Learning to love your life even when it’s completely different than what you originally thought it might be like can be tricky, but is incredibly worth working through. This week, Dr. Whitney looks at how the idea of radical acceptance can change not only how you feel about your circumstances, but also room to manage those feelings as well.

Key takeaways:

• Radical acceptance is a scientifically researched component of dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) that psychologists use all the time. It means recognizing your emotional or physical stress (could be really small issues ranging to something major) and wholeheartedly practicing acceptance. It’s different than just deciding the things in our lives are bad and “living with it.” When we accept the things going on, it actually helps us to manage and deal with our emotions about the circumstances so that we can move forward and NOT feel bad all the time.

• Radical acceptance surrounding my daughter’s diagnosis of autism is one of the most fundamental shifts in my thinking that I made about 3 years ago that really allowed me a lot of freedom and made it so I wasn’t so miserable all the time. 

• Real life example: my family had the opportunity to go to Hamilton and things totally went awry as getting ready to go. My oldest was hesitant on whether or not she wanted to go and my daughter had a (non-COVID) cough that I knew was going to get us all the stares in the theater. I could see my husband starting to get anxious about the whole situation, but we had to decide on something together: no matter what happened, we were gonna be okay. We knew it was not going to be perfect, and that was okay.

• How many times have things not gone the way you want them to on a family vacation? How many times has your kid not acted the way you want them to on a playdate? That you’re not able to have as much free time that you want? That you were wistful for how you wish life could be–instead of really leaning into the reality of what your life can be? Instead of constantly trying to make things “better” or “normal” you can use mindful self-compassion to get real with your feelings surrounding the situation. 

• The more you fight your actual circumstances, the harder you make it on yourself. On the flip side, the more you lean into accepting the circumstances of your life and asking yourself what you need in reaction to that, the happier and more at peace you’ll be on the other side.

If you can get to a place where you can say, “Okay, this is my life. This is what’s happening. Now what?” you’re going to be much less reactive and more responsive to your kiddos’, family’s, and your own needs. You’ll be more effective at recognizing moments where you need to take a step back and tag someone else in.

Stop fighting against the reality of your life and start accepting that it’s amazing and beautiful, even if it looks entirely different than what you originally thought.