Accepting vs. Letting Go
And how to cut yourself some GD slack
Here’s something I’m overthinking about: the difference between accepting and letting go.
I put a lot of pressure on myself to let things go — breathe in positivity breathe out negativity, that sort of thing. At some point, I guess I internalized the idea that if I’m holding on to negative things, that makes me a negative person. A bad person.
When I put thoughts like this in the centrifuge of my mind and let the plasma separate from the rest of the junk, I can see how ridiculous that sounds.
Letting go is hard because our brains make sure that it’s hard. Ever vigilant, our brains can be like scary cartoon guard dogs: they want to chomp down on the bad guy’s leg so he can’t get away and surprise us in the future. Telling our brain-dog to let go can have the opposite effect. For instance, I recently dog-sat a (real life, not metaphorical) gorgeous, huge husky mix, and on a walk she found half a dozen bagels on the ground. Guess what happened when I tried taking a sesame bagel out of her mouth? She clamped her jaw down harder.
My brain does this all the freaking time.
“Don’t be scared,” I tell myself when my stomach starts feeling uneasy. “Let it go.” And then? I focus so much on trying not to feel unwell that I work myself up into — you guessed it — feeling worse.
That’s why acceptance is one of my favorite tools ever.
Instead of telling my guard dog brain, “Don’t be scared,” I try saying something like, “It makes sense you are scared.” It gives my brain the space to unclench its jaw. And it gives me a sense of peace instead of panic.
Letting go implies impossible permanence, the period at the end of a sentence:
”If I let go of this sadness, then I will never feel it again” (as if your brain would ever allow that to happen). Acceptance is going with the flow. When you accept something, you’re creating only the first part of a sentence. To finish that sentence, you can use an “and” or a “but.” Or both!
For example, “I accept that I am scared and I will treat myself with compassion” can also be “I accept that I am scared but I am going to do this thing anyway.” That fear might continue squirming between the jaws of your brain, but you and your mind can move on to other thoughts and feelings.
For the record, I’m not trying to tell you that acceptance is like super easy la dee da. I wrote a whole dang book about it, and I’m still learning.
But I know we can do it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, the guard dog that is my brain has a grooming appointment.
Love Always,
Christina
P.S. I love this video:
”The more you live life, the better it will get, the easier it will become, and the stronger you will feel.”