Maybe acceptance isn't everything
Acceptance on repeat is probably what you've gotten used to from me over the past however many years you may have been following this newsletter.
Accept and things will change.
Accept not just so things will change, and they will change.
Acceptance of your emotions, other people, your body, yourself.
Well how about accept, and then choose?
I'll be the first to say that making new choices around my triggers often feels like a baby calf taking her first steps combined with a child throwing a tantrum in my mind. It's awkward, new, and I'm still the adult observing it all happen (in my own brain and body). The layers! Oh, the layers. Which means I get to make a choice.
What happens if you completely neglect a child and never listen to it? It will develop greater and greater patterns of explosive behaviors in order to get its need for attention met. An immature brain doesn't care if attention is good or bad; if good isn't an option, bad attention is still attention. And attention equals survival.
Or maybe the child will sell itself out, become "such a good baby!" by thrusting down its needs and elements of its personality in order to be favored with attention.
Or maybe, the kid withdraws altogether, becoming silent and shut down but still alive, a ghost in the background who "doesn't need any help." Since help was never an option.
Turning your attention inward is an important piece of the puzzle. It is still important to pay attention and accept.
And.
What about looking outward and moving forward?
It can really help to look around at the outside world when you're trying to get back on your feet.
Among the skepticism at the highlight reels that people show or the (rightly assumed) unrealistic view of a small slice of people's lives that you get to witness, there is also a lot of possibility in seeing what other people are experiencing.
If a person can go from "that's not possible. (emphasis on period.)" to "that's not possible for me", that's an improvement, because they have edged forward into the belief that something is possible, just not for them. It's dangerously close to believing that something is possible for them and just not happening! Which is on the way forward toward having the thing they observed in the first place.
So here's where I believe with my heart of hearts that acceptance of the ideas, feelings, thoughts, emotions, memories and people inside of us deserve to be met fully with our attention. And that doing so in even fractured moments of sinking in, allowing ourselves deeper, pausing, and taking a breath does in fact change us.
But I am also a strong believer in choice after doing more vivid experimenting with it myself before reporting here.
Once you've built your capacity for acceptance and love for what is, you want to apply it to your ability to choose what you want moving forward.
So what do you want?
I bet you get a fraction of the way into what it is before one of the voices you've accepted says, "NOT POSSIBLE! FEED ME MORE ACCEPTANCE!"
Ask me how I know lol.
And you could, turning again over and over again inward towards the voices that do not want you to change inside. And your outward change will be slow and distracted and numbed out. You will still change at least.
Immature voices also follow strong leaders.
The bird leading the flock isn't necessarily the most compassionate bird. It's the one that knows where it's going. (I have zero idea if bird psychology is like this but isn't that a neat and understandable analogy?)
Having a direction creates order, gives people jobs, and opens up new neural pathways like never before.
I'd say that the most common thing I say in sessions is,
"If your brain feels like it's exploding then we're getting somewhere."
Because I'm not interested in helping you do something that's already the norm for you. I help people discover new parts of themselves they've never accessed before. And sometimes that means going where they've never gone before forward.
Often it also means hip cramps.
So just like in mobility training, when I ask you to do something you might have absolutely zero idea how to fucking do the thing I'm asking for, because you've never been asked to use those muscles or try that idea out in your mind. And I will laugh and you'll cramp and short circuit for a moment and it's all a good time hahaha. But the attempt to reject what growth is happening is just a protective reflex coming from what you're used to.
Neurological confusion in the face of something new. But if you hang out there long enough, what was new eventually becomes what's normal. New abilities, new strength.
New "fuck you Sam, I can't do that."
New "really?" hahaha
I hope you enjoyed my continuous crossover between how I see the body and the mind doing the exact same things in different ways.
If you don't know and are confused, when I teach someone to access a new part of their hip they've never felt before, the body often responds with neurological confusion in the form of a cramp. If you understand that, you may avoid panicking about it and over time the new area becomes familiar to the system and you have more hip to use every day. (I have a hips course if you want it.)
In the acceptance phases of life coaching, cramping is like the feeling of being overwhelmed with emotion. There's nothing wrong or actually damaging with feeling it, it's just more than you're used to, but it may feel dangerous, and your body may respond with crying, rage, laughter, or the need to shit in order to release it.
In the growth phases of life coaching, you begin to venture outward into believing you can have what you thought you never could, and normally go through a few phases of fear and utter rejection of the idea as you slowly replace old thoughts with new ones until they become your normal way of thinking day to day. There's nothing dangerous about thinking that more is possible, except that it's not what you're used to and that's scary. So you'll try to reject it, and sometimes hard, before you break through it gradually.
Because new experiences are scary in some areas for everyone.
Does that make sense to you?
I'll be explaining how to become friends with your mind, your body, and your thoughts this Saturday at 12pm EST on Zoom. Join me. Registration ends at 2pm tomorrow (Friday)
Sam