Accepting What is - Enabling You to Feel Empowered

Do you find you struggle accepting some of the challenges or situations you are facing in your life?

Do you find yourself blaming others for what has happened?

Do you feel resentful, angry, frustrated or alone in your challenge?

As you step into and walk through the difficult times in your life, it may require you to open yourself up to both your vulnerability and courage, and importantly, accept what is going on in your life. Accepting what is does not mean you won’t at times feel sad, frustrated, angry or any of the other uncomfortable feelings, because you are human after all. Facing challenging times can be painful, and to keep moving forward as best as we can will require stepping into your boldness.

Fiona Quigley, Stoma Nurse Specialist, based in the North West of Ireland explains many of her patients have lived through and are still living with life threatening diseases. A stoma is an artificial permanent opening created in the abdominal wall made in a surgical procedure, which is a life-saving measure linked to various illnesses or conditions. Fiona supports her patients - not just with essential medical care - but also with accepting their lives will be different as they live with a stoma.

"It can be very challenging for patients to get to the acceptance stage," explains Fiona. "Part of my role is to remind them that the stoma bag is a 'rescue bag:' it has saved them in some way, either from disease that was going to take their lives or a condition that was causing deterioration of their lives.”

Fiona says this simple change of perspective can enable people to become more accepting of the physical changes that have happened to them. When they choose to accept what is, they become more empowered in the way they are choosing to think about their situation.

At Empower World, we believe one of the keys to practicing acceptance is to choose notice and be present with the emotions that show up at any given time. If we choose to ignore and numb our pain, we can never fully experience our joy. If we want to feel the beautiful emotions of love and happiness, we must also be willing to experience and accept the darker emotions.

Being gentle on yourself, practicing self-compassion and self-love as you face, acknowledge and move through the many and varied emotions will support you to build resilience. You may not be able to change the circumstances you are experiencing, but you do have the power to choose how you respond to your situation by noticing different and potentially empowering perspectives.

Below are some simple processes to support accepting what you cannot change:

• Pay attention to all the emotions you are feeling: what they are, what they feel like and where they originate in your body?
• As you feel your emotions and name them, notice what thoughts you are thinking and get curious about how those thoughts are supporting your emotions to be stronger.
• As you become more aware of your emotions, allow yourself to be with them and simply notice them moving through you and ask yourself what are the lessons for me in these emotions? We are not encouraging you to dwell in them for a long time: enough time to uncover new awareness.
• Treat yourself with loving kindness and self-compassion. Practice speaking to yourself with kind words and notice how this supports you in your acceptance of the situation.
• When you find yourself rejecting, blaming and feeling negative emotions, simply notice it, don’t beat yourself up about it. Smile and get back to practicing acceptance, remembering the pursuit of mastery is never ending.
• Surround yourself with others who are loving, kind and generous. Reach out to family, friends or members of your community who can be your supporters. If you don’t have people in your network, connect with support groups who understand what you are going through.

Listen to Empower World's Coaching and Leadership Podcast Episode-96 in which Marie Quigley interviews Fiona Quigley, where she talks about her work with her patients as they live life with serious illness. She shares how she supports these inspiring people in their everyday living to build resilience strategies and practice self compassion and acceptance.

Episode-96 can be found here:
Direct link: bit.ly/2wyXtS1
#itunes: bit.ly/EW-Podcast-iTune
‪#stitcher : bit.ly/podcast-episode-96

Be Empowered.