Are your negative thoughts and emotions ruling your life? How do you know if those thoughts and emotions are a true representation of reality? Most of those thoughts and emotions happen in your unconscious and come to the forefront because you want to believe them. I know that sounds strange but you can gain distance from those negative thoughts and accept the world for what it is. Acceptance is a journey but it can lead to greater happiness.
Reality Therapy
Formulated by William Glasser in the 60s, Reality/Choice Therapy reminds me a lot of what Buddhist psychology tells us. Essentially, our desire to bend people and situations to our will makes us miserable. The Buddhists talk about craving for things to be different in order to serve us and only us. This clearly causes suffering because the world just does its thing regardless of what we want. Instead, the choice is to alter our wants and ensuing behaviours rather than to fall victim to the mind.
The mind can be a tough tool to work with. Of course it wants us to be the centre of the universe because its job is to protect us and only us. Even as I was grieving for lost souls this year during my recent meditation retreat, it dawned on me that I’m simply clinging to the past. I want them here for my own purpose. How do I know they’ll be happier alive with me?
Instead, reality therapy, as does Buddhism, attempts to help you change your relationship with what goes on around you. Through this work, you learn that you can control your behaviour and reactions despite any negative thoughts. So, instead of acting out when things go off, you learn acceptance that things are as they are so you can achieve greater happiness.
How Does it Work?
It all starts by exploring your needs, wants and perceptions. So, for example, how do you spend your time and do your activities leverage your strengths and make you feel good? From that, you start understanding your behaviours and what could be changed. It’s the same with meditation that helps you accept your feelings such that you can observe them from a distance. This in turn means that you have a longer pause with which to decide your actions more wisely once a thought is triggered.
Most of my coaching clients come to me wanting to change other people stating that the world isn’t fair. No, it isn’t but the only thing any of us can do about that is to observe our behaviours and what we want. Then, you observe the cause of those behaviours by learning to watch your thoughts. This can be done through meditation or by working with a counsellor to hold up that mirror for you.
Learning Acceptance for Happiness
Of course, this isn’t easy especially because it means connecting with our internal fears and even terrors. But you cannot reach acceptance without looking inside.
1- Be open to change
The wonderful paradox of this one is that as you change your wants and behaviours, the external world also changes. You emit a different energy and self-assurance that you don’t have before and you’re also better able to let things go. It’s actually a wonderful phase, as you can imagine.
This type of acceptance involves sitting with your feelings and thoughts and sometimes even considering them from different viewpoints. Would others come to the same conclusions for instance? That’s another reason I love meditation. It gives you the space to look at a thought and then watch it float by without judgement. “Ah, I’m having a negative thought – how intriguing, let’s move on”.
2- Do not make thoughts your master
That wonderful mishmashed line from Rudyard Kipling’s poem If. He was so accurate when he said this phrase. We are all addicted to our thoughts and we love our own stream of consciousness. If on the other hand, you’re not addicted to your thoughts then you’re free from ruminating and reacting according to what the ego wants, as explains psychologist Carder. It’s normal to love our thoughts though because that’s how the brain was designed.
As my teacher recently said on this past retreat, “we all have a choice when we notice our ruminating mind: we can choose to continue with our storyline or we can choose to stop self-absorbing and just observe the world through our other senses”. That phrase will stay with me forever.
3- Internal validation and spiritual healing
Feelings and emotions are still important. Nevertheless, they were often created by past childhood issues and don’t usually represent our reality accurately. That’s why reality therapy teaches you to reframe them to see things from different viewpoints. Alternatively, mediation teaches you to see them as just feelings and emotions, nothing else. They do not define us and nor do they need to control us as Tony Fahkry explains, leading Australian mind-body-health speaker and writer.
Whilst all those negative thoughts are milling around, grounded people can balance these with internal validation. Of course, that isn’t easy to gain but spiritual healing and growth can be another transformational experience to support that balance. I’m not talking about religion but the feeling that you are connected with yourself internally and, in my case, with nature. You feel in harmony with all, despite the anxieties you suffer because they don’t define you. In fact, they become so faint that they’re just like a radio on in the background that you can ignore. Essentially, you reach a state of balance that allows you to recover more wisely from pain and suffering when they occur. This can only truly happen through acceptance of that pain and suffering and you reach happiness as you let go of making the pain about you rather than a common human experience.
Typical techniques to become spiritual are the famous mind-body practices such as yoga and tai chi, amongst others. Alternatively, contemplation through journaling and just experiencing art, music, nature and reading. Anything that gets you away from the ruminating mind and into the moment can be both healing and transformational.
Where to Next?
With time, these techniques will allow you to increase your self-esteem as you realise that none of this really matters. In the end, we all die and the only thing you can do is savour each moment through acceptance and letting it be. You’ll then become connected with yourself whilst leveraging your strengths and following your purpose. The journey is long and arduous but it’s worth it as you gradually increase your acceptance for greater harmony and happiness.
