Transcription
For [Music] la [Music], have you ever wondered why some people get destroyed by suffering? And other people, when they suffer, they don't get destroyed? In fact, some people not only don't get destroyed by suffering, but they, they seem to become even stronger just by going through stuff. Have you ever thought about that?
Well, I didn't think about it for a long time because I was brought up believing that suffering is something everybody can grow through. So I was just brought up thinking that. So I always thought it was true that if you wanted to grow through it, you could. Then, when I started working with people who suffer a lot, both as a psychotherapist, but also I've worked a lot with the poor and with the homeless, I started realizing, "Hey, wait a minute. I'm not so sure this is true." Everybody doesn't go through suffering. Some people get destroyed by suffering despite their best effort. Some people simply get destroyed.
So I started asking myself, "What was the difference?" I mean, what's the difference between the person who gets destroyed and the person who doesn't? Why is it that when some people get knocked down, they keep going? They get knocked down, they get up, and they go again. Other people, they get knocked down, and they just stay down. They never get up.
So I thought to myself, "Well, I need to find the answer to this question." Mainly because I work with a lot of people who suffer, and I work with a lot of people who seem to be getting destroyed by it. So I thought, "Well, if I could find the answer to that question, I could teach it, and I could help the people that I work with." So I started trying to figure it out.
So I thought a lot about it. I also did a lot of reading. I decided, "Well, all right, the thing to do is I'll try to read as much as I can about people who've had lots of suffering in their lives, tragedies and traumas, and the people who somehow make it." And I'll try to figure out what's the difference between people who make it and people who don't make it.
The purpose of this program is for me to teach you what I've learned, and all the readings that I've done, all the thinking that I've done, and all the people I've talked to. What we're going to focus on in this program is how to make it, how to keep yourself from being destroyed, even how to grow or to build when a life that you're living feels like it's not worth living. We're going to talk about three sets of skills, or three sets of behaviors, or three things to practice that seem to be what the people who grow all have in common.
So there's a lot of information that's going to be coming your way in this particular program. You may want to take some notes. Most people find that pretty useful. So if you want to take some notes, I recommend that you do. The thing to do right now is to get up and put this program on pause. Go get yourself some paper, get a pencil or a pen. Come back, hit the start button, get yourself all comfy again, and get ready to go.
Now, while you're doing all of that, I'm going to get myself all organized. I'm going to get organized and be ready to teach the skills when you get back. One more thing, if you just so happen to have my skills training book, when you get up to go get paper, go get your skills training manual. If you don't have the manual, but you've got the handouts, well, go get your handouts. Bring them back.
And when you come back and sit down, you're going to want to open your book up, and you're going to find the following handout. You're going to find "Basic Principles of Accepting Reality," and there are two pages. On the first page, you're going to have "Radical Acceptance," "Turning the Mind." We're going to go over those skills. And on the second page, you're going to have "Willingness" and "Willfulness." We're going to go over those two.
When you get back, I'll be back. I'll be ready. So I hope you are. Let's go.
There may be an infinite number of really painful things that can happen to you, but there are not an infinite number of responses you can make to pain. In fact, if you sit back and think about it, there are only four. The only four things you can do when painful problems come into your life. What do you think they are? Think for a minute. Problem is in your life, pain, suffering, something you don't want in it. How can you respond?
Well, the first thing you could do is you could solve the problem. You could figure out a way to either end the painful event, or you could figure out a way to leave the situation that's so painful. So that's the first thing you can do: solve the problem. What's the second thing you could do? You could try to change how you feel about the problem. You could figure out a way to take a negative in your life, make it into a positive. All right, so that's the second thing you could do.
What's your other option? You could accept it. So that's the third thing you could do. You could just accept the problem. Okay, that's not everything you could do. There is a fourth alternative. What do you think it is? You could stay miserable. That's the only other option you've got. So you're going to have to either solve it, change how you feel about it, accept it, or stay miserable.
The skills I'm going to be talking about, you could call them reality acceptance skills. And they're three: radical acceptance, turning the mind, and willingness. We're going to start with the first one, radical acceptance. Can you think of any really serious problems, really serious pain, serious traumas, things that make you really unhappy, that you can't change? Maybe you've had a child who's died. People who've had a child who's died never get over it. Maybe have a permanent disability. What are your options? You can be miserable, or you can accept the reality that you've got it.
Maybe you've had a really painful childhood. You know, a lot of people have to live with that. You just have to live with the fact that those happy childhoods that you see on TV aren't in your life, and there's nothing you can do about it. Maybe you didn't get a job that you really wanted. There's nothing you can do about it. These are just not the kinds of things you can start being happy about. So what are your options? You can either be miserable, or you can figure out a way to accept the reality of your own life.
So what's radical accept? What do I mean by the word radical? Radical means complete and total. It's when you accept something from the depths of your soul. When you accept it in your mind, in your heart, and even with your body. It's total and complete. When you've radically accepted something, you're not fighting it. It's when you stop fighting reality. That's what radical acceptance is.
The problem is, telling you what it is and telling you how to do it are two different things. Radical acceptance can't really be completely explained. Why not? Because it's something that's interior. It's something that goes on inside yourself. But all of us have experienced radical acceptance. So what I want you to do right now is try to focus in on some time in your life when you've actually accepted something radically, completely, and totally.
So let's think about it. When might that be? Well, think back in your own life to either something you've lost, perhaps someone you've loved has died, or something that you really wanted that you didn't get, a job you really wanted and you didn't get it. Think about something that you wanted that you either didn't get, or something you had that you've lost. Now sit back, close your eyes, and go back in time to right before you found out that you've lost what you had, or right before you found out that you weren't going to get what you wanted. Imagine that again. Kind of go back there, and then go through that period where you weren't accepting it, and then move to imagining when you did accept it. So kind of like relive that.
Most people can find someplace in their life where that's happened to them and where they've accepted it. And that's what I mean by radical acceptance. I'm guessing some of you tried that exercise and you just couldn't think of a time when you've accepted something, so you couldn't imagine what it felt like because you couldn't even remember a time when you've done it. Don't worry about it. Just try it another time, maybe after the program today, tomorrow, some other day. Just see if you can go back to a time when you've accepted.
But for the moment, let me tell you what it might feel like. Often, when you've accepted, you have this sense of letting go of a struggle. It's just like you've been struggling, and now you're not. Sometimes, if you've accepted, you just have this sense of being centered. Like you feel centered inside yourself, somehow. You may have a lot of sadness. Acceptance often goes with a lot of sadness, actually. But even though you've got sadness, there's a feeling like a burden is lifted. Usually, if you've accepted, well, you feel ready to move on with your life. You sort of feel free, ready to move. So that's what it feels like. Let's keep going.
Pain is pain. Suffering, agony, are pain plus non-acceptance. So if you take pain, add non-acceptance, you end up with suffering. Radical acceptance transforms suffering into ordinary pain. There are three parts to radical acceptance. First part is accepting that reality is what it is. The second part is accepting that the event or situation causing you pain has a cause. Third part is accepting life can be worth living even with painful events in it.
So let's start with the first, accepting reality for what it is. What do we mean by that? Well, I'll give you an example from my own life. This is a good example because it makes the point that acceptance can actually do you some good. I once had this job. I was a clerk typist for a big insurance company, but I really wanted to be a social worker. So I applied for a new job. I went to an employment agency and I asked them to help me get a new job. And I told them I wanted a job in social work. So they got me a job in social work. So I gave notice to the job that I had, which was a really good job in the sense that the people were fabulous, and I got paid at least enough to live on. And I gave them notice. I quit that job and I went to the social work job. I was so excited. I cannot even begin to tell you how excited I was. Finally got a job in social work.
So I went in. So the first day, you know, I have to do training and stuff. So what did they have me do? Well, they had me typing. So I typed all day. And I was thinking, "Oh, well, it's not so terrible. I'm not going to have to keep typing." But the second day, what did they have me do? I was typing again. So I went and talked to my supervisor and I said, "Well, where am I going to get to do the social work?" She said, "What do you mean?" I said, "Well, I mean, when, when do I get to do something like social work work?" She said, "What do you mean? Your job is typing."
And the first thing that went through my mind was, "No, that's not true. I took a job with this social work agency. This can't be true." And I actually thought of staying. I thought of staying and trying to make it into a social work job. That would be denying reality because the facts of the matter are, it really was a typing job. So what are my options? Well, I could have stayed miserable. I could have gotten hysterical. I could have stayed there, fought, told them that they should make it into social work, how mean they were for not doing that. I could have done a lot of things. My other option was just to accept this was not a social work job. I made a mistake. I needed to correct the mistake. And the way to correct that mistake, well, it was to get another job. So that's just what I did.
When my next break came, I called the employment agency. I told them I'd made a mistake. I need another job. They said, "Fine." They looked for it. Took two weeks, but I found another job. I was a lot happier. Now, think about your own life. What is the reality you're denying? What are you not accepting for what it is?
The second part of acceptance is accepting that every event and every situation has a cause. Accepting that every event has a cause is the opposite of saying, "Why me?" Now, there's another opposite for thinking events have causes, and that opposite is when you say, "Things should not be the way they are." Now, "should not be the way they are" is non-acceptance. We never say that about things where accepting, or we like, or we want. We say "should not" about things that we think aren't caused. They should not be this way. So the opposite of "should not" is "should." And once you think that everything has a cause, then you think reality should be the way it is. Acceptance from this point of view is when you say, "Everything should be as it is."
So let me give you an example. Imagine that there's a child on a bicycle, and the child's on a hill, and the child is racing down the hill, going really fast on his bicycle. And he goes into an intersection. And coming the other direction is a car. And that car is driving, let's say, at the speed limit. That car is not speeding. But the intersection is unmarked. There's not a stop sign, there's not a stop light, and there's not a yield sign. So we're going to imagine the kid is racing down the hill, the car is coming the other way, and they meet up right in the middle of the intersection. The car hits the kid, and the kid dies.
If you say, "It should not have happened," I would say, "Well, it should have." There wasn't a stop sign, there wasn't a stop light, there wasn't a yield sign. The kid was going fast. The car was going the speed limit. Something blocked the driver's view. The child was a child. Children go fast. If you wanted to say that should not have happened, you would have to create causes for it not to happen. You'd have to do something about all those causes. That's an example of accepting reality as it is, and accepting that reality has causes.
Now, do you think I approve of this? Do you think I think it's good that the child got hit by the car? No. Is that what I want? No. If I were the child's mother, am I going to go on a campaign to get stop signs put there or make the speed limit lower? Yes. Will I teach my child not to race down hills? I would certainly try. But until the causes are different, that event should happen. It was caused.
So think of a situation in your life. Can you think of one? Can you think of one where you've been saying, "Why me?" or "It shouldn't have happened"? See if you can think of one.
What's acceptance? Radical acceptance is not necessarily knowing what the causes are. Like in the example with the car, well, all right, I don't know if the problem was there wasn't a stop sign, or the speed limit was too fast. I don't really know. But I accept that there was a cause, even if I don't know it. So think of a situation in your life. See if you can radically accept that even though it's not clear what the cause is, there is some cause.
Think back in your life to something either about yourself that you found hard to accept, or something that someone else did that you found hard to accept, but it's not really a catastrophe. All right, you got it? Now think through what caused that event to happen. So what you want to go through in your mind is just be thinking now, "Why did that happen? What caused it?" Because often, when we don't accept something, you know, you say, "It shouldn't have happened," like somehow the rules in the universe should be different. So the first thing you want to say when you're trying to accept is, you say, "Wait a second. The rules of the universe are the rules of the universe." Then you try to figure out what caused it.
Now, you know, most of the time when people don't accept things, they start saying, "Things shouldn't be the way they are." Have you ever noticed that? You say that. "This shouldn't be that way." We all do it. So if what you're trying to practice is acceptance, you're going to try to go the other way. You're going to try to say, "Everything is as it should be." That's the way you practice. First, you think, "What caused it?" And as you notice what caused it, you're going to notice that what happened should have happened, given those causes.
Sort of sounds like I'm saying if you can change your thinking, everything will be all right, right? Does sound that way? But it's not true. Now, acceptance is a lot easier if you can't change your thinking, but that's not all there is to it, especially not with radical acceptance. The whole idea in radical acceptance is you've got to accept all the way. You accept with your mind, accept with your heart, accept with your body.
Now, how would you do that? Well, the short answer is, you practice. What do you practice? Well, what you want to practice is letting go. You're going to let go of tension, tightness. Let go of your muscles. You know how when you're not accepting, how you get all tense? Face gets tense, your arms get tense, your hands get tense. Have you ever noticed that people get sick to their stomach when they're not accepting? I mean, it's all around. Your whole body just tightens up. So if you want to accept, start with just letting go. You can start letting go of your forehead, letting go of your eyes, go over your cheeks, and go over your jaw, and go your shoulders, and go over your arms. Let go of your stomach, your legs, your calves, your feet. Just start letting go.
Sometimes, when people start letting go, they say, "No, I don't want to." You tighten back up. It's all right. Don't worry about it. That happens. Start over. Just start relaxing again. Just keep letting go. You know, acceptance, it's all about the word "yes." It's yes to reality. It's yes to the moment. It's yes to just what is.
So another way to practice is you could just walk outside, maybe late at night, look up at the stars, and you could just say the word "yes." It's yes to the universe. You could go out and practice every night. You could say "yes" two times a night. So there are lots of ways to practice. You might think of other ways you could practice them. Let's go back to the program.
So what else do you have to do? You have to do one final thing. You have to accept that life can be worth living, even if really painful events are in your life. What's that mean? Well, it means that you have to find a way to not say that life is a catastrophe. How about if we take an example? You get thrown in jail for a crime you didn't commit. You are innocent. And now it's gone to the Supreme Court, and they didn't overturn your conviction. So it's looking like not only you're in jail, let's imagine you're in there for something really serious. So you're in there for life. What are your options? Well, you certainly cannot solve that problem. You're not going to get yourself out of jail. And to be honest, it just doesn't seem to me it's going to be possible for you to start being happy that you are an innocent person in jail. So I think we're going to rule that one out.
So what are your options? Okay, you could be miserable, distraught, upset. You could cry every day for the rest of your life. Or you could accept it and figure out a way to build a life worth living inside a prison. To go from unendurable agony to endurable pain, you're going to have to accept that you can build a life. Because if you don't, don't accept it, well, what happens? You're not going to build a life. And building a life worth living actually takes a fair amount of work. Believing that you can't do it makes it almost impossible. Believing that you can do it makes it a lot easier. So the chances are a lot higher that you'll actually do it, you'll build a life worth living.
So what gets in the way of radical acceptance? Lots of things do. The most common thing that gets in the way is the belief that if you radically accept, that means you're approving, you're going to be passive, you're resigned. People I've worked with, they almost always say this. They say, "What are you talking about me radically accept? I thought you were trying to teach me to stand up for myself. How could I do that if I radically accept it?" Other people say, "Are you kidding? That's the problem with the world. We accept too much. The world's going to hell on a handcart and no one's doing anything about it."
If you want to change something, you have to accept it first. You can't change something you don't accept. If you don't face the reality as it is, if you deny it, how are you going to change it? If you think there's no cause, that it's just happening magically or fate or luck, how are you going to change it? So acceptance is required. Don't believe me, huh? All right, I'll give you an example.
Imagine the following: You're a person who's buying a new house, and you finally found the house of your dreams. There's only one problem with the house: it's purple, and you hate the color purple. So you say, when you buy, "Sell, right? I'll pay you this much money, and you get it signed, sealed, delivered. When you get to that house, it is not going to be purple." Fine. The big day comes, so exciting. You get your keys. You go to the house. Not only is the house still purple, but the owners have moved, and you don't even know where they are. All right, who do you think would get that house changed the fastest? The person who walks in and says, "I can't stand it! This is a disaster! Oh God, where are those people? We got to get... Oh, this! I'm so mad! Well, I'm just not going to tolerate this. I just can't believe..." And that person goes on and on and on. Maybe they storm out, get in the car, leave. They say, "We're not buying that house." But can you get out of it? No. That's one person.
Now imagine the other person. They go in and say, "Ah, I'm so disappointed. I didn't want the house purple. All right, where's the nearest paint store?" Who's going to get it changed first? The person who accepted that the walls were purple, or the person who threw a tantrum? What do you think? Well, it's the person who accepts it.
So if you want things to change, accept them, then change them. Because when we talk about accepting reality as it is, we're not saying accept reality as it is and believe it can never change. Reality is always changing. If you want to have an influence on how it changes, it's in your interest to accept how it is right now. It's really easy to accept things you like. And when you're happy, you probably don't even think about accepting it. When things are going your way, they're what you approve of, they're what you want. Acceptance is really easy.
So when is acceptance hard? Well, it's the hardest when you hate what's happening to you, or you really disapprove of it, or it's causing you a lot of pain. So the bottom line is, is the higher the pain, the harder the acceptance. Let me give you an example. You get married to a nice guy, then you discover this guy has lots of wonderful qualities that you had actually never noticed. He's completely different than you thought. He's 10 times more wonderful than you thought. Do you think that'd be easy to accept or hard to accept? Right, easy.
Well, let's take another case. You marry a guy. He's a nice enough guy. Now you're married. You get to know him. You discover he has lots of negative qualities. In fact, fact, he's got a lot of things about him that you had not known, and you do not like. Easy or hard? Hard. Now, why do you think that is? Why is it harder to accept really painful things? Generally, it's because secretly, somewhere inside us, we actually believe that if we refuse to accept something that we don't like, all we have to do is throw a tantrum or refuse to accept it.
The next skill we're going to talk about is the skill of turning your mind. Now, turning your mind is a great skill because radical acceptance is not something you can do once. It's something you have to do over and over and over. And how do you get yourself to do that? You get yourself to do that by turning the mind. What you have to practice is turning the mind towards acceptance. It's a little bit like walking down a road, and you keep coming to forks in the road. One direction, accepting; the other direction, rejecting. Turning the mind is when you keep turning, turning your mind towards the acceptance route.
So in life, you keep coming to forks, and you have to keep turning the mind to the accepting route. Getting yourself to do it can be really hard. You have to practice over and over and over. The good news is, if you practice turning the mind towards acceptance, eventually you'll practice acceptance more often. And if you do that, what happens? Suffering gets less intense. Suffering goes down to ordinary pain.
How do you do it? Well, the first step is you have to actually notice that you're not accepting. The tip-off to not accepting generally is going to be anger, bitterness, annoyance. Or you may be falling into the sea of "Why me?" So you're going to want to notice that. Or you might find that you're always trying to escape reality. You're trying to block things out all the time. You're hiding behind other things, or you're covering up how you're really feeling with other things. You find yourself saying all the time, "Why? Why is this happening? Why is this happening?" So notice, notice that you're not accepting.
The next step is make an inner commitment to accept. The inner commitment is the turning the mind to the road of accepting. This isn't accepting. Don't worry. You don't have to do it right away. Just have to make the commitment. So go within yourself and make the commitment. In other words, go inside yourself and simply turn your mind towards acceptance.
The third step, do it again. Sometimes you may have to do it again, over and over, many times in a minute. Sometimes you have to do it many times in a day. So that's how you do it. Step one, notice. Step two, inner commitment. Step three, do it again.
So let's take an example. Let's imagine that you're on the bus, and the bus is taking a really long time, and you want to get where you're going. So you look at your watch, and it's already 45 minutes, and it's usually only 20. You may start noticing you're having lots of non-acceptance thoughts. "I can't stand this. They have to hurry up. It shouldn't be taking so long. How much longer? How much longer?" Well, let's say that you've noticed all this. Then you want to practice turning the mind. The first thing you might do is look at all those thoughts and see if you could replace them. How could you do that? Well, you could say, "All right, this is a pain, but it's not a catastrophe." You could say, "I don't like it. I'm frustrated. I can stand it." You could say, "Everything has a cause. There's a reason the bus driver doesn't drive better." Then you could notice yourself, see that you're starting to get annoyed, fidget again. You just repeat it over and over and over.
So the key idea here is that if you're trying to get from non-acceptance to radical acceptance, you first have to turn the mind.
So what's willingness? Willingness is the realization that you are part of and connected to some cosmic process. Not only that, but it's a commitment to active participation in that process. Willingness is when you allow the world to be what it is, and no matter what it is, you agree to participate in the world. So willingness has all to do with the attitude or the stance that you bring to life.
Life is a lot like being a batter in front of a pitching machine. So what happens when you're in front of a pitching machine? There's a machine, and it's throwing balls at you, and you're standing at one end, and the machine's at the other, and the balls start coming. You've got a bat. Now, if a ball's coming at you, and the pitching machine is throwing it, what are your options? Well, you could either take your bat, pull it back, try to hit the ball. Or you could throw a tantrum. You could get really upset. You could say, "It's coming too fast. I don't like it. I'm not doing it. I'm not hitting that ball anymore. Stop!" You think the balls would stop coming if you did that? No.
Life is like that. You can get as upset as you want about life, but actually, life just keeps coming, one moment right after the next. What are your options? You can stand there, do nothing, let the ball go by. Or you could stand in front of the ball and just get hit by it. Or you could try to hit the ball. Willingness is trying to hit the ball.
Sometimes, when I'm trying to explain willingness to people that I work with, I remind them that life is a lot like playing cards. So imagine that you're in a card game. You get dealt cards, handed cards, as does everybody else. Now, what's the objective in a card game? The objective is to play the cards you get, right? That's the game. You get the cards, you play them. So imagine you're at a card game, you get your cards, other people get their cards, and one of the players gets mad about their cards, throws them down, says, "I don't like my cards. I want more cards." He said, "Well, those are the ones you got dealt." And I said, "I don't care. It's not fair." Said, "Well, those are your cards." "No, I'm not playing these cards." What would you think? Would you want to play with that player? Probably not. Who do you think's going to win at the card game? Well, it's probably the person who plays the cards. That's willingness.
Throwing the cards down and walking out, that's willfulness. Sitting back and saying, "I don't care. Oh well. I got a bad hand. Poor me. Whatever." Just throwing any old card out, that's willfulness. The idea when you're playing a hand of cards is to play as skillfully as you can. That's willingness. It has everything to do with throwing yourself into life, participating in a willing manner.
Willfulness is the opposite of willingness. If willingness is realizing that you're a part of and connected to life, willfulness, it's when you forget life. It's when you deny it. It's when you refuse to be part of it. When you want to sit on the sidelines, or you try to ignore it, or you try to destroy it. Willful is a little bit like the terrible twos when you start saying, "No, no, no." But you're saying no to life itself. You're saying no to reality. You're saying no to what is.
All of us have experiences of willfulness. Let's say something's happened to you. It's really painful. Sooner or later, you figure out, "All right, I need to accept this." So you turn your mind towards acceptance. And just as your mind's turning, it's almost there. What happens? Up pops willfulness. "No, I refuse. I am not going to do it." What do you do when willfulness shows up? Well, the first thing you want to do when willfulness shows up is just notice it. You observe it, you identify it, you describe it. You say, "Willfulness has shown up." Second, radically accept the willfulness. We've got to accept that it really is there. Third, turn your mind. You turn your mind to willingness. Turn your mind towards acceptance. Willingness, participating in reality just as it is.
What if you're having trouble getting yourself to turn your mind? You want to, but your mind isn't turning. What can really be helpful when that happens is to try a willing posture. You know, sometimes you can have a really willful posture. Your mind's going one way, and your body's going another. So try a willing posture. What would that be? Well, open your hands. Try it right now. Just open your hands. It is actually hard to be willing with clenched fists. Open your hands. Relax your body. Sit like this, or stand like this.
So what if that doesn't work? What do you do next? The next step is ask yourself, "What's the threat?" Usually, immovable willfulness has to do with some sort of threat. We're thinking that if we're willing, we have something to lose, something terrible is going to happen to us. There's something dangerous out there. That may be true. Also, really immovable willfulness also involves some sort of catastrophe. We start saying, "Not only is there a threat, not only is it dangerous, but I won't be able to deal with it." So we deny it. We push it away. We ignore it. Willfulness allows us to do that.
But remember, willingness is the active participation in reality. Willingness is what you need to overcome a threat. Willingness isn't approval, and it's definitely not lying down and letting yourself get rolled over. So ask yourself, "What's the threat?" Then you could ask yourself, "What's the catastrophe?"
Reality acceptance skills are the skills that you need when really painful events happen in your life, and you can't change the painful event. You can't solve it. You can't make it go away. And you can't turn it into a positive. It's a negative that just won't become a positive, and you're miserable. When that happens, practice reality acceptance.
So what are you going to practice? First, you're going to practice accepting radically. You're going to want to accept that the event has actually happened. You're going to need to accept that there's a cause. It happened for some reason. You may not know what the reason is, but there is a reason. And you're going to want to accept that you can move through it. You can develop a life that has satisfaction, meaning, and worth in it, even with this painful event in your life.
In order to do that, you're going to have to turn the mind over and over and over. When you reach the fork in the road with pain in the middle of it, turn your mind to acceptance, away from rejection. And practice willingness. Practicing willingness means recognizing that you're part of life, that you're connected to things. But it's more than that. It's not just recognizing that you're part of life, but it's actually agreeing to be part of life.
These are the skills of reality acceptance. Sounds easy? Well, it probably doesn't sound easy. Probably sounds hard. It is hard. It's really hard. All of us are still practicing this. This is not one of those things you're going to get perfect at. There's not going to be a day you're going to say, "All right, I've got it. I've got it. I can radically accept. I turn the mind all the time, and I'm willing." That day is not going to come. This is the only set of skills that I teach that I would have to say just about everybody has to practice just about every day of their lives.
The way to practice these skills at the beginning, when they're really hard, is to find small things to practice on first. If you start trying to practice on the really big things, you're not going to be able to do it. So find something small. Practice on that. Willfulness, notice it. You could start by counting it slowly. Try to replace it. Radical acceptance, notice when you're not accepting. You could start with counting it slowly. Try to replace it. Turning the mind, write yourself a note. Put it somewhere in your house. Put it on the refrigerator. All you have to write is "Turn the Mind." Put it up. Try to practice it. Practice it every time you open the refrigerator.
If you keep practicing these skills, they do get easier. It's really the truth. They do. You'll get better at it. Life will get easier. All right, so those are the skills: radical acceptance, remember the word radical, complete, total, all the way. Turning the mind, over and over and over and over and over. And willingness, entering life with willingness.
Now, I know that these are really difficult skills. They've been difficult for me. They're difficult for everybody I know. And then the facts of the matter are, every single person I know is practicing these skills. But I think if you practice them, you'll find over time, may take a while, may be slower than you want, but I think you're going to find them really helpful. The secret is, don't reject them right away. Don't reject them if you don't feel better right away, or somehow your life isn't worth living right this minute. These skills take time to work. But if you keep at it, I think they will work.
So I'd love to hear from you. I'd like to know, are they helpful or aren't they? My email's going to come up in this program in just a moment. I hope you'll write it down. I hope you'll send me an email and tell me what you think about the skills. Now, if you just so happen to know something that I haven't talked about in this program, you think it might improve my program the next time I do one, I hope you'll tell me that too. I'd love to hear from you. Take care. Goodbye.
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If you're interested in ordering other videotapes in the "From Chaos to Freedom" series, please contact Behavioral Tech at 206-675-8588 or visit our website at www.behavioraltech.com.
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