How Acceptance Can Transform Your Life

June 30th, 2021

By Steve Taylor, Ph.D.

Guest writer for Wake Up World

Some time ago I wrote an article about acceptance, explaining how the act of accepting a situation can transform your state of mind. Often feelings of negativity are caused by an attitude of resistance. For example, about 15 years ago I began to suffer from tinnitus. Initially it caused me a great deal of discomfort—I couldn’t get used to the idea that there was a screaming noise in my ears which I couldn’t get away from. I tried to mask the tinnitus with background noise – at night, I tuned my radio to the white noise between stations. However, after a couple of years, I felt I had no option but to try to accept the tinnitus. It wasn’t going to go away; it was part of my reality now.

So one night I went to bed without white noise, and faced up to the noise in my head, with an attitude of acceptance. I decided to “welcome” the noise, to go towards it rather than try to push it away. And to my surprise, this attitude of acceptance had a transformational effect. The tinnitus began to seem less disturbing. It just became a neutral part of my reality. I can hear it as I write these words, but it doesn’t affect me.

I began to use this attitude of acceptance in other situations in my life. I used it when I was ill with a bad cold, feeling miserable. I realised that part of my misery was caused by my resistance to the situation. I became aware that I was thinking negative thoughts like, “I haven’t got time to be ill! I have deadlines to meet! I’ll have to take time off and my colleagues will resent me!” I made a mental switch to acceptance, and asked myself, “What’s really wrong with this situation? I’m lying down, resting, and as long as I allow myself to rest, I’ll get better soon. The deadlines can wait.” I gave myself to the reality of the situation, and paid full attention to the feelings inside my body, my sense of tiredness and discomfort. And immediately, the sense of resistance faded away, together with my feelings of negativity.

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Recommended articles by Steve Taylor, Ph.D:

• Hypnotic Healing: What is Responsible for the Placebo Effect and Hypnosis?
• Beyond Religion: Will Human Beings Ever Transcend the Need for Religions?
• The Transformational Effects of Bereavement
• Post-Traumatic Creativity: How Psychological Turmoil Can Unlock Our Creative Potential
• The Meaning of Life May Be Life Itself
• Spiritual Depression
• Do Psi Phenomena Exist? A Debate (Part One)
• Do Psi Phenomena Exist? The Debate Continues
• David Ditchfield’s Remarkable Near Death Experience

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