Acceptance of reality is the first step to creating change

It only took a few hours for Arnold Beisser to go from being a 24-year-old nationally ranked tennis champion to a Polio survivor that could not stand, walk, sit, eat, drink, or even breathe unassisted. 

Despite that, he would go on to teach psychiatry at UCLA, lead a community mental health movement, and write several best-selling books. 

What allowed him to do it?  Radical acceptance of reality.  And his greatest legacy within the field of psychiatry and therapy is what he called the paradoxical theory of change: 

“Change occurs when one becomes what he or she is, not by trying to become something he or she is not.”

People can pursue all kinds of skill-building in an effort to make themselves better, stronger, more complete, or less broken. But transformative growth becomes possible when we accept that we are already whole. The deepest, most important part of us is already exactly as it should be - and that becomes the platform for greater understanding and growth.  

It sounds very “woo woo” but we’ve experienced this firsthand so powerfully. When people accept that their humanness is already working beautifully, the real growth journey begins.  

They can stop projecting, hiding, defending. Guards go down, possibilities open up, and true learning becomes possible. 

This is not growth in order to fix something or “become” something else — but growth that comes naturally from achieving a greater understanding of what you are and a greater connection to the present moment. 

The Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hahn talks about the plant that grows — not because it is putting energy toward becoming something else, something “new” — but because it is so grounded in what it is, and it is alive to the opportunities of the present moment.  

Growth happens because “the plant is being the plant.”

For us as humans, this requires a level of acceptance that we’re conditioned not to give ourselves: to accept ourselves as we are, and reality for what it is.  It requires us to get rid of the “shoulds” in our life.  

We feel a sense of stress from having our focus on so many things, and the fatigue of a perpetually racing mind. Our ego pushes us to resist reality. It might say: You shouldn’t be so overwhelmed.  A stronger leader who wouldn’t feel this way.  

But what if there is nothing wrong with “you?”  What if “you” are working perfectly, and your body is telling you what it feels like to spend so much time disengaged from the present moment?

What would happen if we all stopped expending energy trying to become something else and focused instead on what our bodies are telling us right now?  What we’ve seen in our intensives is that what we feel can tell us A LOT.  

It can tell us what we care about. Who we care about.  It can tell us when someone is being dehumanized (including us).  It can tell us that a wrong decision has been made.  That we’re not living our values.  

Or, that we are.  It can tell us when we’re taking care of ourselves.  And when we’re not. 

But the reason we stop listening to our feelings is that we’ve internalized the notion that those feelings are the very evidence that we are broken. As our ego reminds us, we should not feel that way.  It’s a sign of our weakness.  We see that cycle fueling burn out. 

Accepting ourselves at that level is hard - even for those of us who already receive far more messages from society that we are “acceptable.”  There are leaders on the journey with us who receive many more harmful messages about who they “should” be, can’t be, etc.

We invite everyone to take this moment with us and become aware of what we’re feeling right now and seek the greater understanding it can offer.