Thyself” usually focuses our attention on the attainment of ‘knowledge‘.

Versus ‘Wisdom‘, which comes from knowledge AND experience (plus a healthy serving of consciousness).

So…

It is super awesome to know thyself, but it is even more awesome as to what you do (experience) with that knowledge.

And thus begins our story…

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Acceptance Emotional Feeling Growth Life Lessons Perspective

Don’t Do This…Unless You Love Rollercoasters

I am not sure of where you are at when it comes to roller coasters.

Occasionally, they can be fun.

Like once or twice a year (for me), but definitely not weekly.

Pass.

So I would like to (strongly) recommend you don’t make a habit of this.

Unless of course you love roller coasters, and especially the emotional kind…

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Acceptance Belief Honesty Personality Perspective Relationship

Lessons about Grief, Relationships and Family

I am once again perched on a table at my mum and dad’s place, drinking tea, and reflecting on what I have learned over this last couple of weeks.

For those that did not read my last newsletter article, I spoke about the passing of my father and all of the wonderful lessons he taught me over my life. Thank you for joining me, and getting to know my father a little along the way.

Today I wanted to continue with my observations of the experience we are all faced with at some point in our lives.

The passing of a family member or someone near and dear to us.

My first observation is there is definitely no ‘one size fits all’ when it comes to how we handle someone’s passing.

It really highlights the true uniqueness and differences in our life experience, compared to even our closest flesh and blood.

We all have different, and sometimes very different, lenses of perception.

We have different beliefs.

Different perspectives.

Different behaviours.

Different ways of expressing and processing our emotions.

Different past experiences (which shape how we view something new, but related).

On of the most important things we can bring to the grieving process, is a very clear acknowledgement that how I (as an individual) process my own experience, is likely to be VERY different from how someone else will deal with it.

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Acceptance Emotional Gratitude Growth Joy Perspective Relationship

Lessons My Dad Taught Me

I am back in Queensland (Australia) as I write this.

Sitting at a table out the back of mum and dad’s place, drinking a cup of tea, and reflecting on my dad and all the things he taught me.

Dad passed away peacefully in a beautiful palliative care hospital a little over a week ago, with family at his side, after having been ill for the last 6-months.

My life (particularly over the last 20 years) has been one of curiosity and deep observation of my relationship with life, so I might learn and grow, and share my lessons along the way.

As I reflect on my dad, I realise a lot of what makes me ‘me’, were great lessons passed on from my dad.

And although dad was a school teacher throughout his working life, it wasn’t through teaching verbally that I learned most from him. It was how he acted, behaved and showed up in life, where I learned my greatest lessons from dad.

I realised too, as I write this, that he not only ‘taught’ me a lot of life skills, but he taught and influenced 1000’s of teenagers (he was a high school manual arts teacher) over the 35 or so years he was teaching.

Nice one dad!

So let me share with you, what I feel are his greatest gifts and have most influenced the building of my character.

And before I get into my ‘list’, I was chuckling to myself, that dad never drank, smoked or swore, and on this one I might have gone a slightly different direction, and have the bumps and bruises to show for it. I never got into smoking, but I am not sure I can say the same for the other two.

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Acceptance Choice Emotional Fear Growth Pain

A “7th” Way We Make Life Harder Than It Needs to Be

You do know I could go all year on this topic.

And I am now committed to writing a short, compact book, on 18 ways we make life harder than it needs to be (and more easeful alternatives), which will be published by the end of the year.

But for now, we will keep the conversation going, which we started 2 weeks ago.

If you didn’t see the first list of 5, check it out here.

This week, we will continue the theme.

Essentially the theme is this:

By the choices we do or don’t make and the actions we do or don’t take, we make life much HARDER than it needs to be in the long-term and for a majority of our waking hours.

And for you, me and everyone on the planet, I think we could all do with less HARD and more PEACE.

Plus if we do hard, it is because we chose to, knowing the highly positive benefits at the back end.

So let the conversation continue…

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Acceptance Belief Choice consciousness Feeling Perspective

A 6th Way We Make Life Harder than It Needs to be

Since so many people enjoyed last weeks article, where I spoke out 5 ways we make life harder than it needs to be, I thought I would add to the list, while answering this question…

“How do we unintentionally (or accidentally) make life harder than it needs to be?”

I am a big fan of words like ease and grace.

Also I like a high return on investment, for the lowest expenditure of energy, time and resources.

I am always looking at how to improve things or make them easier and more impactful.

Life is hard enough as it is, so it makes a LOT of sense to not make it harder than it needs to be.

And given my work coaching for the last 15 years, I have had plenty of time to see people doing it tough, when they really don’t need to.

Plus I have seen how they are the ones – knowingly or unknowingly – making their own life hard.

It is most often not something “out there” which is causing pain, discomfort or disturbance in their lives, it is often something they are doing, because they are not aware of it, or don’t know better.

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Acceptance Choice Emotional Feeling Negative Emotions Personality Perspective Relationship

The Relationship Tip of All Relationship Tips

As we head into the Xmas season (as I am writing this), you are bound to bump up against people that “rub you up the wrong way”.

Would I be correct in saying?

Chances are; the more people you interact with, the higher likelihood you have of bumping into those special people in life who challenge you in every interaction.

There are some people that just trigger you.

With Xmas festivities coming, there is a high likelihood you will bump into them.

Or need to spend several days in their presence!!

(Moaning sound)

They might even be people who you truly love…

…but they frustrate the living beegeezus out of you!!

Want to know a secret?

9 times out of 10, the reason they trigger you is due to what I am about to share…

So get ready to get the antidote to this triggering event.

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Acceptance Choice consciousness Growth Life Lessons Perspective

How is Your Practice of Non-Attachment?

If you have read any books relating to Eastern philosophies, or yoga, or Buddhism, or even the Greek and Roman stoics; you are likely to have heard of the practice of ‘non-attachment.‘

Plus if you have followed me for awhile, you would have heard me slip it in – more than once.

WHY?

Because attachment is such a powerful force.

And because we are operating on autopilot (subconscious programs of the brain and autonomic system) well over 90% of the time, having more awareness of what we are, or are not attached to, is hugely beneficial.

And of course there is a very different outcome based on what you are attached to – i.e. sugar versus daily physical activity.

One is taking you two steps forward, and the other two steps back.

So it is not only the practice of non-attachment, but an awareness of what you might be attached to.

Is an attachment beneficial or detrimental to your physical and mental health?

That’s where we are going today.

Continue reading “How is Your Practice of Non-Attachment?”

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