How To Accept What You Can’t Change

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1. Start with moving toward accepting who you are. If you do some analyzing, you’ll find that most problems are, one way or another, rooted in not accepting and loving yourself. This is the best place to start.

2. Don’t rely on ineffective coping mechanisms, find healthy outlets for yourself. For example, suppressing your feelings and ignoring the problem will never bode well for you in the long term, and you know this.

3. Make lists, write things out, consider the possibilities. This is how I deal with mostly everything I can’t figure out immediately. I write things down, make lists and weigh pros and cons. For the sake of acceptance, write down why you can’t change it or the reasons why you may be happy this happened in the future.

4. Don’t try to change everything at once. You won’t do anything thoroughly if you try to uproot your whole life one day. Take it one step at a time, the best changes, and the ones that last, are the ones that happen in gradual steps.

5. Find your happy place. My happy place is often my bed. This is not a sexual innuendo. I just love to nap, read or write while sitting in bed. Your happy place can be a state of mind or a room in your house. It doesn’t have to be some intangible unrealistic place that you won’t be able to go to on a daily basis. Find it, and go there.

6. Find other thoughts to fill your head. You won’t just stop thinking about what hurts unless you find other things to think about. Suppressing your thoughts, as mentioned before, will not make them go away. They’ll make them more powerful when they eventually all come back to haunt you. Find new things to think about. Go to bed reading poetry and wake up letting any negative thoughts pass by you and finding beautiful ones to fill your emptiness.

7. Let the feelings wave through you and pass. Breathe through them. Don’t resist them, just let them go. You will never, ever, reach a day where you don’t have feelings, the good and the bad. Resisting them will not help, it will hurt. Train yourself to acknowledge your feelings, consider what they’re trying to tell you, and let them pass.

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image – Ashtyn Renee