The Superpower 95% of People Are Not Aware They Have
Are you a victim or are you a creator?
My baby always struggled with sleep.
He would resist sleep like crazy, and we he’d finally fall asleep I’d have to hold him for the whole nap, or else he’d wake up.
I’ve been nap-trapped for the first sixteen months of his life — with no exception.
Sixteen months, y’all.
No sleep in the carrier, no sleep in the car seat, no sleep with daddy, no sleep with nonna. Just me, and my arms.
To some moms, this would be a nightmare.
And it was to me too, at first. I fought it and fought it until I realized:
Resisting is pointless, I can only accept it and surrender to what it is.
The misunderstanding about acceptance
Most people think of acceptance as resignation, “giving up” — You win, I lose.
It’s nothing like that.
“Acceptance doesn’t, by any stretch of the imagination, mean passive resignation. Quite the opposite. It takes a huge amount of fortitude and motivation to accept what is — especially when you don’t like it — and then work wisely and effectively as best you possibly can with the circumstances you find yourself in and with the resources at your disposal, both inner and outer, to mitigate, heal, redirect, and change what can be changed.”
- Jon Kabat-Zinn
Acceptance means releasing inner resistance about something that you cannot change at that moment.
It means letting go of thoughts about it and refraining from creating a negative narrative in your head.
It’s hard work, but totally worth it.
Here comes our superpower
Accepting a situation for what it is and releasing any inner resistance to it is a huge relief and it allows us to adopt a new point of view.
Once we do that, we can change our perception of the situation so that we no longer perceive it as a problem.
As captain Jack Sparrow said — the problem is not the problem. The problem is your attitude about the problem.
And whereas you have no control over “the problem”, you have 100% control over “your attitude about the problem”.
Many people live their lives at the level of thought and don’t realize that we are much more than that.
We are conscious beings experiencing thoughts.
And this means that we have control over our thoughts and the narrative we hold about anything that happens around us.
We can change our perception of anything, by simply observing our thoughts and choosing a better alternative.
In some cases this means counterbalancing the negative thought with some positive thoughts, in others, it means reframing the narrative to give it a different meaning, and in others, it means linking the negative experience to something we enjoy. That’s what I did.
Once I realized I couldn’t escape my nap prison, I made myself comfortable in it.
I’d take a nice book with me, some snacks, and my phone. I watched four seasons of The Man In The High Castle and countless episodes of Start Trek this way.
Other times I’d use that time to meal plan, shop online, or even work at my future business.
I made it something to look forward to.
And guess what? Naptime became my favorite time of the day.
You are your own kryptonite
Some people get stuck in resisting a situation because they make up excuses like “I can’t do that”, “I’d do it if I could”, or “It’s unfair”.
This means living at the level of thought and neglecting our true power.
I had a million excuses to keep fighting my circumstances.
I had plenty of things to do, a household to run, meals to cook, cleanings to be done, pets to attend to, basic self-care needs, business duties, desire for intimacy with my partner, and so on and so forth — like every other mom on the planet.
There will always be a voice in your head telling you all the reasons why something’s unacceptable and you gotta keep fighting it.
Cultivate the ability to shut that voice down, or get curious about why you are struggling so much to surrender to acceptance.
“A feeling of aversion or attachment toward something is your clue that there’s work to be done.” — Ram Dass
Don’t fool yourself.
Thoughts don’t define who you are. It’s who you are that defines your thoughts. And you always have the ability to break free of the limits in your head and choose a different narrative.
That’s your superpower, don’t waste it.
