Acceptance and the Unforced Rhythms Of Grace
Most people experience a variety of ups and downs along their life path. Unfortunately, the way we are wired cognitively, the downs affects us more than the ups. For most of us, this asymmetry creates a downward spiral. Our ego develops a “why me?” attitude and whines about anything “bad” that happens, or that it does not what to do.
There’s a substantial body of self-help/spiritual guidance that advises you to park your ego and let go of trying to control the things you can’t control, and then control the things you can control.
The problem with the acceptance-park-your-ego advice is that:
- It’s difficult to do.
- Typically, there’s not an immediate payoff.
When we fail at our acceptance practice, because we don’t see any payoff during the brief time we practiced it, we add this experience to our gripe list of how life isn’t cooperating with our wishes. We then decide to take control and make things happen by bending reality to our will.
When those efforts don’t produce the results we want, we become trapped in an accelerating downward spiral into the lower left corner of the graph above.
