Have You Stopped Doing This Thing That’s Drives Everyone Crazy?

The Amazing Power Of Acceptance

You come from a race of fixers. From the dawn of humans, one thing that’s set us apart is our desire and ability to fix things. And while this inclination has helped us grow, it’s done so at a cost.

When we walk into the world with our tool belts on, we tend to see things as broken. And the more broken things we see, the more we feel like we need to fix it. Pretty soon, we turn into zombie repairmen and women trying to piece together our world with rolls of duck tape and staples.

We see this tendency in our desire to give advice, our compulsion to cheer sad people up, and our inclination to buy things to prevent or repair perceived problems.

But what if it didn’t have to be like this?
What if you put down your tool belt and stopped fixing everything?
What if instead of seeing the world as broken you saw it as complete in every moment?
Wouldn’t it be a relief to not have to fix everything?

Of course it might also be a little scary, because if nothing is broken what are you here for anyway?
If everything is perfect, why should you strive and work?
But then again maybe instead constantly working to fix the world, you might just spend sometime enjoying it.
Maybe you’d keep working, but not because anything is missing, but because you want to.

When I Stopped

For a long time I saw the world as a broken place. And I couldn’t figure out how to fix it. I thought, if only I could tape and nail the pieces of my life into place, then I’d be happy. But it never worked.

Most of the time a piece of tape would lose it’s stickiness, a nail would bend or as soon as I got it into place, something would change forcing me to change with it.

But then something happened. I realized it’s not possible to make a whole world from a broken one. And so I stopped trying to fix everything. Instead, I tried to accept that everything was just as it was supposed to be. Now I couldn’t do this for more than a few minutes as first, but as I kept practicing, I got better.

Instead of seeing the world or myself as broken, I began seeing the world as whole and my part in it as perfect. Not because I was exceptional or special, but because I couldn’t help being a whole part of this whole world.

I began to understand that all of my perceived faults and flaws were all just part of the wholeness. I began to accept that my difficult emotions were just as whole and perfect as everything else.

My Invitation

My invitation for you is a simple one. Pick on thing that bugs you and stop fixing it. Maybe it’s something about yourself you’ve never liked, or maybe it’s something about the world you’ve never liked. It doesn’t have to be you biggest pet peeve, just a little thing that often rubs you the wrong way.

Then every time this thing, person, or part of yourself bothers you, pause, and say:
“I accept that ‘X’ is whole and complete lacking nothing.
There isn’t anything wrong with ‘X’.
It is just how ‘X’ should be.

Try this for one week or even better for one month and see how your relationship to this annoyance changes. You might find that it doesn’t bother you or even that you are grateful to have this thing in your life, so that you can learn from it.

What I’ve found from years practicing acceptance is that it not only helps me let go of frustration. It also helps me feel grateful for everything in my life, even for those things that get under my skin.

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3 thoughts on “Have You Stopped Doing This Thing That’s Drives Everyone Crazy?

  1. Wow! This has had a big impact on me. Thank you! I accept the challenge, and am currently racking my brain with which little frustration to start with 🙂 Thanks for the awesome blogs!

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