The Rocky Road Between Ideas and Reality

Last week I wrote a rather messy unedited piece about the ever trendy diagnosis of Narcissism and Sex Addiction. This week I'm going to talk about the rocky road which we travel when translating great ideas into reality. Concepts such as, acceptance, forgiveness, letting go and reflecting among other things seem like wonderful ideas.  The problem with wonderful ideas is that they often are just wonderful ideas that seem highly obtainable in thought however, instantly seem highly unobtainable when translating them into action. There are so many variables in this transition, we just don't know how other people are going to respond. We have fantastical ideas when we first set out which are abruptly halted by the reality that confronts us.  We have a misconception about what success looks like we aren't prepared and often we give up before we have given these ideas a really good try.

I remember when I first graduated from my Associate Diploma of Social Science and Community Development I had also done years of self-help manual reading and hours of counselling and self exploration. I was keen to stretch my wings and practice what I had learned: Talking in the "I",  reflecting content, empathising and not sympathising. I was keen as mustard to be strength focused, to be accepting of my clients and their situations and treat everyone as my equals. I had  textbooks and self help books stacked high in my many bookcases amongst a healthy amount of children's books for my sons. I had diligently read them all and committed them to memory. What a pain in the bum I was. Probably I still am sometimes :)

Lucky for me my first job was with intellectually disabled people and their families. I launched into a conversation based on all my training, my own self discovery.  I was talking to a young guy who had made several attempts on his life, his father had committed suicide and so had his older brother. My job for the day was to take the fellow fishing and try to talk to him about his depressed mood. My leading sentence, after the formalities were over, was "Is there anything you'd like to share with me today?".  You can only imagine my shock when the very honest young man looked me dead in the eyes and said to me rather harshly "Can you just cut the crap and talk to me like a fucking human being?"...from that point on I understood that those books might have been pretty helpful for my own personal development  and formed a good foundation.  Reality required that I come up with something more authentic and meaningful right now or I would not be successful at all in helping anyone including myself.

So with this is mind we are going to cut the crap and have an authentic blog about the reality of acceptance.  Let me start with meditation, the goal of meditation is to empty your mind and find a place of peace and serenity.  I've been practicing Meditation for many years, since I was 13 years old. At 50 years old I can empty my mind and reach a place of peace and serenity sometimes, not all the time. The expectation of emptying your mind and finding a place of peace and serenity is a goal and perhaps some of us are perfect meditating guru's and can reach nirvana after 12 months of practicing meditation. The rest of us however, will never be able to achieve that pinnacle. This fact is probably why the focus on meditative goals has changed so much since I first learned this life skill. It's the practicing which is important. It's important to be realistic about it and congratulate yourself on your success and not spend too long analysing what went wrong. The important thing is you gave it a go and you learnt a little bit more about it than you did last time you had a go at it.

With this in mind in regard to practicing acceptance, do not have the expectation of being able to accept everything all at once. If you are in a full on argument with someone over politics, sex or religion forget the idea of accepting the other person's arguments. Try at first to see that their argument might be just as important to them as your arguement is to you. Does that mean you shouldn't challenge them? No it does not. Challenging and withstanding a challenge is very character building. Being open to accepting that you might be wrong or you're opinion isn't fully formed is also a good idea.

Have you ever had an argument or debate with someone, a conflict of any kind actually and then 24 hours later realised that you were in the wrong or you missed an opportunity to learn something or you may have prematurely burned a bridge? If you have never experienced this congratulations to you. If you have welcome to the club of imperfectionism.  You are not alone. Most of us have had that feeling. It takes a great deal of self acceptance and humility however, to fix it all up. I would like to say it is never too late to apologize. It's never too late to clarify. It's never too late to complete a conflict. The completion of a conflict is "resolution".  As one of my very wise son's said to me "Conflict is the gnarly tree we have to climb to eat the sweet fruit which is resolution"

This is the first practice of acceptance which may surprise a lot of people. Conflict is a good thing and is a crucial element of acceptance because when we complete the conflict we reach resolution. This is true of "inner conflict" as well. In order to achieve acceptance we must resolve our conflicts. The first point of call is learning how to climb the gnarly tree without bleeding to death before we reach that sweet fruit. You might want to revisit the earlier blog on genograms to look at how your family taught you to manage conflict.  Next week let's tackle our hardest conflictual nemesis "ourselves". There will be some writing and thinking to do so come prepared.

References

Stevens, Bruce "Happy Ever After?: A Practical Guide to Relationship Counselling for Clinical Psychologist" (ebook, 2015) Publisher Australian Academic Press

Hayes, S phd with Smith S "Get out of your Mind and Into your Life: The New Acceptance Commitment Therapy" (2005) New Harbinger Publications