Acceptance Leads To Defeat
Check Your Ego
There’s this notion of acceptance, to simply let things be as they are. Your failures (Accept them), your successes (Accept them), your doubts (Accept them) all lend to wisdom — an internal reflection of the knowledge you’ve accumulated during your existence so that you may move forward in the direction of your life’s task.
Acceptance can be the balancing factor between taking an illogical risk and an intelligent one. Now some of you may be saying to yourself, “the greater the risk the greater the reward” — that I whole heartedly agree with. The thing with risks is at certain times if you don’t accept whatever outcome manifests you leave little room for internal growth.
This space with-in is critical to self-development. Call it what you will:
- Spiritual growth
- Self-improvement
- Growth Hacks
- Lifestyle Change
Without knowing yourself inside and accepting outcomes as they are presented to you, the cycle of self-defeat will continue to churn until your last breath.
If you aren’t working on yourself, improving your skills and learning from those who have paved the way before you how can you ever know that progress is being made? You see progress is the direct measurable ROI that we all need; finishing projects, losing weight, battling cancer, winning a championship.
For many, there is no option but winning and if you aren’t winning each and every time you can take that extreme loss much like soldiers on a battle field. Yet a sense of acceptance of your efforts could be the limiting factor — it’s not that it’s causing your defeat directly but it’s you creating your own ceiling.
You win some, you lose some, move on
Perfectionism has been the breeding ground for many people’s success. I thought before that everything had to be perfect in the sense that if I did not come out victorious that meant my results were not perfect, thus I failed and psychologically put that burden on myself to never make the same mistake again.
Time and time again my ideology of perfectionism worked…and it didn’t work. Sure I won many trophies (Karate competitions) and had plenty of defeats, but my Ego was constantly being fed false positive and the rage inside led ultimately to my greatest failure — not following my dreams…
I was constantly at war with-in myself to create a better understanding of the world around me so I could navigate life “a little easier”. What I found was that the more I could not accept things as they are, the less peace I had inside. When you have less peace you aren’t going after your dreams, rather time will simply push your dream further into a dark background until you give up on hope.
If you can understand and accept that certain things will not pan out the way you thought, THAT’S OKAY. There’s no need for self-destructive talk, all that leads to is further confusion and ultimately a sense of doubt about your abilities.
Assess, Optimize, Maximize, Minimize
The concept above comes from my training as a Powerlifting coach but i’ve adapted it into my own self-development. This is how one may move away from perfectionism and start to embrace acceptance.
1.) Assess
Without evaluating where you are, what you have done and where you want to go you will be left with no direction in life. Similarly if you’re constantly losing at something or allowing negative results to get the best of you, then you must assess your current strategy.
Take time to understand first your true intention (GOAL) and then everything else will come into play. You’ll have the foundation laid out to build on top of, rather then making a living castle out of park ground sand.
2.) Optimize
Once you’ve assessed your strengths, weaknesses and goals it’s time to optimize the mediums you are using. What does that even mean?
If your aim is to support yourself financially but you’ve allowed 10 straight unsuccessful interviews to deter you, then you’ll have to regroup and ensure you are asking the HR representative for as much detail as possible.
You want to know why they passed you up and chose a different candidate. Once you know then you can start to optimize your resume, how you engage verbally, the clothes you are wearing to the interview etc.
3.) Maximize
Take full responsibility to drive the results you want to their peak. If you know a promotion is possible after 3 hard years of working in your company, take measure to know what is required to maximize that goal.
You may need to sacrifice things, stay later, wake up earlier, skip out on happy hour and spend that 1–2 hours exercising your body and mind.
4.) Minimize
At all costs minimize the emotional destruction that being attached to results has. You have to learn to let things go, the battle may have been lost but the war is far from over.
The best way to counter hardship is to communicate, talk to your friends/family/loved ones about what’s going on rather than holding it all in. The more you suppress emotions and frustration, the less room you have to breathe through the pain and as a Yoga instructor that has been the most beneficial method of self-awareness I have shared.
Breathing is not only a physiological necessity it’s directly connected to your emotional and energetic states.
Take Away
The time you spend living your life can be full of joy, wonder, fascination and growth. They are all ways for you to become a more powerful version of you personally and professionally. Maturing through the process takes times and along the way temptation to be perfect and striving for results will cross your path.
It’s only through being very self-aware about acceptance that true victory blossoms.
You don’t always have to do things perfect and perfectionism itself is “in the eye of the beholder”. It’s your definition of perfect which will never be perfect. It can get close to it and that’s fine too!
Don’t beat yourself up for being human.
With Love and Light,
David Lee — The P.O.W.E.R Coach
I hope you enjoyed reading this rant, philosophical expression, psycho-something or other post!
If you have 1 second (just one!) please comment or ❤ the post if you liked it! I believe in communication and community which is why i’m here.
Thanks a bunch and follow me around on my journey as a Powerlifter, Yoga Teacher, Holistic Lifestyle Coach and Tech Reviewer.
Namaste!
