In this episode, you'll discover a mindset shift that can help you practice acceptance. Hey there, it's Michael. Welcome to whole again. A show about helping survivors of physical injury and trauma reclaim their strength and resilience through the wisdom of Kazuki on Fridays. I love sharing a microdose of wisdom with you to help you become whole again and step into the person you're becoming.
Well, like Wednesday's episode, I still have a bit of a frog in my throat. I'm still trying to recover from the cold I picked up from my dad as we try to help him become whole again. But as they say, the show must go on. And today I wanna share a bit more about acceptance with sharing a mindset shift that helped me in my recovery, and I hope it helps you as well.
But before I share it, I do wanna underscore something we addressed in Wednesday's episode. Acceptance is not about approval. It's not about liking the situation, it's also not about giving up and simply being okay with it. Rather, acceptance is simply facing what is We let it be, if you will. Without the extra calorie burn of pushing against reality or fighting it or resisting it, or all that judgment that comes along with things that we don't really like or don't want.
Let's take the weather. If it happens to be raining right now and you don't want it to be raining because you wanted to go outside and do whatever today. We can argue with Mother Earth all day long, but that's not going to change the fact that it's raining. We would be better served by accepting that it is raining and finding a poncho or an umbrella so we can be comfortable when we go outside.
So acceptance is not about being hunky dory with whatever situation we find ourselves in. During my recovery, my meditation teacher, or one of them, John Cabot Zinn, who created mindfulness based stress reduction, shared something with a class he was teaching. That shifted my perspective on acceptance, and it really helped my recovery, and it has a bit of a water theme, which I love because who doesn't love a good water analogy?
You might know that my blog post that comes out every Sunday is called the Ripple Effect. And all this ties nicely into what a former guest here on whole again, Joe Jacobi, Olympic Gold Medalist shares as he brings his world of kayaking into the business world. And what John shared is that you can't stop the waste, but you can learn how to surf.
So we can sit by the beach. Wish that the water was flat, but the waves keep coming. The waves represent the stress of our current moment, the stress of life today. The waves keep coming and if we try to fight them, if we try to resist the waves, think about the last time you were in the water. Well, the waves are more powerful than we are.
They're gonna topple us over. We're gonna fall down in the surf. But we can learn how to surf. We can learn how to get above the wave and enjoy it. And that's a good analogy to bring into life, but also one to bring into our recovery by accepting the fact that we can't stop the waves. We no longer fight them.
The action we take is that we start to learn how to surf and we can learn how to surf by practicing things like gratitude or mindfulness, or doing our daily practice of pausing, breathing, reflecting part of our PBR method acceptance allows us to see the water and see life, or to see our recovery as it is.
It moves our energy from, why me? Why is this happening to me? To what now? We move from that victim mentality of ior, from the adorable Whitney the Pooh, and into a mindset that has a few more possibilities. But here's the hard thing. 'cause there's always a hard thing with all this, I'm sorry to say, but that's the reality.
Acceptance isn't a one time decision, it's a daily practice. Like all of this, it's a moment by moment choice to stop fighting the waves or fighting whatever we feel is unpleasant. It may even be a moment by moment choice to stop fighting ourselves and to offer ourselves compassion. See what is, because we're not able to change what happened, but we can.
This is where we have power and there's power in acceptance. We can change how we relate to what happened, and that could make all the difference in your recovery.
As always, thank you for being here and thank you for being a fellow survivor. In this episode, you discovered a mindset shift that can help you practice acceptance following the advice of John Cabots. You can't stop the wave, but you can learn how to surf. Try this this week and see if it can help you.
Hang 10 with a little bit more ease and grace and equanimity, and let me know how it goes again. Thank you for being here, and thank you for being a fellow survivor
and if you wish to further enhance your digital health, I'll invite you to take my smartphone wellness check and you can access it through the link in the show notes, or you can visit my website, which is Michael O'Brien shift.com and it's absolutely free. And it will help you scroll less and live more.
And of course, I hope you'll join us here on whole again every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and discover how to heal, grow, and become more resilient and celebrate our scars as golden symbols of strength and resilience. Until then, remember, you can always come back to your breath. You've got this. And we've got you.
