I’m going to wrap up Focus on Freedom month by talking about acceptance and allowing. If you make these two practices a way of life, you will have the freedom to be YOU, and you empower the people around you to do the same.

Acceptance means seeing yourself in your full freaky glory and being OK with it.

It’s accepting everything about yourself, even if you consider it to be a flaw, and embracing who you are rather than feeling like there is something wrong with you or you need to be different in order to measure up or make other people happy.

Acceptance means loving yourself and giving yourself the freedom to be YOU.

Allowing is what happens when you give yourself permission to be yourself, and you trust your instincts and intuition and allow yourself make the choices that you need to make too be happy.

This all applies to the way that you regard other people as well.

When you practice acceptance, you stay present and see who someone is, and you accept who they are. You don’t make them wrong or think you know what they should do.

You ALLOW them to be exactly who they are without trying to change them.  You respect their choices and know that they know what is best for their life, just like you know for yours.

Allowing others to be who they are truly frees you up & releases everyone from expectations. It puts you in a place of choice rather than resistance. You are free to make your own choices pertaining to what you need to thrive and so are they.

Too often we project our expectations and fantasy’s onto other people and we don’t give them the freedom to be who they are. We don’t really see them. We create an image in our heads around who they’re supposed to be and are angry & disappointed when they don’t live up to our expectations. We resist the reality of who they are and we expect them to change to fit into our idea of who they should be.

Can you think of a time that someone did that to you?

How did it feel?

Being in a state of resistance feels bad to everyone involved and wastes a lot of energy. You are pushing against what is, and whenever you expect someone else, or something else, to change to suit you, you’re engaging in a losing battle.

This applies to situations too; like a job.  It’s common to have expectations around how your boss and co-workers should act, or what your job is going to be like, and when things don’t live up to these ideas you make them wrong and engage in a lot of resistance. You think things should be different and you spend a lot of time complaining, being miserable and thinking things need to change. You’d be better served by accepting how things are and allowing it to be that way, then making the choice to stay there or not.

What it all comes back to the idea that true freedom lies in the ability to make choices and to be yourself. The more that you accept yourself and embrace all of who you are, the easier it will be for you to  live a life full of meaning, happiness and satisfaction.

Doesn’t that sound very Kick-Ass?

There is an awesome 3 book set called The Four Agreements Toltec Wisdom Collection by Don Miguel Ruiz that really helped me understand these concepts and apply them to my life. I highly recommend reading it!