This popped into my Inbox this morning and, given the difficulties with family illness and moving house currently that some of you know about, it was rather timely, so I thought I’d share it.
RICK’S REFLECTION: ACCEPT DIFFICULTY
Sometimes things are difficult. Your legs are tired and you still have to stay on your feet another hour at work. You love a child who’s finding her independence through emotional distance from you. A long-term relationship could be losing its spark. It’s finals week in college. You’re trying to start a business and it’s struggling. You’ve got a chronic health problem or a disability. You’re being discriminated against or otherwise treated unjustly. The body ages, sags, and grows weary.
To observe that life contains unavoidable difficulty is not to minimize its impacts or to suggest that we should give up trying to make life better. But people – me included – add a lot of unnecessary frustration, anxiety, and self-criticism by resisting difficulty – often with an underlying attitude of “it shouldn’t be this way.”
Try the attitude of accepting difficulty instead of getting aggravated by it. It’s a lot more peaceful.
In the moment, start by acknowledging any stress, weariness, frustration, or pain. Open to the impact of whatever is difficult. Let the experience be whatever it is. Let it flow . . . flowing through you . . . and flowing on out the door.
Then step back. See if there is any resistance to things being difficult, and see if you can let it go. Notice that when you stop resisting a difficulty, it feels less difficult.
It’s OK that things are difficult. That’s part of what gives them their savor. Not all fulfilling experiences are grounded in some difficulty, but many are. Honor yourself for the hard things you’re dealing with. And be aware of the things that are not difficult in your life, including the things that do support you.
Difficulties come and go. Meanwhile, your own good qualities and the good things in life persist and remain.
Personally, I have accepted that life is pretty stressful at the moment and decided to practice the self-care that I am always preaching to you! I’ve cut down on work, am taking things easier, doing nice things and allowing myself to grieve, worry and feel things fully, where normally I would suppress them – which, as we know, can come back and bite you in the bum!
I hope if something in your life is difficult currently, you just accept it is what it is, don’t resist it and let it flow through as easily as it can. That seems to me to be a healthy way to deal with it anyway. Be kind to yourself x
This is so true. Check out Chloe Brotheridges podcast, Calmer You or something. she has a monk on recently talking about just this. Makes so much sense.
Thanks for that recommendation, Ruth; I’ll check her podcast out – not that I have time to listen to any of them lol!
Just what’s needed Micki, Thank you.