December 28th, 2021
3 minute read
Your everyday inconveniences and irritations in life might be weighing down on you more than you think. Picture this, its your first day at your dream job. You’re 10 minutes late due to traffic and you just spilt coffee on your new shirt. “This day can’t get any worse” you’re thinking, theres a situation completely out of your control , its just so indicative of your life, nothing ever goes your way.
But theres a problem. Being angry and rattled over situations completely out of your control often leaks into the rest of the day. More often than not, that frustration doesn’t just last in the moment, you harbour that negativity and it leaks into your relationships and your general day-to-day.
Back to our scenario. You finally get to the office but your'e rattled, pissed off and flustered. You make an awful first impression, a far worse impression than just being late for work.
Now I’m not going to bore you with how you should just stay positive and keep productive, life isn’t that simple. Instead, I’m about to introduce you to a concept that has served me extremely well in life, and it's a concept I’ve adopted from stoicism. If you adopt this mindset fully, you will not only be more resilient to the chaos in life, but the chaos will actually make you stronger to the point where you might actually prefer a little mayhem so that you can get stronger.
It’s not a secret, it is actually so simple it’s almost insulting. The concept is called Radical Acceptance.
Radical acceptance can be defined as the ability to accept situations that are outside of your control without judging them, which in turn reduces the suffering that is caused by them
The mindset stems from the idea that we all have a fundamental rejection of reality as it is. We live our lives with a sort of expectation of how reality actually is or how it ‘should be’.
Accepting your life as it is, your own mortality, the fact that you’re going to die one day. This may sound super depressing but this is what the Ancient stoic philosophers did, like Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, and it actually helped keep them grounded. It allowed them to focus on the bigger picture so that they could live a more fulfilling life in the present moment.
Allow your mind to focus on the things that are truly important, the things that are eternal. Not the frivolous things that will fade away, the fact that you dented your car or said something embarrassing to your crush. Certain things are fact, you’re tragedies and hardships are inevitable, they are woven into the fabric of our reality.
But, if you live your life in acceptance of life as it is, the things you can and cannot control, then it’ll stop feeling like you’re constantly drowning in the waves of life, splashing on the shore, you’ll become a surfer. Eventually, you’ll start to contemplate the effects you have on the people around you and the world you’re part of.