De-stress, Increase Productivity, and Reach Your Full Potential In 1-step.
Spoilers. It’s a big step.
I remember sitting in my office stressed out, ready to give up, and feeling completely lost. There wasn’t an easy way forward. My life was only questions and I was exhausted trying to find answers. If someone had told me then, what I am about to tell you now, I would have laughed in their face.
I also would have thrown something at them. Something hard.
What you are about to read is going to frustrate and challenge you. I wish that I had had the wisdom then to do what I am about to ask you to do. If I had, the decisions I was struggling with would have been easier. I would have been a better Father, more faithful to myself, and achieved everything so much faster.
The No. 1 Way You Can Gain Peace of Mind, Immediately.
Marsha Linehan is the genius behind Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT). DBT is psychotherapy designed to help people that live on an emotional rollercoaster. It helps people have more regulated, peaceful, and productive lives. At the core of DBT is the idea of acceptance. That is what I am going to ask you to do. Accept where you are. Stop struggling against everything around you, stop fighting inside your head with where you want to be, and stop doing the same repetitive things you always do.
Acceptance is the gateway to everything I promised in the beginning. Accept where you are. It doesn’t mean giving up. It means giving yourself the peace to achieve your dreams.
Here is a scenario:
Person A wants to build a business empire and start hiring people. Person A wants to reap the rewards of their hard work and live a different life than they currently have. Person A spends their days stressed out striving to build their empire waiting for the day that it all comes together.
If Person A started practicing acceptance, it would look like this. They would define their goal, develop a plan for how to get there, and stop the internal stress of not being at the end. Accept that today did not go as planned. Accept that they did not get a task completed. Accept that someone let them down. Accept the world as it is and stop trying to force everything to be what you think it should be.
Accepting is not giving up. It is allowing yourself to be ok with the process.
Want to see a master of Accepting? Look at Yoda. Yoda takes everything in stride. He sees the struggle as it is. He waited decades for Luke to find him. And, even though he molded the young Jedi, he accepted him as he was. He didn’t fight with himself over who he was training.
Accepting life is a power that most of us have never known. When you master it, that power becomes yours.
Accepting Is The Road, Not The Destination.
If that person had walked into my office and told me to accept what was going on, I would have thrown something at them.
Accept, where I am? This place is horrible. No thanks.
I would have been missing the point. If I had accepted that this place is the road, not the destination, I would have had a lot more fluidity in my thinking. I would have had a lot less stress, and my pace on that road would have picked up.
As you read this, I am asking you to accept where you are. Practice it at all times and in all situations. Accept everything you encounter, work for the goals in your life, but accept that tough decisions, unhappiness, setbacks, and self-doubt, are part of the process. They are not where you will end up, but they can be what stops you.
The work you are doing, whatever it is, is worth doing. Learn to accept the journey.
