Radical to Accept Reality as is

Parenting can lead you to experience moments that bring you great joy and other times of heightened stress or frustration. Nobody wants to be woken up in the middle of the night or feel helpless through failed attempts to tame an almighty tantrum at the shops. Children fighting, not enough money or no one to call on for support when you need a break.

This might sound kind of crazy but a proven method of coping more effectively with tough times is learning to accept your reality fully for what it is. Be careful to distil the facts from catastrophic thinking. For example a sleepless night is just that and not accurate to believe you’ll never sleep well again.

Learning to be open to accepting each moment for what it is doesn’t mean you necessarily like it but you let go of fighting against it. Try acknowledge what is happening without judgement.

Lets try and target an aspect of our parenting role we would like to radically accept. Reflect on how you know you are not radically accepting it. Perhaps you worry a lot about being a good enough at this parenting gig. Signs of resistance are having thoughts such as it shouldn’t be like this or I’m a bad mother.  We are wired to invite suffering in and tend to get stuck in a feeling state. By providing space for what it is to simply be, we free up mental space to problem solve what we can do to change things.

So the next time you are tempted to blame yourself or someone else for what is happening. Turn your mind towards acceptance and use your body to help you. Take some deep breaths and focus on releasing tension in your shoulders, face and stomach.

This skill requires lots of practice. In time through doing it over and over, it gets easier to practice full acceptance. The pay off is freedom from fooling yourself that there is any other way then to accept what is.