Acceptance, the second core feature of mindful awareness is acceptance, which means opening to our
experience as it unfolds.
After a couple miserable nights, Joan realized he needed a new perspective on his daughter's bedtime.
The next night, he decided to try a different approach.
What if he let the night play out?
However it was going to?
It's not like his resistance made things better.
It was making him frustrated toward his baby.
Every night, he resolved to do his best to help her fall asleep and to release his fierce attachment
to controlling exactly when that happened.
The first time his daughter began to cry, Joan took a calming breath before going into her room and
instead of telling himself, I hate this or this is ridiculous.
He thought, this is what's happening right now.
Then he took stock of what that statement actually meant.
He was standing by the crib of his baby girl, whom he loved more than words.
He was patting her tiny back, which was the size of his hand.
He could hear her breathing begin to slow.
He realized how in that moment he had no real complaint about anything.
He wasn't cool, hungry, thirsty or in danger.
His daughter was healthy.
She just wasn't asleep yet.
Maybe things were exactly as they ought to be.
John's example reveals important natural response of mindful acceptance.
First, it doesn't mean we stop having preferences for how things go.
Of course, John still wanted his baby to fall asleep quickly and easily and wanted to have more of
the evening to himself to unwind.
Accepting meant holding those preferences more likely and not assuming his daughter was doing something
wrong by not being asleep when he wanted her to be.
Accordingly, Joan didn't throw in the towel and stop following the bedtime routine he had agreed on
to transition their baby to falling asleep on her own in her crib.
He stuck to his plan, offering predictability and consistency while recognizing that he couldn't control
his daughter's sleep.
When we stop fighting against the way things are, we leave an enormous portion of our stress earlier
in my career.
I had a very difficult supervisor, and I often found myself tied up in my thoughts as I tried to make
sense of how unreasonable she was.
Finally, I reached a point of accepting that she could just be difficult, period.
My acceptance didn't change her behavior, but it did free me from acting as if she were doing something
surprising.
She was simply being true.
To form a crucial part of acceptance is that it lets us respond appropriately to the facts in front
of us.
My acceptance of my boss temperament made it clear to me that I needed to find work elsewhere, which
underscores the distinction between acceptance and apathy.