If it bothers you, accept it or change it
Well-being 🌿 | Letting go 🍃 | #Acceptance #Frustration #Perfectionism
TL;DR
When something bothers you, choose between accepting it or making a change.
Changing requires a well-thought-out plan and genuine commitment to the objective.
Mindful acceptance is not quitting but a valuable skill, allowing you to focus on what you value and avoid unnecessary battles.
Seed
If something bothers you, you have two choices: accept it or change it. It's up to you to decide what the best course of action is, but ignoring or complaining about it will only lead to continued suffering.
Adjusting what frustrates you often appears like the obvious option. But if you decide to change something, make sure you have a plan. You will need to think it through. And most importantly, you will need to commit to your objective genuinely.
The other path, accepting reality and moving on, can be challenging. It also can be a real strength. Many people would think that changing things is a more noble approach. But letting go is also a skill that can be genuinely difficult to master and extremely valuable.
I often hear that accepting something that bothers you is quitting. Like it's something negative. But giving up on something that is not worth your time and energy is not a bad thing.
Mindfully accepting means that you will acknowledge what happened and consciously choose to leave it as it is. You're not ignoring the problem, you're not hiding from it. You just know it's here and decided to live with it - which, ironically, will make it become less of a problem.
Letting go will allow you to focus your energy on things that you value. Sometimes it will even help you to avoid fighting an impossible battle.
The real danger is pretending to accept, pretending that you're fine with something that annoys you. This will create a lot of friction in your life. And the dissonance between what you want reality to be and what it actually is will most certainly create frustration.
Finally, keep an open mind. Sometimes, you may find that there are parts of the situation you can let go of, and other parts that you want to change. Maybe the best solution for you will be a compromise between the two.
To sum-up, accepting or changing something that bothers you is the only way to avoid continued suffering. It's not always easy, but it's necessary for your own well-being.
Example
Climate change bothers me. It's actually a topic that even worries me a lot. Obviously, worrying about it won't achieve anything. But on my own I cannot solve it all.
It's one of those cases where I can do both: accepting that it's not something that I can solve on my own and that it’s something that won’t be solved any time soon. And I can also commit to taking action today to contribute correcting the issue at my own scale.
Bonus
There are events for which you won't have a choice, and you'll need to accept them. Sometimes, you just cannot have control over something.
The best examples are events from the past. What happened has already happened, and dwelling on it will only make you feel powerless. You can't change the past, but you can control what you do going forward.
Somehow this Seed always makes me think of a quote from a movie I love, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. A bit of context: one of the protagonists is chained and about to be devoured by some alien, when the narrator casually states:
What to do if you find yourself stuck with no hope of rescue:
Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far.
Alternatively, if life hasn’t been good to you so far, which, given your current circumstances seems more likely, consider how lucky you are that it won’t be troubling you much longer.