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Radical Acceptance

Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach

The third chapter of this book is the one that really got me hooked.  It is called The Sacred Pause: Resting Under the Bodhi Tree.  Prior to that though I enjoyed the writing and understood where Ms. Brach was coming from, it was this chapter on pausing that made me stop and think about myself in the real world.

She gave the example of everyone’s hero, Chuck Yaeger who followed several other pilots trying to go in the atmosphere with their plane where no one else had been.  All of them killed, frantically trying to stabilize their planes that had entered into a tumbling and diving that made them scream, ” What do I do next?” as they plunged to their death.

Her thoughts and examples of situations that we may find ourselves, things we cannot control, using strategies that are not working, feeling helpless and trying frantically to manage our difficult situation, with nothing working for us what should we do?

Chuck Yaeger was knocked out in his flight and was able to do nothing.  He came to, in time that as he re-entered the earth’s atmosphere he was able to regain control of the plane, bringing it in safely.

“Learning to pause is the first step in the practice of Radical Acceptance.”   Could pausing be an answer to some of our most troubling, out of control feelings and situations?  It certainly allows us to make choices in how we respond, teaching us how to nurture ourselves.  I hope you enjoy her thoughts and experiences if you choose to read this book.

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What makes disciplined people successful?

Have you ever noticed that those who reach their goals, that is achieve the things that they want, always seem to be the ones that do what is necessary, even when they don’t feel like it. 

There are many individuals who would have loved to have been in the Olympics, but there are very small percentage that the discipline to do what is necessary to get to that level of success and even less that place in the top 3 in the world.  If we look at what the most successful do though we see that every part of their life they practice discipline – so they can reach their goal.

How do they do this?   There is much involved but we could say that they work hard, plan ahead, practice, and schedule the time.  They know what they want to acheive and  then they practice what we will call WBP.  WBP stands for Work Before Play.  When we use our discipline we set our goals, make a plan, maybe get a coach to help us, then schedule how we can accomplish the goal, then we WBP.

No excuses, no goofing around, no doing it halfway.  We don’t play at it, or allow other activities to get in the way of it we just “Do it!”  There will be no procrastination… or if there is we recognize it immediately and complete the task at hand.

I have been working on this for so long and recently I read a book about getting things done that are important for the progress of my personal growth as well as reaching my goals.  The author, Brian Tracy, said “eat the big frog first”.  He went on to describe how everyday we should make a list of the three things that would have the biggest impact on our lives or business.  Then the hardest, most difficult of the three should be done first and stuck with until it was complete.  Eat the biggest, ugliest, stickiest frog first.  Then be sure to complete all three tasks no matter what in that day. 

Why?  Because when you get rid of that one you have a sense of accomplishment and the rest of the frogs don’t look that bad.  I have been trying this and it has been working very well for me.  You may want to try this too.  Having said that some of the hardest things to be disciplined about though is our diet and exercise.  More on that next time.