Accepting the inevitable

Aurelian Victor Cotuna
Nov 1 · 4 min read

“You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming.”― Pablo Neruda

All external actions can be beneficial to us, even if they don’t look like that.

It is in our power to see the things through our lenses. Some things we perceive as good, others as bad and dangerous. It is far easier to talk about how the things should be. It is a different thing to accept them for what they actually are. It takes mental thoroughness, humility and a strong mindset to accept things for what they are.

Accepting the inevitable

In the mountains, pines have learnt that in order to survive the winter, in order to sustain the amount of ice and show that falls on their branches, they have to bend or break. Other trees did not learned this important lesson and when the snow falls and the weight on their branches increases, they snap and crack.

Photo by Osman Rana on Unsplash

Just like pines, we also need to learn to bend and accept things that are happening to us and there is nothing we can do about. Worrying about things that are out of our control is useless. In time, it can even harms us, both physically and mentally .

When we face a tough challenge, the first wise thing to do is to take a step back and think about what we can do about the situation. If we can find something to do, we should act, right there, without delay. If there is nothing we can do, we have a choice. We can either accept the thing or worry about it. Worrying about something causes stress and anxiety, making us tense. In time, this causes physical damage, like stomach pain, head aches and heart diseases.

Acceptance, on the other hand allows us to break free from stress and pressure. However, acceptance is not the same thing as giving up. It has nothing to do with action or inaction. We accept only the things that we can’t do anything about.

While we are driving, we have to accept the rules and the traffic signals. Imagine if someone we know would take traffic signs personally, getting upset about limitations, forbidden roads or no access ways. We would consider them insane, right? In our day by day life, we stumble upon the same things, but in different context. Life is telling us to come to a stop. We can’t argue or scare the problems away. A business decision that causes a loss, a friend or family member disappearing, a break-up are sometimes out of our control. We simply have to accept them and move forward.

When a doctor gives us an order, even if this is exactly opposite of what we want, what do we do? We accept it. We don’t have to enjoy the treatment, but delaying it will only delay the cure or make things worse.

Instead of worrying, when we have to deal with hard things, we can turn them all upside down and make sense of them. That’s the beauty of life, that we can see a bad thing as a tragedy or a challenge. Hard moments are there to harm us or to teach us. We just have to decide on the process.

Being robust and resilient enough to handle whatever occurs and also accepting the things that are outside of our control doesn’t make us indifferent, but wise.

Resilience in nature

When you lose money, do you get upset and stressed or learn from it and move forward?

Do you appreciate the small things in life, or you prefer big, important things?

Your turn

Through this article series called “Minutes Mindset,” I’m helping you build a solid mindset, writing my point of view on different subjects that we meet in our day by day life. I am a strong believer that once we can understand a subject, we can engage with the idea or refuse it altogether. Both ways are helping us grow and develop our own way of seeing the world.

If you like my work, clap on it, share it with your friends and follow me.

In the end, everything starts with us, with our mind, our self, and even our stories. We can choose to act or Not.

If your fitness trainer can help you get fit in the gym, I will help you get a fit Mindset. Let’s connect on Medium, Linkedin, Twitter and share some Ideas

Aurelian Victor Cotuna

Written by

#Mindset builder, high energy #IT #entrepreneur and #education disruptor. Daily mindset building project on Medium https://medium.com/@aurelianvictorcotun

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