We have this idea that acceptance means approval, that if we accept when something goes wrong—when a boundary is crossed, when someone disappoints us, when we get rejected—we’re saying it’s okay. When this is how we define acceptance, we avoid it; and when we avoid acceptance, we reject reality. We avoid processing our unmet expectations; we avoid the grief that comes with unmet expectations; and ultimately, we keep ourselves stuck ruminating on what should have been. When we don’t accept what is, we use up all our energy thinking about the reality we can’t control until there’s no brain space left to think about the reality we can control. We tend to fear that accepting the reality of a situation means accepting our powerlessness to it, but when we think about it differently, acceptance actually becomes the thing that gives us our power back. That’s why I want to share my new definition of acceptance with you. I hope this will help you reclaim your power when unmet expectations leave you feeling powerless. Can’t wait for you to listen!
We have this idea that acceptance means approval, that if we accept when something goes wrong—when a boundary is crossed, when someone disappoints us, when we get rejected—we’re saying it’s okay. When this is how we define acceptance, we avoid it; and when we avoid acceptance, we reject reality. We avoid processing our unmet expectations; we avoid the grief that comes with unmet expectations; and ultimately, we keep ourselves stuck ruminating on what should have been. When we don’t accept what is, we use up all our energy thinking about the reality we can’t control until there’s no brain space left to think about the reality we can control. We tend to fear that accepting the reality of a situation means accepting our powerlessness to it, but when we think about it differently, acceptance actually becomes the thing that gives us our power back. That’s why I want to share my new definition of acceptance with you. I hope this will help you reclaim your power when unmet expectations leave you feeling powerless. Can’t wait for you to listen!
You are listening to the X Good Girl podcast, episode 62. I want to talk about acceptance because I, the longer I coach, the more foundational I feel it is to have a definition of acceptance that really works for you and can help you move forward. Because of the pain that I see so many people, including myself, that we create when we don't have a definition of acceptance that works for us. This is something I've thought about, you know, for, for years and years. And, um, it's come up so often in conversations with clients. I just decided it's time and I'm going to use Um, an example of the relationship that I had with my mother in law, who has passed on. Oh, just got a little wave of grief there. Did not think that would happen. She was a wonderful woman. And I can say that I'm really proud of the relationship that we had when she passed, although it didn't start off that way. And so I'm going to use my, um, my relationship with her as, as the example. So. When we moved from Texas to Arizona, we intentionally moved close to my husband's parents and I had dreams of what it would be like to have my three children who were very young at the time they were in, you know, kindergarten and, um, pre K live next to their grandma. She was beautiful. She loved to bake cookies and, and, um, I had all of these grand visions of them walking to her house after school and spending lots of hours with them in her garden and baking cookies. And shortly after we moved here. It became apparent that while she didn't love them and she was interested in having a relationship with them, it did not match my expectation of what the grandfather grandmother relationship was going to be like. And so I spent a lot of time thinking that something had gone wrong. I was very confused about why, you know, she didn't want to spend the same amount of time with them that I thought we should have. And although, you know, this podcast could easily veer off into expectations, we're going to keep it on acceptance, even though there's a lot of relationship there. Because essentially what was happening in my mind was a mismatch between what I wanted and what. Was actually happening. And when this is the situation that we are in, it's very tempting as humans to think something like this should not be happening. This is not right. This is not how it was supposed to be. And that is exactly what my brain was doing. And it kept me spinning on all of the things that were not going the way that I wanted them to go all of the things that I wished were happening weren't and it all kind of culminated one day when I was pregnant with my fourth child and an OBGYN appointment, I was, um. Of quote unquote, advanced maternal age, which I think is bullshit, but whatever. And I needed, I had more appointments than I, than I normally had. And I asked my mother in law if she would watch my other children, my three children, while I went to the doctor and she responded back and I quote, that's the day I'm going to the art store. And I was very surprised. First of all, as a people pleaser, right? Side note, when other people aren't pleasing you the same way you work so hard to please everybody else, it can be very disorienting, uh, upsetting. And I remember looking at, I think it was a text that she sent me. That was the day I planned to go to the art store and thinking she's retired. She can go to the art store whenever she wants. And yet this is her response. That is the day that I plan to go to the art store and just thinking, huh, okay, this is what she is telling me. And she doesn't seem willing to move her appointment to accommodate me. Interesting. And it was the very first time I felt like I settled a little bit into what I have found to be the hopeful definition of acceptance. Just an acknowledgment that this is what is happening. So looking at the words from the text, that's the day I planned to go to the art store. That was the reality. I feel like so often we think acceptance is. Approval, like if I were to accept my mother in law's text, I would have approved of the fact that she was going to the art store rather than help me by babysitting my kids so I could go to the OB acceptance is not approval. In fact, I started to keep track of all of the different ways. That I had misunderstood acceptance and my clients were misunderstanding acceptance. We kept track of it on a little sticky note. And for years, every time there was a new word that would come up. As, as a, a non definition of acceptance, I would write it down. And my list grew pretty long and I want to share it with you. Acceptance is not approval. Acceptance is not permission. Acceptance is not agreeing. It is not enabling. It is not condoning. It is not endorsing. It is not supporting. It is not even giving your consent. When you accept something, you're not saying it's okay. You're not even saying you understand it. Acceptance does not mean that you ignore boundaries, that you're complacent. It doesn't mean that you like it, that you enjoy it, that you're wanting it. And acceptance doesn't even mean that you're not going to seek for a solution or change the situation. Acceptance is simply the acknowledgement of what is happening right now. It is as Byron Katie says, refusing to argue with reality. How does that feel when you hear that list? Is there some fighting or resistance there? If so, that's totally normal. And I'm not even asking you to change your definition if you don't want to. But what I'd like for you to consider is that when you think that acceptance is agreeing with something, then you have to go straight into arguing. If you think that acceptance is condoning a behavior that you don't like, then you have to go into fighting it. If you think that acceptance is somehow ignoring it. Or avoiding it, then you have to go into try and controlling it or talking about it or bringing it up when we don't accept something. That's when we go into the behaviors, like resisting and fighting and avoiding. Trying to deny or suppress or control. And that is what adds the extra layer of pain that I'm talking about. Let's go back to my example with my mother in law. Let's imagine that on that day when I had received the text, instead of that uh, Interesting response that I had, I had gone to my husband and I said, listen, you need to call your mom and convince her to go to the art store another day, because I've really got this important appointment and I don't have anyone else that can watch the kids. And right. If I had gone to him and tried to make him control the situation, that's the extra layer of pain. Now, I will fully admit that decades ago when that happened, I had a very different dynamic in my relationship with my husband and, um, things, things would be very different now, but I'm imagining as if this was happening in the past. So. When we go in, when we are in the lack of acceptance, when we are not accepting, that's when we create the extra layer of pain for ourselves. And I'm not saying that we need to accept immediately. Oftentimes there is grief. Grief is a very, very normal, in fact, essential thing that happens when we expect something and we don't receive it. I had expected. That when we lived close to my in laws, it would mean some help with my children. It would mean that we had close, you know, really connected ties where we spent a lot of time together. Now, did I check that expectation with anyone? No, I didn't. It was all in my head, but whenever there is an expectation that isn't satisfied, that isn't met. Of course, there's going to be grief there and when we can work through that as just grief, then we are able to often move on to solutions. But when we get stuck in resistance and fighting and controlling and denying that creates an extra layer of pain. So I was already in pain because. I, you know, had this situation with the doctor's appointment that didn't feel easily resolved. That was already uncomfortable. Layering my lack of acceptance of my mother in law's Response on top of it would have just made it more painful. Let me give you some other examples from clients that I have worked with in the past. I often work with people who are coming out as LGBTQ and they do not have ideal family responses to their beautiful desire to share themselves with their family. This is a place where there is a lot of very normal grief. They expect to be loved. They hope to be accepted, and they're not. And when a client gets stuck in resisting and fighting and avoiding their family's responses, it often keeps them stuck longer in the pain. They want to be accepted, and their lack of ability to accept, Oh, my family is not accepting me. That's what's happening here. It's so painful. It does not mean that they are endorsing their family's response. It does not mean that they're saying it's okay. It does not mean that they are not going to try and establish boundaries. And find a solution, but when it's not accepted and the churning of why is this happening? Why are they like this? Why can't they accept me? While it is very normal, it adds pain. I had a client whose husband had an affair. And while the affair had happened long before she started working with me, she kept going back to that should not have happened. He shouldn't have done that. This isn't how it was supposed to be. This isn't how I thought my marriage would look. This is not right. What he did was wrong. And all of the time and energy and effort that she spent mentally replaying all the events that led up to the affair, all of the things that she wished she would have done differently, all the things that she wished he would have done differently. It took a lot of energy and brain space. And time replaying, ruminating, wishing things had been different. And so when I asked her, do you think that if you accept what he did, what will that say about you? And she said, well, that means I'm saying it's okay that it happened. And I said, what if it's not? What if it doesn't mean at all that you approve or that you condone or endorse what he did, but you are simply saying. Yes, that is what happened. She broke down in tears because what she was using that lack of acceptance for was kind of a buffer against the grief that was there when she accepted, yeah, this is what he did. He had an affair with this, I think it was his high school sweetheart that he'd reconnected with on face on Facebook. Yeah, that is what had happened. But by allowing herself to just experience and feel the grief that she had been trying to hold back by not accepting what had happened, she was actually able to move forward. And that, I think, is the secret gift that acceptance offers us that we don't really focus on when all of our brain space and time and energy is spent replaying events. Ruminating on what we think should have been and isn't replaying all of the scenarios that we think should have had different. Outcomes in different circumstances, we can't really deal with the grief that is often there that we need to work through. So again, acceptance is not approval. It is not permission. It is not agreeing with what happened. It is not saying it is okay. It is simply an acknowledgement that this is what happened. And so often that opens the door to being able to process the grief or the other emotions that are there. Let's say that you planned a day and picnic at the park and it's raining acceptance would say, okay, it is raining. It sucks. It's shitty. I don't like it. But it is raining. So now what other options do we have when we are stuck in the resistance that takes up all of our energy and effort. And so often, that is exactly what keeps us. From finding a solution or changing the situation, as long as my client who experienced the negative reaction of her family, when she came out, as long as she is ruminating on what they should have done. She doesn't have the same brain space and energy, or she doesn't have that brain space and energy available to ask the question. Okay, now what do I want to do about this? What are my options? What boundaries might I need to put in place? To protect me and allow me to have the experience with this that I want to be having as long as my client's brain was caught up in regret and ruminating about all the situations that led to her husband's affair. That brain space was not available for her to think about how she wanted to change. The situation, her, her role in the marriage, possible boundaries, possible difficult conversations that she wanted to have. She couldn't do that as long as she was stuck in resisting and fighting what had happened. Sometimes it helps to answer the question. Like if you're, if you're stuck in thinking, this should not be happening. It does help to answer the question. Well, how was it supposed to be or what should be happening here? Because then it reveals your expectations that were not met. And we can have so much compassion for that. When you come out to your family. Your expectation and hope is that you are celebrated when you have a marriage to someone. Your expectation and hope is that they agreed and are true to whatever your definition of fidelity is inside that relationship. And we can have so much compassion for that because we do as humans have expectations about how things are going to go. And when they are not met, grief is a very, very natural, normal response. But when we get stuck in resistance, that's when we create that extra layer of pain. A second place where it's really helpful to have this definition of acceptance Is when we are having difficult conversations with people where we are trying to change the circumstances or we are trying to, to move the needle on behaviors that we don't like, or situations that we want to be different. I've talked a lot about a phrase. That I love. It makes sense. That makes sense that I offer to clients and people inside the stop people pleasing group coaching program when they're having a difficult conversation and someone comes back with an opinion or a point of view that. They disagree with but want to validate. And again, it's not the same as agreeing with it. It's not the same as endorsing that opinion. I have a client inside stop people pleasing right now. And we were having a conversation about. Um, a situation with her husband that she was, she was trying to shift the dynamic and, um, and the outcome that they were getting. And this is the text that she sent me, and she gave me permission to read this. She said, something else I have noticed when you first introduced the phrases, it makes sense that you feel that way. I understand why you feel that way, et cetera. I felt so much resistance as if I was validating their position. I was thinking in particular about my mother's political stance, but there has been a shift as I lean into the truth that I can see possible reasons she has for those beliefs. Or make up a plausible story since she cannot articulate what she believes it. And I'm not agreeing, but simply allowing her the room to be herself. I got really hung up on having to understand her choices, but that probably isn't ever going to happen. And that is exactly right. It doesn't mean we understand why someone else thinks the way they think. We can accept that is the way they are thinking. It doesn't mean that we condone the choices that someone else is making. It means these are the choices they're making. What I love about acceptance is that it transfers the power back to me. Once I can accept, okay. For example, with what this client said, all right, these are my mom's political leanings. Okay, I don't have to accept them to say, all right, mom, it makes sense that you would think that way. I understand how the following thoughts are working their way in their mind for to produce this particular religious, or excuse me, this particular political belief. Actually, let me just share a personal example, because this has helped me to accept a lot of the, um, the ways that my parents still think about me leaving the religious group that I was raised in, and. I've used the sentence, that makes sense, to validate that I can tell that they still have the particular religious beliefs that they, that we all were taught. When I say to them, that makes sense, what I'm saying is not that I believe the same thing you believe anymore, but I can see that you still believe it. And so when my mom invites me to religious activities, it doesn't upset me at all because I can see why she would. And when I can say, huh, okay, that makes sense, it transfers the power back to me to say, okay, now that that makes sense, I don't have to argue with it. I don't have to fight it. I don't even have to tell her that she shouldn't do it. I mean, I could, but I just choose not to. It doesn't matter that much to me. I don't have to control it. Now the ball is back in my court, given that that is what she thinks. And I can see why, what do I want to do about it? What are the options that I have for still maintaining my course of action or deciding on a course of action that I like for me? And that is the power of acceptance when you realize that it is not saying it's okay. It's not consenting. It's not saying that you're the other person just gets to do whatever they want to do. What it is saying is, okay, this is what is happening. I understand that it makes sense given the way this person's brain works. Now what do I want to do about it? It really allows you to get into seeking a solution, taking a look at your options. And making a decision about what you want, because acceptance frees us from having to judge the other person, from having to even understand them. There are things in this world that I do not understand, and I do not want to devote any time to understanding. And when I can just accept, then it puts me back in the position of power to decide, okay, given that this is what the situation is, what do I want to do? I hope that this is helpful for you. It has been absolutely transformational for me and for my clients. As always, I welcome your emails and your DMs. About this. If you have any questions, if you think I'm wrong, if you have some other words to add to my list, I would love to hear them in my email, Sarah at Sarah Fisk dot coach, or in my DMS, always thanks for listening. See you next week.