Episode 23: Try Layering On Acceptance

Here's the truth:  There are gonna be a lot of things in your life that don’t turn out the way you would have liked.  And sorry to tell you this, but none of the tools I teach will prevent bad things from happening to you, give you the power to control other people, or prevent you from ever making mistakes.  What I CAN help you do is decide, when things don't go your way,  whether you end up wallowing in an experience or moving through it. Tune in to today's episode to discover the key ingredient that will help you make an emotional lasagna that ends up tasting great, rather than one that is moldy and makes you sick.  ;) 

Think New Thoughts Academy:

Check out our most recent workshop in the Think New Thoughts Academy, "How To Let Go Of A Grudge."  I'll show you how to layer on acceptance instead of resistance so you can start moving THROUGH your experiences instead of getting stuck wallowing in them. 

100 Thoughts for More Joy

Wanna think some new thoughts?  Here are 100 of my favorites that you can try out. Be warned, though. Choosing to really, truly believe even one of these thoughts could drastically impact the way you view yourself and others, and might completely change your life. :)

Full Transcript:

You're listening to the Think New Thoughts Podcast with Emily Ricks, episode number 23. Try layering on acceptance.

I'm Emily Ricks and this is Think New Thoughts, a life coaching podcast to help you find more joy in your relationships. In each episode, I'll share a simple idea that will help you see things in a new way so you can love God, your neighbor, and yourself more deeply than you ever have before. If you're ready to literally change your mind, I think you'll like it here.

Hello! I'm so glad you're here.

Here's the truth, my friend. There are going to be a lot of things in your life that don't turn out the way you would have liked. Maybe it will be because of the weather or an accident or someone else's choices.

Maybe it will be because of your own decisions that didn't lead to where you actually wanted to end up. And I'm just going to tell you right now that I don't have any magic strategy to prevent bad things from happening to you. And none of the tools I teach are going to help you be able to control other people or prevent yourself from ever making mistakes.

So sorry about that. What I can help you with, though, is when you get to that spot, that place of, oh man, that is not how I wanted that to go. You have a very important choice in that moment to layer on resistance or layer on acceptance to the situation.

And that decision will determine whether you end up wallowing in an experience or moving through it. So let's take a closer look at what wallowing looks like and what moving through an experience looks like. So you can really see the difference and ultimately decide which one you want.

There are three steps to wallowing in a situation. So step number one, something happens that you didn't want to happen and you feel some negative emotions. You might feel disappointed or sad.

You might feel regret about what you did or didn't do. You might feel hurt or betrayed or even heartbroken. And all of this is part of being a human.

We are going to experience certain types of physical and emotional pain in this life. That's the reality of it. If you want to wallow in an experience, then what you do is you layer on resistance to whatever you are experiencing.

This is step number two, resist your emotions. I don't want to feel these. Resist the reality of what has occurred.

This never should have happened. If only I had done this or that, I could have prevented it. That's what resistance sounds like.

And this resistance layers on additional suffering to a situation that's already unpleasant for you. So let's say you feel regret about something that happened. And then you're like, Oh, I hate this feeling.

This never should have happened. If I had just made a different choice, then I wouldn't be feeling regret right now. And this seems like a logical way to think of it, but do you see what it does? When you resist the regret and try not to feel it, then on top of regret, you layer on frustration and resistance and self pity.

And you get a whole emotional lasagna with layers of negative emotion. Or if you feel disappointed that something didn't go the way you wanted it to. And then you think, Oh, I'm so mad at this person for ruining the opportunity I was supposed to get.

They're awful and mean and selfish. Then you have disappointment as the base layer that you're experiencing in your body. And if you wallow in it and add resistance, then on top of that disappointment, you layer on anger and resentment and powerlessness.

I like to think of wallowing as making emotional lasagna with moldy cheese. We layer on more and more negative emotions, more and more moldy cheese, and it tastes super gross. And we feel pretty bad when we eat it.

So the key step, the moldy cheese is choosing to resist whatever is happening on the first layer. Resist the experience, resist your emotions, resist that other people have agency to have made the choices that they did. Resist that you are an imperfect human who also made choices and layer on as much blame and self pity and resentment and frustration about the whole thing as you possibly can.

That's what wallowing looks like. Something happened that isn't what you wanted. Then you resist everything about it and add layers of negative emotion.

And then step three of wallowing is to now replay the event over and over in your mind as often as you can. Decide that it's terrible and awful. It's the worst possible thing ever and replay it in your mind to prove to yourself that it's awful and that it never should have happened.

Wallowing is saying the same things about the same negative situation day after day. And as a result, you as a person stay pretty much wherever you are. Wallowing is like an emotional merry-go-round where you ride the same horse and listen to the same song over and over and over again.

And you're moving but not really going anywhere. And that's what happens when you layer on resistance to a situation. You end up wallowing in it.

And you can do that anytime you want when things don't go your way. So let's just review if that's the option you want to go with. Something happens you didn't want to happen.

That's step one. Step two, you resist everything about it and layer on more negative emotion. And then step three, you replay the event and complain about how awful it is again and again and again.

And if you like stagnation and eating moldy lasagna, then this is probably a great option for you. Let's take a look at layering on acceptance and how that leads to moving through a situation. Moving through a situation also has three steps.

Step one is exactly the same. Something happened that you didn't want to happen and you feel some negative emotions. Like, gosh, this isn't how I wanted this to go at all.

And maybe you feel sad or disappointed in yourself or betrayed. Or maybe you're experiencing physical pain as a result of whatever happened. This is the base layer of the lasagna.

And it's just part of being human. And we're not trying to change that part. We actually can't change that part.

So here's where we can choose to layer on acceptance. Step two, instead of resistance is we choose to accept the experience. Accept that you're feeling emotions that aren't particularly pleasant.

Accept the reality that this event occurred, even though you didn't want it to. Accept that you aren't actually powerful enough to prevent hardships. You're not powerful enough to control other people and you're not powerful enough to change the past.

And this is how life is designed. That's what acceptance sounds like. Even when you're suffering, you can choose to accept that being a human comes with pain and loss and disappointment rather than resisting it and saying it shouldn't be like this.

And this shouldn't have happened. Even when you're feeling betrayed or hurt or disappointed, you can choose to accept that this experience is part of your course curriculum in your life right now. This decision to layer acceptance onto your suffering will open the door to learning and growth and progress like resistance.

Acceptance also creates emotional lasagna that's layered, but it tastes good in the end, because if you choose to accept your pain and accept other people's choices and accept your own mistakes, then on top of disappointment or regret, you can layer on compassion for others and for yourself. You can layer on confidence in your capacity to get through this. You can layer on faith that God will somehow use this for good in your life, even if you can't see how yet.

When you choose to layer on acceptance, this is what is happening. This is what I'm feeling. I choose to experience this and not fight against it.

Then you layer on all sorts of other emotions to that original base layer, but there's no moldy cheese in this lasagna. It really is so amazing how the same base layer can become something that tastes terrible and makes you sick, or become something that tastes good and fills you up. Whether you choose to resist or accept is the determining factor.

Okay, so this is moving through an experience rather than wallowing. Something happens you didn't want, you feel negative emotion, and it doesn't feel great, but if you open up to it and let it in, then you can layer on compassion and patience and faith. When you mix suffering and regret and pain and disappointment together with compassion and faith and love and patience, then it starts to taste like joy.

So then step three of moving through an experience is you do replay the event in your mind for a time, but you don't replay it to prove how terrible it was. You replay it to extract value from it. You replay it to study what happened and see what you can learn.

You look back and find out, huh, how did I show up in this situation? What did I say and do? Did I face it with faith or fear? And if I came up against a situation like this in the future, how would I want to respond? This replaying of the event might circle around for a little while, but it's not a broken record. It's not a merry-go-round that gets you nowhere, where you just complain and suffer indefinitely. It's more like a research laboratory where you discover and learn and collect data and draw useful conclusions to guide your path forward.

Processing regret can help you align better with your values next time. Processing disappointment can help you establish boundaries for the future. Processing grief can help you heal and move forward.

Processing or moving through an experience is like watching a video of a past experience a few times and pausing the video as you watch so you can understand it better and then decide what lessons you want to take from it. So when things happen in your life that you didn't want to happen, you're going to experience pain and some discomfort and some struggle. That part will be true no matter what.

But from there, you get to choose in every experience if you want to layer on resistance or if you want to layer on acceptance. You get to choose if you want to wallow or move through, if you want to replay the negativity over and over and complain about how terrible it was and get nowhere, or if you want to extract value from the experience and take a compass from it that will guide you on your way forward. James says this.

This is the NIV. Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

Next time you're in a situation where things don't go the way you wanted them to, instead of resisting it all and making emotional lasagna with moldy cheese, try layering on acceptance and see what happens. For more help learning how to layer acceptance onto any situation, come check out the February workshop we just did in the Think New Thoughts Academy. It's called How to Let Go of a Grudge and if you want more progress and growth in your life, you're going to love it.

Learn more at emilyrigscoaching.com join and come start moving through your life experiences rather than wallowing in them. Thanks for joining me today. I'll talk to you next week.