My thoughts today were dangling around what is it that makes life difficult and what is it that makes it easier. It is a situational conundrum but an interesting one. Many options come up in favor of both sides but then I realized that probably the one major problem which we all face and never even realize is the one that is always staring us in the face and yet we do not even realize or recognize it as a problem. Yes my dear friends – the problem of Acceptance
It is such a simple word but it is so difficult to execute it. Throughout our lives we fail to accept everything and anything that is not in congruence with our lives, our life goals, our pattern of thinking, our behavioral designs, our mental levels – in short, anything that does not fall into our expected pattern of life, we do not want to accept it.
Be it the mistakes made by you or your life plans going haywire due to certain factors, we do not want to accept it. We refuse to accept our mistakes, we refuse to accept relationships and people if they don’t fall in our yardstick of understanding as designed by us. We refuse quite simply anything that attempts to prove us wrong and show us the mirror because our ego and our superiority complex come to the fore each time.
For most of us, acceptance of something is like laying down your arms in a battle – akin to surrendering to the enemy and that is something we never want to do. Because our head size may be small but we all carry a king sized ego inside it. We would rather die than accept.
But unfortunately what we fail to realize is that the simple act of ACCEPTANCE can be a huge salvation for all of us. Rather than attempting to wage a useless battle which we know we will end up losing, we should rather let go of our ego and see the bigger picture. Acceptance can bring real peace to us because after accepting in true sense, we do not need to keep on fighting and waging the war continually. We can afford to let our guard down and let ourselves loose.
We all must accept that we will never be perfect
We all must accept that life will always be full of challenges
We all must accept that other people will continue to disappoint us sometimes
We all must accept that we ourselves are to blame for majority of our problems
We all must accept that problems are God’s way of testing us
Finally we all must accept that by accepting all these things, we are taking our first steps to permanent mental peace
Just like Sorry, Acceptance is the hardest thing to do.
But we must persist and we must keep trying because ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day’ and the art of acceptance is one which needs to be cultivated carefully with patience.
Good Luck,
Dr. Rajesh Mankani
