Ep 70| Radical Acceptance: The Secret to a Happy Life

Kim Strobel 00:03 

Hello, hello, my she finds joy podcast listeners, I am joining you today. And I just experienced my 48th birthday. And I don't know about you. But I tend to reflect on each birthday and think about What lesson did I learn this year? Or where did I grow? What work did I do? And I was really proud of myself when I thought about this last year because in this podcast episode isn't necessarily about this, but I'm just telling you where I am right now in my headspace, but I worked on the word acceptance. I have felt like there have been in justices that have been done to me, it could be situations that I was in, that I didn't feel I deserve to be in it could be people who didn't treat me or still don't treat me in a way that I don't understand. It could be situations. 

And I know that I have held on to bitterness and resentfulness for too long. And when I did this work last year on myself, I was really trying to say, Hey, how can you, Kim begin to stop wishing that things were different. Because I find myself doing that a lot. I wish I had not married someone and then divorced him five years later, I wished that my son didn't grow up in a blended family, even though his stepdad is his primary father figure many times and it's such a gift. I wished that certain people in my life didn't bring their psychological garbage towards me, or that these relationships could be different, or why aren't they different? Or why am I treated like this. And over the years that has stolen a lot of my energy. And I've spent too much time letting it take for me. And I don't know if you can resonate with this or not. But this year, I had to work on this idea of no longer resisting things as they are. And not wishing them to be different. Not thinking they could be different, not forcing them to be different. 

But truly just saying, This is how it is. And I don't have to spend time ruminating on it. I don't have to try to figure it out. Because you're never going to figure out other people. And what if I just allowed it to be what it is. And I did this work through some journal writing. I did some forgiveness meditations because it was really hard for me to forgive these people. I held on to it thinking that it was serving me somehow maybe my own righteousness. And what I've discovered is that I'm a lot happier and more at peace, when I accept people or circumstances or situations. And that I accept that I have no power over them to change them. And this little lesson, I will tell you it. It has freed up space in my life for more of what I do want. You see when we I laugh at myself, because here I was just going to do a little birthday thing. And now this podcast episode has already been four minutes in about acceptance when I had no plan to go there today.

 But you got to go with what your soul is wanting to say today. But I think and I'm pondering this right now. But when I learned that I am learning to let go of resentment and bitterness in trying to change situations that I cannot change. I will tell you that everything in my life this year has in creased exponentially the amount of love between my husband and I has increased exponentially. My finances have increased exponentially. My business has expanded exponentially and I know it is because I have let go of some of these heavier feelings, these lower vibrational feelings. And when I did that, I freed up space in my own life for more goodness to come to me. And that's my birthday reflection. And I think I still have work to do on that. But I think that when we resist things as they are, we cause suffering for ourselves. And that, to me is suffering. Suffering is when you keep wishing things were different, and they're not. And I will tell you that another kind of quote that really stuck out to me as I was reading one of my own inspirational books last week, was this idea of trauma. And the quote said, I'm pulling it up here for you. 

The quote said, our trauma is not our fault. But our healing is our responsibility. And I love that, because bad crap has happened to almost all of us things that we did not deserve, people who did injustices to us. Things that happened in our childhood in our teenage years in our adulthood, this trauma is not our fault. But it is our responsibility to heal that trauma. And for me, that means I am constantly working on myself, both me working on myself individually. But for me, I also have, I don't even like to call him a counselor only because there's no not because of the stigma. But like, he's more than a therapist, he's more than a counselor, he's like this angel walking the earth that has guided me in all areas of my life for 20 years. And because of him, I feel like I've been able to peel back the layers of the crap that's inside of me, and begin to really transform that because that's the decision that we have, isn't it, we have to decide if we can actually use the bad shit in our life, to change us for the better. And that is not easy work to do. In fact, it's hard work. It's painful work. I call it productive struggle, work and productive struggle, is that little area in your life where it hurts. It's not fun. It feels hard. It feels yucky sometimes to have to meet the shadow sides of yourself those kind of dark hidden recesses, where you have to bring up old shit. 

And you have to look at your responsibility with the shit. And you have to do the work on yourself. Because you will never, ever change the people around you. The only person you can change is yourself. And that is where your power lies. Your power lies in your ability to finally say, I am no longer going to be a victim of this thing that happened to me. I am no longer going to let this thing that happened to me steal my joy. Still my well being still my piece. And that, my friends is when you take your power back. And I think that when I look at what I do now for a living, I think that power, which is a word sometimes misused but I think that I want others to truly step into their power and their potential. Because there were so many times in my life where I felt powerless. I felt like there was nothing I could do. And I tried to change Change what was happening to me and I could not change it much of the time. 

There's so many ways that we feel powerless, maybe you've lost a family member to suicide or disease or natural causes. Or you grew up in a dysfunctional family or had an absent parent or had a parent with mental illness or a narcissistic parent abuse an abusive parent, and you felt powerless. Maybe you were a victim of sexual assault, or physical and emotional abuse as a child, and you felt powerless. Or you were a victim of a violent crime, or you have a family member who has an alcohol or drug problem, or your beloved pet develops cancer. There are so many ways that we feel powerless in our life. But I think we have to redefine powerless, and allow ourselves the grace to feel those heavy feelings. But there is a way we can use those things. As lessons and opportunities for going forward. As hard as that is because we all hate the feeling of being out of control. Right? Well, we'll we'll do pretty much anything to not feel powerless. But it's understanding that we can make a conscious decision to take our power back in these areas of our life, where we have been stuck. We might feel like, at times, we have control. 

But it's not it's not control. It's the illusion of control. And the illusion of control can make us feel safe for the short term. But it's really the cornerstone to our suffering. And so we have to think about that our power comes from being able to accept things as they are. And then use that particular theme as a stepping stone, to work on the parts of yourself that need to be transformed. Or work on the parts of yourself that need to forgive people for what they've done to you. And I'm going to tell you, I have for I have resisted this forgiveness thing for a long time. Like I want to forgive people, I know that forgiveness doesn't mean that I forget what they did. I know that forgiveness will free me up. But it's so hard to let go of. Because you feel like you're making the other person pay for what they did to you by not forgiving them. And I think that I will always be working on that. But I do know that this year I've specifically worked on it. And it feels lighter, I feel better. And I want all of us to just consider where in our life. And we begin to allow acceptance. Where can we say I can't change this situation. I can't change this experience. 

I can't change this circumstance, I can't change how this person thinks of me or looks at me or responds to me. All I can do is accept that that's what it is. And when I say that, I mean that we you know, we have to have respect for how others treat us we're allowed to draw boundaries. But personally, I have some people in my life, that I'm somewhat limited in having them in my life. And I've had to work really hard on not trying to change their perception of me and to allow them to have their perception of me even though I think it's unfair to me, even though I can't wrap my head around it. But I accept that that is their perception, and I can't Change it. And that, for me, has felt like relief. And that's just a piece of what I wanted to share with you today is a little bit about my birthday reflection, the word acceptance, understanding that when we can begin to allow things to be as they are, and do the inner work that is required of us, we create space for more goodness in our life. Ah, how does that feel? I would love to hear from you. How does that feel to you? How does that resonate with you? If you happen to be in the she finds joy Facebook group, I would love you to pop in and let me know you listened to the episode. Let me know if it resonated with you. Or if you're on Instagram, and you're following me at Kim Strobel Joy, I would just love for you to take a screenshot of the episode and tag me or shoot me a message because when I check to see how many people are listening to this podcast, I'm amazed. But I want to make those personal connections with you. I want you to reach out and say, Hey, this is the episode this is how it affected me. Because what that does is it gives me a little more energy to bring to the next podcast episode. But I thank you I thank you for your time. I thank you for listening to this podcast. And I look forward to hearing from you