The Mindful Attitude of Acceptance

Learn about the Mindful Attitude of the Acceptance to help support your formal (meditation) and informal (day to day) practice of mindfulness. Bring this attitude into practice and navigate life with a greater degree of clarity, calm and connection.

Use the attitude to guide your formal meditation practice, or as an informal reminder throughout your day to come back to the present moment. Find ways to incorporate these mindful attitudes in discussion with your family, or those close to you and practice them in communication with others both at work and at home.

The Mindful Attitude of Acceptance

In the context of mindfulness, acceptance refers to an expansion, an opening, an embrace of the present as it arises moment to moment.

We spend much of our time and energy avoiding or fighting with difficult thoughts feelings and emotions, but as long as we have minds we will always have thoughts and emotions – many of which are negative, as we are wired for survival. However as the Buddhist philosopher Sogyal Rinpoche puts it “just as the ocean has waves or the sun has rays, so the minds own radiance is its thoughts and emotions. The ocean has waves, yet the ocean is not particularly disturbed by them’. 
 
The attitude of acceptance encourages us to let thoughts arise and whatever arises not to view it as a problem, or impulsively react to it, but rather to be patient and allow the thoughts to settle back into the mind, like waves in the ocean.
 
Learning to relate to ourselves and our experience in this way creates space for a greater understanding and embrace of who we are, an openness to the way our minds have naturally evolved to operate and hopefully a more accepting attitude of the current predicament we find ourselves in, that is, to be alive and to be human!

Below are some resources on Acceptance compiled by the Happy Melon Team to be shared with you. Enjoy listening, reading and watching. Stay connected and let us know what you loved, or share your own resources with us in return!

A Life Changing Speech on Acceptance

This recording of a speech from Ram Dass speaks to the challenges and necessities of learning to accept yourself, exactly as you are.

Ram Dass was an American spiritual teacher, psychologist, and author, seminal in the popularisation of Eastern spirituality and yoga in Western culture.

Listen here.

The Power of Now

“See if you can catch yourself complaining, in either speech or thought, about a situation you find yourself in, what other people do or say, your surroundings, your life situation, even the weather. To complain is always nonacceptance of what is.

It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim.

When you speak out, you are in your power. So change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness.”

If you haven’t read Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now, we highly recommend it. 

Radical Acceptance

“Radical acceptance reverses our habit of living at war with experiences that are unfamiliar, frightening or intense. It is the necessary antidote to years of neglecting ourselves, year of judging and treating ourselves harshly, year of rejecting this moment’s experience.

Radical acceptance is the willingness to experience ourselves and our life as it is. A moment of Radical Acceptance is a moment of genuine freedom.” – Tara Brach

Tara Brach on Radical Acceptance

Self-Acceptance and Perspective-Taking

In this podcast episode Tami Simon speaks with the cofounder of the acclaimed Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (known as ACT) Steven Hayes on self-acceptance, negative thought patterns, perspective taking and the influence of spirituality on modern psychology.

Listen to the full episode here. 

Simple Tools For Self-Acceptance

Meg James shares her Tools for Self-Acceptance Course via Insight Timer.

The course consists of daily 10-minute lessons that will teach you how to cultivate a more compassionate, loving and accepting relationship with yourself. This course is perfect for anyone who has struggled with perfectionism, low self-esteem or low self-worth.

Sign up for the course here.

Decadent Chocolate Mousse

After putting our mindfulness into practice with radical acceptance and perspective-taking, it’s time to indulge!

This delicious chocolate mousse recipe combines sour cherries, sesame biscuits and of course loads of dark chocolate. Have this for dessert tonight, you won’t regret it!

Find the full recipe here.

Move and meditate with us in-studio and online to continue cultivating the mindful attitude of acceptance. Book a class here.