The Impossibility Of Self-acceptance & Letting Go

[Sleepwalker]

Hi to everyone who's reading this... I'm glad to finally get this out of my system.

I started noticing that I've carried a heavy burden for quite a while. In some way, I consciously refuse to let it go. It's not that I can't, but I'm not sure that I want to. I think that I want to carry it with me until the end, until I reach my goal. 

My burden is the need to look a certain way in order to be happy.

I posted this here, and not in the fitness & health section because I don't want to ask you for fitness advice, but because I noticed that this simple, seemingly harmless and small issue in my life started to toxify into a serious emotional problem that doesn't allow me to live normally. 

Now, I deliberately chose to focus on fixing this aspect of my life (my looks) and I already kind of know what the next steps are, but I need somebody to tell me if I'm going towards a good route and if I'm making good decisions on this path. Actually, in the last few days I started wondering that I'm doing myself more harm than good by trying so hard to reach this goal... All of this stress and anxiety, because I often make mistakes and overeat and don't manage to reach my goal quickly enough (and I'm trying really hard) and all of this doubt in myself, have led to the outcome that almost every day I go through some of these emotions, depending on how strictly I sticked to my self-imposed eating rules and diet. Just a few days ago, I've had the first day in months in which the voice in my head finally shut up and it hadn't had anything to criticize (I weighed myself on that day and I lost a lot of weight), of course, until I overate again. 

I started wondering if this is the right way to go towards, because of all the stress and anxiety which may influence my mental health. Although, I can see how reaching this goal would be beneficial to my life and it would solve many other problems (at least, I believe that with all my heart), it would raise my confidence and solve my problems with communication, social life and intimacy. I can see how this missing piece would fit in the overall picture of my life and connect many other parts. 

On the other hand, I started to doubt this approach and to wonder if it's authentic. In other words, I'm  not sure if the confidence gained by fulfilling this goal would be solid, strong and long-lasting, because it would depend on the look of my body. This seems to me more like hiding an insecurity about myself, by fixing something in the external world, than being trully confident. I think that true confidence is internal and that it doesn't depend on circumstances in the outer world (like the look of your body). 

So I started thinking, what if I simply let go of this goal and accept myself exactly as I am, without changing anything? What if I just let go and allow myself to be happy? Well, I came to the conclusion that I'm not able to do that... It's not that I don't want to, but I simply don't feel that it's in my power to allow myself to be happy after I would let go. It is almost impossible for me to create any mental picture in which I would be happy after letting go of this goal, this desire to look pretty, this burden, which makes me so unhappy because I struggle so much to get there.. and at the same time, gives me hope for happiness in the future.

It gives me hope, because I know that it is out there, that I don't ask for any extreme change... it is achievable. In my situation, if I would be able to perfectly control myself, it wouldn't take me even 2 months to achieve it. It is so simple and achievable that I'm embarassed that I'm still not already there.

Theoretically, I could let go of this burden, but I already can imagine what the outcome would be. Just then, my life would turn into hell. It would be pure misery and depression. If I would accept myself and my life without changing anything, I would be stuck on the same place, with the same toxic people, with all the same results and outcomes in all aspects of my life. It would be so depressing that I couldn't handle it. 

I also considered combining self-development with self-acceptance and doing both simultaneously. I came to the conclusion that it doesn't work this way for me, or at least, not right now. I struggle very much to understand how they function simultaneously, although I am open for trying it again if you have some suggestions that could help me.

Therefore... is it really that bad if I continue going down this road and continue pursuing this goal, although I am aware that I'm focusing on a very petty thing right now? Anyway, when I come to the end of this road and conclude that it didn't make me happy and give me the confidence and fulfillment I expected... only then, I will know that self-acceptance is my only salvation. But for now, I feel like I have to go down my current road and see where it will lead me. 

I would really like to hear whether you consider this decision as being valide and good. 
Thank you for reading this and thank you in advance for your help.

[Capethaz]

@Sleepwalker Are you meditating? I suggest that you adopt a consistent meditation practice, at least 45 minutes a day. If you do it, I guarantee you that all this problems mentioned will vanish.

[Sleepwalker]

6 hours ago, Capethaz said:

@Sleepwalker Are you meditating? I suggest that you adopt a consistent meditation practice, at least 45 minutes a day. If you do it, I guarantee you that all this problems mentioned will vanish.

I've been meditating for 2 years by now. I never felt a significant change so far. 

[Capethaz]

@Sleepwalker what technique are you using? How much time?

[Sleepwalker]

8 hours ago, Capethaz said:

@Sleepwalker what technique are you using? How much time?

Mostly the do nothing technique and the most common one (where you release thougths when they come into your mind), I don't know how it's called... The first 6 months I meditated just about 20 mins every day, the next 12 about 30-35 (I never rushed to increase my meditation time, I always supposed that it was enough) and the last 6 months about 40 mins. 

Also, there are at least 12-15 days a year in which I, for some reason, didn't get to meditate (forgot it, or willpower drastically dropped etc). Could it be that that's the reason why my meditation isn't effective? Because of those "cheat days"?

Btw I always wondered, what exactly will meditation do for me for these kinds of problems? 

[Jonas]

@Sleepwalker Meditation doesn't help to solve any problems. I just do it when I feel like I need to relax and let a few things go.

You're right, that self-acceptance and self-development don't go together very well. If you learned to accept yourself, however, your self-development would happen on its own without much effort on your part. That's hard to believe, however, so most people never even try. 

But you can't just accept your looks, you need to learn to accept everything. Your situation can only be hell if you make it that way. If you'd accept your situation without any expectations of how it should be, why would it be bad? Good or bad are created inside your mind and have nothing to do with the world. The same is true for your emotions. You only feel bad because a part of you thinks that feeling bad or being depressed is appropriate. 

You can feel good in any situation if you choose to. Looks like you're afraid that you'd stop growing if you didn't feel bad, but that wouldn't be the case. That part of you, which is afraid, would still want you to grow, no matter how good you feel. The only difference would be that you'd enjoy your life instead of being miserable. And if you don't waste your energy on being unhappy, you'd be able to achieve much more

[kurt]

There is no need to let go of this desire.  Just a little bit of analysis and understanding will break it.

Ask yourself if this desire is working for you?

You will probably no doubt be in agreement that really, at the end of the day, all said and done this is an irrational idea and it is really not conducive to happiness.

Really think about it.  I know this sounds obvious right now, and you will probably get mad at me thinking whats this guy talking about here?  I've tried everything under the sun to let this go!!

Bur before you get the rotten tomatoes out consider this.  What is it that you are really looking for when you continue to act out this desire?

Are you looking for happiness? Or, are you looking for freedom from the feeling of limitation that the desire causes you?

Think about it carefully.

If you can become conscious of your actual motive, then the habit will break.

So, what is it you are really wanting from the desire to look good?  You know that looking good in itself doesn't contain the actual happiness itself.  If looking good DID contain the happiness, then everyone who looked amazing would be happy.  But they are not.  The happiness is not in the looks, is it?  On close inspection this will reveal itself to be the truth..100% guaranteed!

So, moving on.  If the happiness and freedom is not in the looks, then where is it?  Where is happiness and the feeling of freedom from the desire that you are really looking for located?

If you can answer that question (and it is the same answer for every single person that ever existed) and ponder on the discovery you make, all you need to "do" is just resist acting on the desire or thought or feeling that comes up next time you get anxious about it.  See it for what it is, a trick the mind plays on you, and just STOP entertaining it.  Once you stop entertaining the idea it will sooner or later just stop disturbing you.

The best bit is yet to come.  As soon as the disturbance fades and leaves your life for good, you will experience something very special.

Good luck

[Capethaz]

@Sleepwalker theres a book called The Mind Illuminated by Culadasa. I suggest that you read it, you can found it online.

[Sleepwalker]

@Jonas I am aware that good and bad are created in the mind, but regardless of that, I'm still operating as though they're real. For instance, what I care about are the results that "being fat" will give me in the external world: unattractiveness and rejection. And yes, subconscioussly, I label those results as bad. But how couldn't I, who would judge me for doing that? I still don't want those outcomes. I understand that "bad" isn't connected to them at all, but am I supposed to feel good about them, or even neutral? No, sorry. There are certainly people who can feel that way about those (and I tried in the past, too), but I seem not to function in that manner. I cannot tolerate those outcomes. I had to accept them in the past and all the depression and emotions that came with them. I already had a long history of self-acceptance and emotion-acceptance and never felt any sense of relief during that time. Whatsmore, it lead to hopelessness and even suicidal thougths, because I had to tell myself, "yeah that's my shitty life and I'm supposed to accept it, even if I'm stuck in the same place forever". After that, I came to the conclusion that that's more painful than trying to change. 

21 hours ago, Jonas said:

Your situation can only be hell if you make it that way. 

You can feel good in any situation if you choose to. 

Maybe you're right, but just up to a point. I used to think that way before, too, until I realized that I actually don't have control over my thougths. Nobody has. If that would be the case, I would always choose to think positive and to feel happy. But I'm not choosing the thoughts which pop up in my mind. I used to blame myself constantly for having negative thoughts. But they just appear. All I can is choose is to believe them or not... Of course, you have a little control about your thougths, when you consciously choose to think specific thougths, but since the majority of your thougths is subconscious, fact is that you can't control all of them. After I found out about this, it was the first feeling of relief about this situation. I always used to think that I'm to blame for these kinds of issues and this information helped me a lot.

[Sleepwalker]

@kurt

20 hours ago, kurt said:

all you need to "do" is just resist acting on the desire or thought or feeling that comes up next time you get anxious about it.  See it for what it is, a trick the mind plays on you, and just STOP entertaining it.  Once you stop entertaining the idea it will sooner or later just stop disturbing you.

The best bit is yet to come.  As soon as the disturbance fades and leaves your life for good, you will experience something very special.

I want to believe this with all my heart. It isn't really that difficult to let the desire go, but it is difficult to deal with the outcomes of that decision. Worst case scenario: obesity? I'd like to let the desire go, but what if I end up being on a worse position than I'm right now? I'm afraid that the feeling of anxiety, because I failed to fulfill this need, could easily creep back on me, worse than ever before.

However, thanks. This sounds really helpful so far. It could work and I'll consider doing it. I just need some time to get used to this idea and convince myself that it'll work..

[kurt]

@Sleepwalker

I get it, I really do!  I have been in the same position, I thought I was the one who had a say in my life (still do sometimes).  

While youre thinking about this do some more analysis, ask a few questions:

1) Did you really create anything in life?  I mean really?  Do you create ans sustain your own body?  Do you create your thoughts and feelings or do your thoughts and feelings just appear in you without your permission, stay a while, play with you and make you either happy or sad or whatever?  When you do your best at something and you dont get the result you expected, did you create that situation, or did it just appear to you without your say so?

You will find that if you think about it is you have all these desires and intentions but most of the time you don't actually get what you want.  Sometimes you do, but its rare.  Your friends will verify the same experience, most of the time life is outside of our control, yes we can and do try to control it, but that is where anxiety comes from.

How is it that some people can just be happy and content and more or less anxiety free and others cant and are controlled by their worries?  Because some take life as it comes and some still have not examined their experience closely enough yet

Examine your experience and ask yourself if you ever got what you really wanted in life?  When you did get what you want, did it cure anything for you?  Did it take away the anxiety permanently or did the anxiety come creeping back soon after you got it?

So thats the first thing.  This is irrefutable because you wont be able to argue with the logic once you look carefully at how life is set up.

The reason you are anxious about relinquishing control is because you have not experienced the freedom and satisfaction from relinquishing control.  You need to have a little bit of faith in the concept presented here, not blind belief, but faith pending the results of your investigation.  As you begin to let go of more and more and just take a stance of gratitude for what you already have, your confidence in the process will gain momentum.  It will teach your mind to be able to let go and trust life.  When you are happy and content you dont eat a ton of food and let yourself go.  It is the opposite, you feel positive and have the energy to put your focus on living a healthy lifestyle.  

If you dont believe me, go make friends with some healthy people you respect a lot and observe their behaviour.  You will find they dont stress over things, yet they seem to function well and seem to get what they want (to a degree).

So my advice is just try the process, and the results will prove to you that the idea works.  I wouldn't try to convince yourself before trying it, that's just more control, isnt it?

**

I forgot to mention, you do have a choice, the healthy choice is that you dont have to believe every thought that appears in your experience.  Just observe what is happening there and dont act on it, soon you will recondition your mind to get in line with what your highest values are.  But that is where your locus of control lies, its doesnt lie externally, it's all inside.  

Edited September 26, 2016 by kurt

[kurt]

A little more psychology if you are still not sure.

The mind (everything in the creation actually) works on habit patterns.  It's all conditioned, nothing is actually wilfully created here. You can verify this for yourself after some thought and observation.

The way the human mind works is that in the past we perform specific actions and those actions condition our minds and bodies. They become patterns.  We cant forcefully manage those patterns in the present moment with will power, like I say, all we can do is observe the thinking that appears in the mind and decide what we want to do with those thoughts based on our highest values.

So the thoughts appearing are conditioned thoughts from the past.  If we eat a lot of ice cream and potato chips in the past we create the habit for that and those desires just appear to us and compel us to continue with that.  There is no actual choice there! The notion that we have free will over this process is an assumption.  The only free will we have to to get our values clear and then decide what to do with the thinking in relation to our highest values.

For example, you wont be able to convince yourself that this idea will work.  But what you can do is ignore your skepticism and try the idea out.  When the results happen, the results re-condition your mind to keep doing the same.  So, if you have a pattern of anxiety, look at it in the light that you have no control over it, see what benefit you derive from the anxiety, and then decide to replace the behaviour with a new behaviour (letting go).  When the mind sees that letting go feels better it will just create a habit of letting go because one of your values should be happiness (correct?). The mind is either your friend or your enemy, it just does what its programmed to do based on your values and habits.  So get your values straight and then build a habit of letting go so that the mind can see for itself the benefits of letting things be as they are and not worrying too much.

Hoping this helps !

And I wouldnt worry about consciously trying to escape toxic people and situations that dont serve you.  Your mind will do ALL that for you once you understand it and give it what it needs to carry out your values.  

Everything happens by itself, you just need to understand how the mind works and let it do its job, and more or less get out of the way lol 

 

Edited September 26, 2016 by kurt

[Sleepwalker]

@kurt There's no need for me to try to convince myself that the idea will work. Because you did it already   I'm really impressed right now.. because people usually describe me as being very stubborn. Nobody could give me a good enough reason to let go, so I used to believe that it's difficult to help me and that I'm kind of hopeless. 

I will try this and thank you. 

[kurt]

@Sleepwalker 

Excellent! 

Just keep us posted, because it doesn't happen overnight. Some patterns are hard to get rid of, so don't give up when facing a challenge or things get down, it's just a blip. 

Hey, what am I talking about? You can do it!! 

Just want to make sure you can come back for more advice and detail of you need it 

Cheers!

[Jonas]

11 hours ago, Sleepwalker said:

@Jonas "yeah that's my shitty life and I'm supposed to accept it, even if I'm stuck in the same place forever". After that, I came to the conclusion that that's more painful than trying to change. 

 

@Sleepwalker You were labeling that state as shitty. Is that an objective fact? Is there no way that someone else wouldn't mind being in the same situation as you were at that point? And besides, accepting a situation doesn't mean that you're not going to change it? You can be perfectly happy at home and still go out for a walk because you would like to get some fresh air just because you feel like it.

In the same situation, you could have thought, "That's what my life looks like now. That's okay. It's only temporary. I don't have to be unhappy about it. However, I'd much rather have my life be the following way. What can I do to get from here to there?"

11 hours ago, Sleepwalker said:

Maybe you're right, but just up to a point. I used to think that way before, too, until I realized that I actually don't have control over my thougths. Nobody has. If that would be the case, I would always choose to think positive and to feel happy. But I'm not choosing the thoughts which pop up in my mind. I used to blame myself constantly for having negative thoughts. But they just appear. All I can is choose is to believe them or not... Of course, you have a little control about your thougths, when you consciously choose to think specific thougths, but since the majority of your thougths is subconscious, fact is that you can't control all of them. After I found out about this, it was the first feeling of relief about this situation. I always used to think that I'm to blame for these kinds of issues and this information helped me a lot.

5

You're right. It's impossible to control which thoughts pop into your head, but you can disagree with a thought whenever it shows up. I used to have some pretty negative thoughts pop into my head constantly like, "no one likes me, I'm too stupid to live, I should kill myself" and I used to take them seriously. After I started to question them and to disagree with them, the frequency with which they show up has gone down drastically. Now, the thought "I'm really happy" also shows up a lot.  @kurt described this process pretty well. 

And I really do believe that it's possible to be happy in any situation. I'm not quite there yet, but I went from very suicidal 1.5 years ago to happier than probably 95% of the human population and I'm sure I can go much further. The key is to always look inside when something "makes" you unhappy. There are always triggers and patterns inside of us and once we resolve them, the same situation won't bother us anymore. And being happy really hasn't made me lazy or accepting of situations I don't want to be in. I'm working harder than ever before and I love it. It's much easier to work if you're not attached to the outcome and procrastination is less of an issue. 

I think it's really great that you're sharing your story here and that you're open to learning new things

[Sleepwalker]

15 hours ago, Jonas said:

And I really do believe that it's possible to be happy in any situation. I'm not quite there yet, but I went from very suicidal 1.5 years ago to happier than probably 95% of the human population and I'm sure I can go much further. The key is to always look inside when something "makes" you unhappy. There are always triggers and patterns inside of us and once we resolve them, the same situation won't bother us anymore. And being happy really hasn't made me lazy or accepting of situations I don't want to be in. I'm working harder than ever before and I love it. It's much easier to work if you're not attached to the outcome and procrastination is less of an issue. 

That sounds amazing! Thank you so much for sharing this, it's so insightful and inspiring. 

I always used to choose "change" instead of acceptance. The concept of self-acceptance made sense to me, but to change simply seemed to me like being more useful. Now I really get to believe that acceptance may be of more importance and more fulfilling. 

Btw acceptance seems to be a passive process, there isn't much to do. but is there anything specific or practical that I can do that could support it? 

@kurt And another thing. So now, because I "let go", what exactly am I supposed to do about my eating habits? Am I allowed to eat as much until I feel satisfied, even if it's more than I should be eating and could possibly lead to gaining more fat?

If I got this right, the eating habits will eventually stabilize over time? I really kind of fail to understand this one. Perhaps I got it wrong?

[kurt]

19 minutes ago, Sleepwalker said:

 

@kurt And another thing. So now, because I "let go", what exactly am I supposed to do about my eating habits? Am I allowed to eat as much until I feel satisfied, even if it's more than I should be eating and could possibly lead to gaining more fat?

If I got this right, the eating habits will eventually stabilize over time? I really kind of fail to understand this one. Perhaps I got it wrong?

What do your values say?  Consult your higher values.  I'm guessing (as we are on a similar journey) that your values might match mine in this regard, so I'm going to make an educated guess and say your highest values are peace, liberation, happiness, contentment, health.  So in light of these values what is the best thing you think you should do with regards to eating?  For me I programme myself to eat smaller and more often during the day, I'm vegan, I chose this because I want to feel good and feeling good is conducive to liberation.  It won't bring me enlightenment but it sure helps because it ripples across the whole of my life into every area.  So my values determine what and how much I eat.  I take my time and don't rush my meals so that I'm aware of when my body has had enough so that I don't pig out.  Most of us pig out and then feel bloated out of pure habit because we don't educate ourselves about food and nutrition.  

Because I've got all this in place habitually I don't worry about it, it's just automatic, like a computer programme running in the background, my attention is on myself and this is where the fulfilment comes from because I'm not worrying anymore.

As long as you get your values and habits straight and don't deviate until they are habitualized (6 months?) and learn the art of letting go, you will be fine.  It;s not about letting go of disciplined living, its just letting go of the erroneous assumption that "things" make you happy.  

Did I answer your question sufficiently?

If not let me know.

[Sleepwalker]

@kurt Yes, you were right about my values, but really they're everyones values. Every human craves happiness, peace and contentment.

...I just thought about what you said and to be honest, I feel like all my attempts to lose weight were already trying to serve those values (obviously without much success so far). One of my top values is feeling good in my body and all of my actions were just ment to fulfill this need.

Maybe I didn't express my problem clearly enough at the very beginning. I have self-imposed eating "rules", but I'm not starving myself to death or punishing myself and I have no interest in being anorexic. I WANT to eat and live as healthy as I possibly can and that's what I was actually trying all the time. For me, looking good and losing weight is just a quite important component of achieving that healhy lifestyle, but it all boils down to feeling good in your body. 

So, to make this very simple: should I RESIST eating a bunch of junk-food or am I ALLOWED to eat it? 

In light of my higher value to feel good in my body, the answer would be: resist! And that's exactly what I was trying all the time and struggling with!

The truth is, I am struggling to live that HEALTHY lifestyle. I'm not talking about a struggle to maintain an extremely unhealthy low-calorie diet, but about maintaining a balanced and healthy one. I'm kind of a sweet carb addict and that's why this is so difficult for me. My family is making it even more difficult, because they don't live healthy either. For instance, I'm doing really good for maybe 3 days and all of the sudden I find the house full with all possible kinds of junk-food which I cannot resist. If this wasn't the case, I most probably would have reached my goal a loooooooong time ago. I talked with them, told them to hide their sweets from me. They would always do it for a couple of days and then just forget about it. I place my last hopes on the possibility that I won't live with them when I go to college. 

Because this is such a struggle for me, should I let go of trying to live healthy? Letting go of trying to maintain a healthy lifestyle would be like letting go of feeling good in my body. OR I'd have to feel good in my body regardless of my lifestyle and physical appearance (perhaps ideally?)

I am soooooo confused right now. 

Thank you for trying to help me, you have no idea how much I appreciate your advice. and I'm sorry for being this annoying.. I guess that my situation is a little more complicated. 

[kurt]

@Sleepwalker

Youre not being annoying

I don't see any problem with having a little bit of junk food now and then, don't you agree?

But if you eat as much as you want you will pay for it in terms of well being (physiological).

Happiness on the other hand is an attitude towards life.  I would imagine the balance between cultivating a happy attitude towards life and eating healthy while spicing it up now and again sounds fine.

Don't confuse happiness with physical and mental well being.

[Sleepwalker]

@kurt I understand now and thank you. I'll keep it in my mind