Overcoming Life's Challenges: Awareness, Acceptance and Action Is Needed ...................3/14/14

"You can't undo anything you've already done, but you can face up to it.  You can tell the truth.  You can seek forgiveness.  And let God do the rest."  Unknown

       Good evening.  Did you check out yesterday's post?  I re-worked it, adding content and 11 hyperlinks.  This inn crossed the 300,000 views mark today.  Making that
200,000 in eleven months. Thank you for keeping me company.

      Many new guests from France, Norway, Poland and Sweden made it a routine to cool their heels here, this month.  Let me know how I can make your stay at the inn more comfy.  I always appreciate my largest audience, those from UK, India, Spain, Russia. Of course, the U.S., are the largest group of visitors who give this inn a look, some 13,400 in the last 30 days.  I'd love hearing from everyone.

     I'm tired. A strenuous week, was had.  Tomorrow, I'm seeing clients.  Not usually the case.  In addition to my work routine, I labored over a poem, my fourth in five months, this, after not having written any since 1997.  This poem took up twenty hours.  It did.

     If my guests are noisy (not nosy) enough, I might share one or two, here, if I hear enough requests.  It would definitely reveal another side of the innkeeper.

     Sunday is a red letter day.  I visiting someone special.  Over the next few weeks I'll write about adding intimacy to our relationships.

     Tonight, I'm taking a break, as the innkeeper.  I need it, being emotionally and physically worn out.  I leaving something written in 2012.  It's still relevant today.  Enjoy!

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The Importance of Awareness
       I celebrate the sanity enjoyed when looking at life realistically. This is also known as awareness. It's a good start, but incomplete.  It's eighty-eight percent of the answer, however when dealing with a problem. There's no remedy without first seeing the issue.

       Awareness deals with the challenges and life's disappointments.  I'm seeing progress, my learning curve is spiking upwards. Circumstances that would linger for months, perhaps years, are now dealt with within two months.  Thank God for personal growth.

Rooting Out the Problem
The Need for Acceptance

      But, it's vital going beyond awareness.  Acceptance is next. This is taking the perspective awareness provides and dealing with it's emotional impact---an aspect often neglected. If  we don't take this step, we are only trimming the shrub of our problems, guaranteeing they will grow back.

       Acceptance is getting in touch with the issue at the visceral level.  It involves five steps.  It is:
1.  Seeing the vexing area.
2.  Feeling our response.
3.  Taking our feelings a step further and grieving the losses involved.
4.  Letting the negative sentiments go---often through forgiveness.
5.  Seeing what steps we can take next. This is looking at our options.

      Acceptance helps us to remove the problem and ten percent of the solution.  Did you notice, acceptance looked upon this way is not acceptance with resignation. It is not, "Oh, this is my lot in life, I'll have to bear with it."

      Here's another critical point: many go straight from awareness to action. "I see the problem, and now, this is what I need to do....." and then come up with an action plan.  Bad idea.  We are only operating within our head.  The heart level is not dealt with. Without acceptance, the problem isn't rooted out.

      When was the last time we made time, determining why we isolate, and did an inventory of the area perturbing us, be it festering resentments or the torture of self-loathing?   Connecting at the gut level, looking at the payoff for unhealthy behavior or thinking helps us see where we need help.  It's uncovering our motives.  We don't do anything, if there wasn't a reward.

       Key point regarding acceptance: we don't have the psychological or emotional distance to clearly see areas where we need to grow.  Having friends who accept and love us, yet challenge us with hard questions are of great help when rooting out a problem.

The Shoe Leather of Personal Growth

       After becoming aware of the triggers, source, behavior and people who contribute to our difficulties, and having acceptance about them,  we apply shoe leather.

       Donning the protection of practical principles and actions help us when we are out in the street of life, handling life's demands.  Applying  healthy alternatives---moving away from unhelpful default modes, unsuccessful former approaches to life's challenges---permits us to tread upon the gravelly aspects of life with minimal discomfort.

       Action is the remaining two percent needed for handling painful areas strewn with the broken glass of life.  There you have it, the Three A's.  Awareness deals with the head, acceptance with the heart and action with the feet (what we do).  Applying healthier alternatives---staying in the solution---helps us move beyond what were once monuments of our past pain into the meadow of better relationships, sanity, serenity, emotional health and ease.

How About You? 
Which of the three A's are you using to deal with a rocky area in your life?