Acceptance vs. Complacence

One of the biggest obstacles I’ve had to overcome in my personal growth is overcoming the seeming conflict between acceptance and complacence. I thought if I’m accepting of my situation, it must mean that I have to sacrifice my desire to grow, overcome my weaknesses and strive for excellence. How can I be accepting of my life if I’m constantly trying to improve?  Doesn’t that mean I’m not accepting of my faults and weaknesses? But on the other side, if I’m accepting of my current situation, wouldn’t that mean I’ve given up my personal power and become complacent?

Why is it that many people seem to confuse acceptance with complacence? If you have acceptance of your life and the world around you, does that necessary make you complacent? Where do we draw the line?

I think resistance to acceptance is caused by a fear of regressing into a deterministic mindset.

Many people feel that if you’re accepting of the way you are, the way things are, you’ve given up. You’ve become complacent and have surrendered yourself to the whims of the universe. Whatever comes along, you’re fine with it, what else can you do right? “It’s just the way things are.”

This is the basic view that you are determined by life, or life determines your circumstances and the life you’ll live. However, we don’t live in a determined universe, we live in a co-creative universe. It’s not a one way street. Our environment influences us, and we also influence our environment.

The smart decision would be to accept this basic fact of life and work with it. After all, when we work with natural laws, instead of against them, we’ll probably get better results.

Uncovering hidden assumptions

Accepting that our environment shapes us isn’t giving up our power, it’s embracing it completely. When we accept that our environment influences us, we’re no longer denying what is. Just as when we accept that we also determine our environment, we’re embracing our response-ability to create our own lives. We don’t have to choose one or the other, why not have our cake and eat it too. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s making cake and not eating it. =)

I used to think that if I accepted life as it is, I was fating myself to whatever life brought my way. I felt that life was essentially pointless, since I didn’t have any real say in how my life would turn out anyway. What’s the point in even making an effort, when my destiny is pre-determined? Luckily I was able to realize that this wasn’t an accurate model of reality. It was only my map of reality that was causing me to view life in a deterministic way. It was my choice to choose to live with this belief or not. That’s when I started to realize that my beliefs were a filter for my reality. They were like holding a blue lens in front of your eyes, you lose your perception of color. The same way that a depressed person views reality through their own mental lens of sadness.

Re-examining your life and making a commitment to finding happiness and joy in your life might cause your beliefs to change. With this change in your beliefs, you’re now viewing reality through a new lens, perhaps one of love or hope. It’s not necessarily that anything “out there” has changed, but the way you see things has.

We have to question our beliefs and ask whether or not they are just assumptions or if they’re actually based in truth. I’ve gone through this process many times in my life. I’ve questioned my beliefs about reality, religion, the nature of our world, relationships, the meaning of life, friendships, sex, drugs, motivation, you name it, I’ve probably questioned it. And if I haven’t, I’m sure I’ll get around to it sooner or later. This questioning isn’t always the most pleasant experience though.

Dropping old beliefs that you’ve carried around your entire life can be very discomforting. The feeling of not knowing and being unsure of what everything means is a very scary place to be. Trust me, I’ve gone through it many times. But ultimately, I’d much rather know that I chose my beliefs consciously, rather than just accepting the ones life happened to hand me along the way.

At first I thought this questioning of life was at odds with the basic need for acceptance. If you can’t find acceptance, you’ll never be satisfied right? This either or approach just didn’t cut it for me though. I had to find a way to reconcile my desire to grow and accept myself as I was. Eventually I learned that acceptance and a desire to grow weren’t at odds with each other at all. In fact, they worked greater together for me than they ever did apart. When I accepted the way things were I stopped working against reality and moved in alignment with it. What’s the point of trying to deny what is? If you’re denying what is, you don’t have an accurate map of reality. It’s like trying to find your way through Los Angeles with a map of Seattle. In the same way, when I realized my response determined my results, I accepted my innate ability to create my own life.

Demystifying the blocks toward acceptance and growth

The real key is to not seek your identity with your position. When we identify with growth, we identify with our position. We resist acceptance because we see all of our flaws and mistakes. We judge ourselves for them and find ourselves guilty. How can we be accepting when there are so many things we see wrong with us?

On the other side we can identify with acceptance, we seek ourselves in our ability to be accepting of life and ourselves. Then we find a conflict in the desire to change and the desire to grow because it violates our acceptance-identity. If we’re constantly seeking growth and excellence, we’re not accepting life as it is. We can’t have that, because acceptance is important. Acceptance brings peace.

What about not accepting yourself because you’re not being accepting enough? I’ve gotten caught up in this useless mind-trap as well. Utter nonsense.

However, if we cease to seek our identity in our position and define ourselves based on our principles and values, we find stability. We our driven by our internal compass, instead of the constantly changing terrain of our life. Instead of the terrain defining us, it will instead define how we apply our values, or compass, to the current situation.

The terrain of life is constantly changing, identifying ourselves with terrain is a dangerous path. We leave ourselves vulnerable to becoming too attached to something that is constantly shifting. If I identify myself with my position today, I might think very highly of myself. I’ve written two articles, I’m caught up on all my correspondence and business matters that need to be taken care of. I also just got accepted to do a guest post on two major personal development blogs. I’ve walked a total of over 5 miles today, practiced my eye asanas, yoga and ate a mostly raw diet. Everything is looking good for me right now, I’m meeting all of my expectations. But if something doesn’t go the way I planned and my expectations aren’t met, I’m left open to feeling disappointed and frustrated. However, if my sense of self is rooted in unchanging values such as clarity, authenticity, love and compassion, I will find peace within regardless of the constant ups and downs in my life. That doesn’t mean I can’t strive for growth and excellence, I just no longer seek my sense of self-worth within my constantly changing position.

This is not easy to do, especially when you’ve spent years doing exactly the opposite.

Finding our sense of self in the permanent

The key to overcoming the conflict between acceptance and complacency, is finding the values that matter the most to you and referring to them for your sense of identity and purpose. My top three values are authenticity, clarity and balance. I know if I’m living authentically, I’ll naturally be happy because I won’t be trying to be someone I’m not. I’ll be expressing my creative energy with everything I do, because I’m living out of a sense of integrity and not a sense of fear. I’m living in congruence with my own truth, not simply what society or others expect of me.

When I strive to find clarity in all aspects of my life, I increasingly become more aligned with the truth. The more we live in truth, the more happiness we’ll find because we no longer let fear hold us back. Another side-effect of increased clarity is our map of the terrain of life becomes more and more accurate. We move from stumbling along an unsure path to having a crystal clear vision of the meaning and purpose in our lives. We know what direction we need to take because we have our purpose to constantly refer to. No matter how much the terrain of life changes, we can constantly refer to it as our guide for the next step we need to take.

Lastly, but not least, balance is very important to me as well. If I work towards balance in all every areas of my life I can find peace and sustainability. The result of all problems in life can always be traced backed to some sort of imbalance. Perhaps your lack of inspiration is due to an imbalance of mind over heart, or an imbalance with meeting the needs of yourself with the needs of others. Maybe your health is suffering because of an imbalance with your desire for money and success and making the time and priority to stay in shape. Or if you’re not finding the fulfillment you want in life, you’re probably not doing a very good job balancing the important with the urgent. You’re just spinning your wheels reacting to the next thing that comes your way. The point is wherever there is a problem, we can always find that somewhere there is a lack of balance.

I have other values that are important to me like health/fitness, excellence/mastery, devotion, drive, integrity, discipline, compassion, love, growth and focus. But there are all secondary to my top 3 values because as long as I’m living in alignment with balance, clarity and authenticity, I’ll naturally create a life aligned with all of my secondary values as well.

It’s important for me that I keep my sense of self rooted in these values. That way even if my position changes or the terrain of life gets rocky, I’ll still be able to refer back to my unchanging values for a sense of purpose and direction. I’m no longer identifying with the hills or the valleys, but my unchanging internal compass.

If you’re struggling with reconciling your desire to accept yourself and life as it is, with your drive to grow and improve, the best thing you can do is to find out what your core values are and start referring to them for your sense of identity and purpose. After all, aren’t your core values such as love, happiness, inner peace and authenticity more important then how much money your making, your social status or how much you weigh? You don’t have to sacrifice your desire to improve these aspects of your life, you just stop seeking your self in them. In this way you can find fulfillment without attachment and acceptance without complacence.

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