At the moment I’m living with a big problem. It encompasses a lot of uncomfortable things, including legal action, family, relationships, money, parents, health issues, step-families. Ouch! This involves other people in my family so it wouldn’t be fair to go into the details, but I’m sure that list gives a pretty good idea of how wide-ranging and painful it can be. I’m not going through a divorce at the moment, although I have done twice, and I can certainly say that this is very much the same sort of thing.
Why am I posting about it if I’m not going to tell you about it? Well, I have got some rather remarkable experience to share, and I expect to be gaining more as time goes on. When this problem first came to light, I reacted with a lot of pain. I was quite depressed, very anxious, and felt hopeless and paralysed. I couldn’t stay like that. I needed to take action, to be supportive and productive. So I started to look for ways to thrive despite what was happening. Amazingly, what happened was I started to thrive because of it! In the last three months or so, I’ve worked on myself like I haven’t worked for….oh about 23 years….and learned some incredible things. I want to share what I’m learning and also find out whether this stuff is helpful to others, and to get some feedback on what other things people use to deal with big problems in a grown up, heart-centred way.
So I have decided to post a number of separate pieces on Dealing with Big Problems. I have about five that I already know about, but I am learning and working hard all the time, so I am sure there will be more after I have done those.
The first thing I want to talk about is acceptance. Most problems require us to take some action, but nearly every problem has aspects that we can’t change and need to accept. For the past two decades, I have been working on accepting the things I can’t change. This is what I say every day: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom I know the difference”. If you’re not comfortable with God, you can substitute something else or leave it out entirely. Plenty of atheists pray without really noticing it: “Let it be ok”, “Get me through this”, or “Where are my keys?”, for example. It helps, it really does, but I believe we also have to work at acceptance, letting go, handing over, all that getting-out-of-the-driving-seat business.
My definition of acceptance is “stop arguing with reality”. That seems a crazy thing to do but if anyone reading this has really and truly never done that, in their heads, I would love to know! I’m an expert at trying – in my head – to make things different from the way they are and I can tell you it doesn’t work! The only answer is to accept. In my case, certain people are as they are, and – very uncomfortable – some people have a very different view of my motives than I do. I can’t do anything about it so I need to accept it.
I have various ways I have adopted over the years to get the “fighting with reality” thoughts out of my head. A great one is the tube train visualisation. I put the troubling thought, person or problem on a tube train. I can see the station but I’m not sure which one it is. I let the doors close with me still on the platform, then sit down and watch the train pull away. Soon it has disappeared into the tunnel, is reduced to a rumble and then it’s gone. I stay sitting on the bench and remind myself that the problem has gone in the train. It can be a lonely and empty feeling, and that’s because part of us (ego, I think) loves to hang on to pain.
Another thing I do is remember the funeral of a very flamboyant friend who died far too young of cancer. In the address, her close friend described how, when this wonderful lady knew she was dying, she said “if it’s going to happen, I’ll accept it. I may not like it, but I’ll accept it”. These days, I tell myself when I’m having trouble accepting something, “if she can accept death, then I can accept this relatively tiny thing”. It helps. It also helps to know that accepting something doesn’t mean you have to like it.
And my latest find is this. I picked up a book called Just one thing by Rick Hanson, at my mother’s house. I opened it at random, and found myself on the page that tells us to say yes. He talks about saying yes to your problems and nodding your head up and down, even things that you are trying with all your might to change. Well, I tried this. About some situations and some people. “Yes, that is how it is”. “Yes, that is how he/she is”. Nodding vehemently. And it was amazing. It really shifts something. What I have found is that this practice allows me to stop arguing with a situation, trying to think of ways that it could be different, or things that I could say to the person, and simply get on with the things I can do. Like the prayer. I also discovered that, after practising this a bit, I could use it in situations where my sanity might be questioned if I was mumbling and nodding my head, just by visualising the nodding. The nodding is very important. There will be a psychological reason for that but I leave that to someone else to explain. For me, for now, it has given me a little more peace of mind, a little more calm in my head, and just as when I switch on the electric light, I don’t need to question how or why it works!
So that’s my first message. Got a big problem? There are parts of it that just have to be accepted. Then accept them. Try my suggestions, try other people’s, but keep trying. It’s so worth it!
