Pages

Tuesday 21 December 2010

Acceptance

One of the hardest personal development lessons I've found has been taking ownership of how I'm feeling rather than blaming other people e.g

"You made me angry" becomes "I got angry because you did X" or even better "I allowed myself to get angry when you did X."

A book* I was reading recently took it a stage further and suggested that anything we get angry at other people about is an aspect of ourselves that we don't accept. After all we can all be late, less than perfect, selfish, arrogant, lazy, mad, childish, etc etc**. So why is it that sometimes someones lateness, selfishness, laziness makes us angry? The book would suggest it's because we don't accept that quality in ourselves. That is if we don't accept it in ourselves of course we won't accept it in others either.

The trick to releasing the anger is in being able to accept that we have , do or could in the future demonstrate this trait and then seeing the positive this trait provides us. If we do this others demonstrating the trait will then no longer trigger the same response.

Do let me know how you get on - I'm doing it with imperfection!

Festive Greetings and wishing you a wonderful, abundant and laughter filled 2011.

Alison

Alison Smith
Helping Purchasing Relationships take personal responsibility
alison@alisonsmith.eu 07770 538159

* The dark side of the light chasers by Debbie Ford

** Of course even this list simply sheds more light on aspects of myself I don't accept. If you nodded your head and accepted these traits in yourself that's a sure sign that you need another list. You may find you need to write another list to get the emotional trigger to at least initially denying the accuracy of this blog. A sure sign you've got a trait to work on is an emotionally charged response of "I'm never that." Do keep going till you get one of those and then try accepting it!

No comments: