Acceptance Leads to Changes

by Heather Long | More from this Blogger

15 May 2006 04:30 AM

We cannot change anything unless we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses. - Carl Jung

When it comes to planning a lifestyle change that includes a new diet and fitness regimen, you need to accept the way you are before you can change it. How can you accept it and change it at the same time? It sounds pretty tricky, but the thing is - once you accept the way you are - changing it is a far easier process than ever before.

When it comes to our bodies, we want to change or modify what we don't like. Obviously, if we like the way we are, we rarely want to change it. If you understand that you only want to change what you don't like, then you have taken the first step towards accepting the way you are. If you do not recognize this, then you are likely choosing to diet out of anger, disgust or disappointment. These are all negative emotions that will be further enhanced by failure.

You Cannot Build On the Negative

When you decide to make life changes based on negative feelings or self-image, then you are trying to get a positive result by multiply against a negative base. Remember, in basic math when you multiply a positive to a negative - your result will always be a negative. Or as my grandmother used to say, when you put out negative energy - you should only expect to get negative energy back. You get what you give.

Unfortunately, we all get into cycles of negativity. We regret past choices and we spend a lot of time saying what if. The problem is that while you are looking back on past regrets and feeling remorse, you are likely creating new regrets as you ignore the present in favor of mourning the past.

You can't go back and undo what you did or did not do in the past, but you can make a difference in yourself right now. You can accept that who you are right now is the product of past decisions and choices. Accept the history lesson for what it is and what it means; use it as a guide to correcting future behavior and making better choices then.

So how does this help?

It helps because once you can accept who you are, you can start living now. You can make choices that affect the now. So what if you ate fried foods and drank coke all the time before; that was then and this is now. By choosing to understand that the decisions you made in the past were mistakes, it says that you have already learned that the past is not something to be dwelled on but rather something to be learned from.

So give yourself a break, don't dwell on who you were, the choices you made or the mistakes you made. Even wrong turns can get you where you are going ultimately. In fact, some of the best places I ever ended up were because I made a wrong turn and took the scenic route. Every experience you have had, every choice you have made - all of them culminated into who you are today.

Accept that. Then you are making your decisions and choices on a positive foundation and where do you have to go from there but up?

Learn more about Heather Long

Heather Long is 35 years old and currently lives in Wylie, Texas. She has been a freelance writer for six years. Her husband and she met while working together at America Online over ten years ago.

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