Transform your life with radical acceptance

Happy Sunday! Or maybe it isn’t happy or Sunday when you read this. That’s OK. Hopefully what you’re about to read will lift your mood…

I’m writing this to you fresh from a day at the hospital with my dad where we ended up talking at length about the concept of Radical Acceptance.

Actually, we started off talking about plain old acceptance. I added the Radical part later. More on that in a minute…

My dad has been in hospital for so long it’s understandably starting to get to him.

And now one of the men in the same bay on his ward has covid.

Thankfully, my dad is a very spiritual person - I say spiritual because he isn’t a member of any particular religion but he has studied and absorbed the key teachings of many different faiths.

Readers of my novel, The Storyteller of Auschwitz will know that the character of Solly was inspired by my dad and the Jewish wisdoms and traditions he’s taught me over the years.

He’s also very familiar with Buddhist philosophy - a major tenet of which is acceptance.

When Buddhists talk about acceptance they are talking about acceptance as a practise - a way of being - and this can be particularly powerful when it comes to tough times.

Practising acceptance means that when you find yourself in a situation you don’t like and you can’t immediately change - being stuck on a hospital ward for instance - you don’t resent or resist it.

Let's face it, resenting a situation only makes you feel a million times worse and is such a waste of energy.

Acceptance on the other hand, could see you saying to yourself, ‘OK, this is how things are for now’ and taking a few slow, deep breaths.

Just that simple act tends to instantly calm your nervous system.

And now you’re no longer wasting energy on feeling pissed off you can spend that energy on thinking more empowering thoughts.

You might not be able to change a situation but you can always, ALWAYS, change how you think about it.

Let me use what happened to me yesterday as an example...

After travelling 3 hours to get to the hospital, I was told that there was covid on my dad’s part of the ward.

I instantly feared for the health of my dad and the other five men in the bay - all of them in their 80s.

And I thought something along the lines of, ‘FFS this is all Dad needs on top of everything else.’

I put on the PPE - the apron, gloves and mask that visitors to the bay are now required to wear and which, combined with the heat of the ward, made me feel like I was in a sauna.

And I thought something along the lines of, ‘How am I going to manage five hours in this heat?’

These resistant thoughts instantly caused my body to tense.

And if I’d stayed in that negative thought loop it would have made for an unpleasant day and I would have been a crap visitor for my dad.

But thankfully something so lovely and unexpected happened it acted as a kind of negative-thought-circuit-breaker.

My dad’s lovely friend Keith arrived with a gift he’d made for him that instantly had us both cracking up laughing.

Here in the UK, buildings where famous people from history used to live are marked with circular blue plaques on the wall, stating the name of the person, what they’re noted for, and when they lived there.

Keith had decided to make a spoof plaque for my dad, making a joke out of the length of time he’s now spent in hospital.

It was hilarious, and instantly shifted the mood.

Later, when Keith had gone, my dad started talking about how the practise of acceptance has been helping him deal with his health issues and hospital stays.

Right at that moment one of the other patients began yelling that he wanted to die, and another launched a wobbly escape bid, causing the nurses to scramble to get him safely back to bed.

‘Forget plain old acceptance, I think you need to practise Radical Acceptance in here,’ I said to my dad and we both had a chuckle about how adding the word ‘radical’ instantly gives any concept a grittier, more powerful edge.

And it reminded me of one of my all time favourite quotes, from Jewish rabbi and theologian, Abraham Joshua Heschel:

“Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement … get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible, never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.”

I googled the quote to write it down in my dad’s notebook and hopefully keep him inspired. As I did so, my glasses kept steaming up because of the mask I was wearing. But instead of getting stressed about it, I kept giggling and taking them off and wiping them before they steamed up again.

Radical Comical Acceptance - and it worked a treat.

On the train on the way home I was flicking through a little notebook that I keep on me at all times to jot things in. I’ve had it in my bag for months now so it’s full of writing ideas and shopping lists and Airbnb details like key safe numbers and Wifi codes from around the world.

me and my trusty notebook

As I leafed through the pages I found something I’d written in August when I was in Ukraine and had already experienced a couple of air attacks.

I’d gone for a walk in the park one morning and sat down on a bench to scribble a list of things I was grateful for…

As I re-read those words yesterday I realised that writing the list had been another act of Radical Acceptance - with a splash of Radical Amazement thrown in.

Rather than writing about the stress of the war - a situation I couldn’t change - I’d accepted the situation and focused on the positives. I was alive. I’d had power for most of the night (for a much-needed and appreciated fan to keep me cool in the heat!) I was surrounded by trees and the colour green. The sun was shining. My phone was full of loving messages from family and friends around the globe.

Remembering that time yesterday made me feel radically amazed all over again.

I hope this letter helps you to accept the things you’re not able to change (yet).

I hope it inspires you to get radical in your acceptance and amazement.

I hope my examples from a covid-infected hospital ward and a country at war help you to see that these practises are possible in any situation. Because the one thing we always have control over are our thoughts.

Until next week, sending love and peace.

Siobhan