'the patience and compassion to keep it welcome when it’s there, and a warm goodbye when it’s time to part.'

the three steps of approaching any feeling, behavior, thought, or event.

imagine a scene where you wake up in the morning and you immediately clench your fist into a tight ball, and held it tight until the end of the day before going back to sleep.

throughout the day you notice the tightness of your fist. and you notice how you can barely do anything with this clenched fist; you can’t write or make breakfast or drive safely; even going to the bathroom is a struggle.

and you notice that other people are noticing this fist, and they don’t know how to react.

and you go to sleep and unclench only because you have to, and you feel how sore and tight it is, even when loosening up.

we hold onto our feelings, behaviors, thoughts, and the effects of past events just like this fist, every day, and it affects every little thing that we do. and others notice; they are affected to, but many people don’t know how to process it, because they have their own fist clenched with their own issues.

unlike the old man, we usually don’t know why we’re clenching so hard.

the mental and physical energy we lose to these feelings, behaviors and thoughts is immense, especially when we break through to the other side and feel that true relaxation that comes with working on these issues.

so we must follow a universal three-step method of transformation to find this true relaxation and stop the energy leaks in our system: acknowledge, accept, embrace.

an aside: why is the word “transformation” used so much in personal development?

why can’t we use phrases like “get rid of” or “stop”? we want to do things like the above, but they are an outcome, not the solution.

with transformation, we’re not just aiming to “stop” a negative habit, we are looking to turn our obstacles into a motor that drives us toward our highest values.

sure, you may have stopped smoking, but to have accomplished such a habit change, you’ve just started on building momentum for serious change to accomplish so much more.

stopping negative habits is getting to baseline. starting positive habits is raising that baseline. this is the role of transformation.

acknowledge, accept, embrace.

this three step framework is adapted from Richard Rudd’s gentle system of contemplation and shadow work: allow, accept, embrace.

i changed one word because i’m like that.

step 1: to acknowledge

while acknowledgement is a mouthful, it gets to the root of what we have to do in the first step: recognize that we have the problem, and determine that it’s something we’d like to change.

at this step of the process, we don’t have to allow it, we just have to know that it exists.

it’s the simplest step—and the hardest.

just think of your friends and family that have their shadow patterns but have never acknowledged them. this is to the point of full on denial—they don’t think they do the thing you see them do.

the road from denial to acknowledgement is rocky and full of detours, and it takes a certain personality and perspective of life to finally arrive at the destination.

you’re likely reading this because you’re already on this universal path, and you’ve acknowledged some issue in your life, and not only acknowledged, you have a feeling you want to change it into something else that serves you.

those at step 0 don’t read this type of stuff.

our acknowledgement is the realization that not only do we have something we’d like to change, but that it’s in our means to change it.

this is important, because there are so many people that will admit their issues, but respond with, “such is life”. i have more thoughts about that in just a bit.

but we must have courage to truly know whether we can or cannot, just like my favorite start of the serenity prayer of alcoholics anonymous:

grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

without the courage, we’ll believe so much of our inner and outer world is unchangeable, and thus revert to “such is life.”

if you feel like a majority of your life is unchangeable, please work with an upstanding friend, family member, coach or anything else to help provide you an outside perspective of your agency in life. it will change your life.

this is just an introduction to the three concepts, so i won’t get into too much detail, but let’s go back to analogy: we want to acknowledge the clenched fist, and that maybe it should relax a bit.

step 2: accept

this is the transformation phase, because acceptance is not just saying to yourself, “yep, i do have this problem.” that’s the role of acknowledgement—and let me try to be clear here:

there are clever people who keep themselves at step 1 and never move on to step 2.

i say they’re clever because they’re the friends, co-workers, and family members who try to make their acknowledgement of an issue as part of their identity.

they wield it against others so they don’t have to do any work against others. if someone recognizes their fear of failure, they might just tell others, “well because of that fear of failure, that’s why it’s so hard for me to do X, Y, or Z”; “you know that i can’t put myself out there like that!”; “i get too triggered, so i just can’t do it.”

this is a big trend of the mental health age of the past 20-30 years, where trauma, adhd, and neurodivergence empower people to feel like victims of fate rather than creators of their own fate. they lean on their disabilities and triggers as if the gods themselves are against their personal development.

but consider the undiagnosed—and the diagnosed—who continue to their personal success anyway, despite the labels. do we tell them “wait, you have adhd, you shouldn’t have done that!”

others think their labels are extra special: “maybe they were able to do it, but i can’t.”

now you can see that this three-step framework isn’t as easy as taking three steps. you are going to find your internally created diversions and traps as you follow it.

but that’s the magic of acceptance: every diversion and trap you set yourself is a portal into your psyche. if you follow each portal into your conscious and subconscious, and find the nature of why it was created, you’re going to make your acceptance even more powerful.

acceptance is summarized by the phrase, ‘the obstacle is the way.’

we may have acknowledged our original problem feeling, behavior, or thought, but when we attempt to work on it, we run into even more excuses, distractions, and avoidances. they are all related.

acceptance is not just the original problem, but everything else that’s involved in keeping you stuck in that problem.

we must accept that there are many more layers to the issue than the one we immediately identified.

the transformation process includes all the layers, until we come to a point where we’ve moved on from breakthroughs to a light maintenance that keeps our momentum going to change even more feelings, behaviors and thoughts that we want.

the hand slowly unclenches.

step 3: embrace

let’s take smoking as an example. first, we acknowledged that we want to change our smoking habit, whether it’s reducing or stopping completely.

second, we accept that there is much more to “not smoking” than just stopping smoking, and we discover parts of ourselves that we’ve never been aware of that keep us at it.

great, we’re not smoking as much or no longer. we’ve come to that baseline i mentioned before. what’s next?

a lot of people stop at step 2 because they pretty much got what they wanted. they stopped or changed the thing they wanted to change.

but this is also a relatively perilous time for change, because there are still many ways to fall off the wagon. our subconscious has an almost unlimited supply of parts that have their own drives that can mistakenly get us back to smoking.

there’s another level to our shadow parts: the truth is that they don’t go away.

no matter what kind of inner work that we do, we will have those moments where we can just go back to that habit.

this is not some great undoing, which is a fabrication by people who feel guilty about doing something they wanted to stop (and that guilt is another obstacle that needs to be worked on).

these kinds of people will feel so guilty that they’ll double down on doing that thing again because they’re essentially going back to step 1 and making their failure part of their identity.

true transformation doesn’t require “control” or “willpower” to “keep our guard up” against our hold behaviors and habits. we simply are, and are moving our way toward our higher ideals.

but some things were part of our lives and inner culture for so long that it stays near us, and our bridge back to the old habit or behavior is short.

this is why embracing our shadow patterns is the last and most powerful step in the process: this is when we channel the energy we typically use on our old feeling, behavior, or thought on those that bring us closer to our ideal.

this embrace is the act of understanding our shadow patterns well enough that we know the source of their energy, and we use that energy for something good.

at the best times, it’ll be when we feel like doing the old habit again, but we have associated a positive behavior with that feeling and do that instead.

at the worst times, it’ll be when we do the old habit again, and we know the exact steps to acknowledge that we did it, accept we have more opportunities to make ourselves even better, and embrace the new obstacles as more ways to stay in connection with ourselves.

you have the responsibility to choose whether this old habit, this shadow pattern will be a lifelong source of personal development, or a lifelong source of pain and misery.

a continuation of the serenity prayer is relevant.

Living one day at a time;
enjoying one moment at a time;
accepting hardships as the pathway to peace.

you can either respond to your problems with love, or a victim mentality.

in a way, you are committing to something similar to those clever step 1 people: you are integrating your issues into your life, but with a sense of grace rather than victimhood. your identity is thus rooted in agency and authority over your life, by way of your obstacles—rather than reaction and complacency.

the embrace is the reintegration of your issue back into your life, transformed into an aspect of yourself that is a source of development. it has become an old friend, with its own wisdom that grows as you grow.

~~~

hold onto it for as long as it wants to say near.

sometimes, it’ll stick around for a while, because it feels like it has something more to say. sometimes, it’ll smile, accept one last hug, and say goodbye.

have the patience and compassion to keep it welcome when it’s there, and a warm goodbye when it’s time to part.

the hand opens.

~~~

thanks for reading,

—dom