Genuine freedom

Acceptance will bring you genuine freedom. You cannot ever be truly free if you’re hiding from the reality of your life. That reality is always lurking in the corner of your awareness. The very best thing to do with it is to bring it out into the open, where you can deal with it once and for all. If you’ve ever tried to hide something about yourself from others, you know how miserable it can make you. Just think how much more confining it is when you try to hide something from yourself. Acceptance can free you from that miserable imprisonment and dread. It can free your attention and your strength to focus on moving positively ahead.

So just how do you achieve acceptance? One of the biggest stumbling blocks to acceptance is the assumption that it’s some kind of defeat or an admission of weakness. In reality, it is just the opposite. Acceptance is a sure sign of strength. Perhaps you are in your current situation as the result of poor choices you’ve made in the past. By acknowledging and accepting those poor choices and their consequences, you will immediately and powerfully raise yourself above them. Those poor choices may have been a sign of weakness. Yet admitting them and accepting their consequences is a sure sign of strength.

The way to achieve acceptance is by understanding that you are more than the mere conditions of your life. You are more than your bank account. You are more than your credit rating. You are more than your job title. You are more than your accomplishments. You are more than the car you drive or the house you live in or the grades on your report card. You are a special and unique person, not limited by your past disappointments or your present circumstances. Every circumstance in your life is something that you can accept with the confidence of knowing that it does not define you. You have the power to define who you are by the thoughts you think and the actions you take from this point forward. Yes, you are responsible for what you have done in the past and you are subject to the unavoidable consequences of your actions. That’s part of your reality. Yet even if you have created your own difficult circumstances as a result of poor judgment, those circumstances are merely things that you’re experiencing. They are apart from you and you have the power to make the very best of them whenever and however you choose to do so.