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Acceptance isn’t passivity or surrender. It’s an active engagement in reality, in real time, on its terms. As such, acceptance is realism and requires existential courage rather than an escapist flight into what theoretically could be. Accepting reality as it is now means just that: accepting the reality as it is right now. If you don’t like the way reality is right now, change the future. You see, acceptance isn’t approval, it’s just an acknowledgment of what is (more about this below). If you don’t acknowledge what is, what will you be improving?
You might think: If I am to accept that at any given time I am as perfect as I can be at that moment, then how am I to achieve my goals? How am I to improve myself? The false choice here is this: either accept or change. Acceptance of the fact that at any given time you’re doing your practical best (however unsatisfying it might be to you or others) doesn’t mean that you can’t try to improve the next moment. Of course you can. Accept and change: accept that at any given moment you are doing the best you can do and, having learned from the experience of this given moment, try to change and improve the next moment to the extent that you can. Automatic, on-the-fly perfectionistic rejection of reality as flawed triggers a mindless rush to improve it. Acceptance, beginning with the acknowledgment of what is as being the best that it can be, is the beginning of mindful change.
excerpt from Present Perfect: A Mindfulness Approach to Letting Go of Perfectionism and the Need for Control by Pavel Somov, Ph D.
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