I am very interested in your text. I am sure we cannot influence anything we do not first accept.
I find your question interesting: How do we accept who we are while trying to become better?
The question makes sense, and my attitude is as follows: The fact that we know ourselves enough and accept that we are the way we are now gives us the right and the opportunity to activate all our potential to be better for ourselves and our environment.
I love your work and the questions you raise! Thank you!
I think you are absolutely right - self acceptance and personal growth can be happy bedfellows. Acceptance involves seeing things as they are, not how we wish them to be. And this includes ourselves, in all our wonderful complexity. Acceptance is the bedrock for true growth because it allows us to see where we need to put our efforts. Great post.
Wow! Awesome! I love the whole message and context. I especially like the way you aligned UPR and self acceptance. For me this was very helpful.
It’s also interesting how you brought masculine and feminine energies in. As I was reading it, before I got to that paragraph, I was literally thinking that the way you’re describing self-acceptance (or UPR to oneself), sounds like the idea of the naturing mother (with sound boundaries), who provides the space to go out and explore the world
Great minds Jonny. I think Stoicism has clear enough answers for me, and it’s also quite a ‘masculine energy’ philosophy that resonates, but I’ve been reading a little on Spirituality and found some pretty interesting concepts.
Great piece - I love the way you make sense of masculine and feminine energies through the prism of self acceptance and personal growth. Thanks for sharing
Really appreciate your thoughtful exploration of this tension, Adam, including how it plays out for you, but also bringing in various perspectives and approaches.
For me, everything is ultimately contained within my spiritual practice - which is less "religious" and more oriented around non-harming and doing what I can (in thought and action) to live more beautifully. I see this as a life-long practice, not something to complete or solve - including as relates to myself, my current and past addictions, my current and past patterns. I find true faith, refuge, and even joy in this path and the un-ended nature of it. Without it, my default would be to try (futilely, harmfully) to solve myself and turn life into a (self-constructed, self-oriented) linear project.
I’m inspired by your writing Dana. I’ve just read your recent post again to digest it further. I take it in. Your post, along with others on related ideas has helped me gain more understanding of what spiritual healing may entail. I absorb the principles and integrate them into my understanding, which is more like ‘a secular or humanist awareness of how to be’. I’m always learning.
I fight a daily battle not with addiction but with the fact that at my age, 73, and professional/financial situation, I could just cruise into retirement and ultimately into death. However, I have been a person of hopes and aspirations my whole life. I can’t seem to regroup to being more than becoming.Also, I have some new motivation in a new grandson (15 months). I need some way to balance my self acceptance and aspirations. I plan to pursue my lifelong interest in flying and for now to continue working at my usual job, NASA astrophysicist. That cannot go forever though and,nas well, I am suffering from retirement FOMO. We are always told to build toward retirement but I am there and can’t lose my need to improve myself and to advance. I look for enlightenment in various places including here. I am completely nonreligious but Zen teaching, freed of Buddhism, attracts me. So does stoic philosophy.Thanks for your lessons!
A lot to unpack there my friend. Hopefully you’ll figure that both can exist, and in fact harmonise, and that these perspectives may help as they do with me.
Great piece! I've felt a tension between these two ideas for a long time, and have been searching for an answer - a way to re-orient my thinking so that these ideas could coexist. I was still in the process of pondering when I found this! You articulated what I felt unconsciously very well. I was gonna write something related to this, to help me think through it, but maybe I'll switch gears a bit and focus on how the culture in the US tends to encourage too much self-development. Sometimes so much to the point that people go to the other extreme, being complacent. It's all about finding the balance, which you have so eloquently illuminated.
Thank you for your reflections. On the face of it, these two concepts don't seem to coexist, but looking into the nuances they fit perfectly and nourish one another. Hey if you want to write about a topic then you write about it. Why not share your approach and your ideas? Thanks for the feedback.
Hello, Adam!
I am very interested in your text. I am sure we cannot influence anything we do not first accept.
I find your question interesting: How do we accept who we are while trying to become better?
The question makes sense, and my attitude is as follows: The fact that we know ourselves enough and accept that we are the way we are now gives us the right and the opportunity to activate all our potential to be better for ourselves and our environment.
I love your work and the questions you raise! Thank you!
I think you are absolutely right - self acceptance and personal growth can be happy bedfellows. Acceptance involves seeing things as they are, not how we wish them to be. And this includes ourselves, in all our wonderful complexity. Acceptance is the bedrock for true growth because it allows us to see where we need to put our efforts. Great post.
That’s a great way to put it. Thanks for your reflections Paul.
Wow! Awesome! I love the whole message and context. I especially like the way you aligned UPR and self acceptance. For me this was very helpful.
It’s also interesting how you brought masculine and feminine energies in. As I was reading it, before I got to that paragraph, I was literally thinking that the way you’re describing self-acceptance (or UPR to oneself), sounds like the idea of the naturing mother (with sound boundaries), who provides the space to go out and explore the world
Great minds Jonny. I think Stoicism has clear enough answers for me, and it’s also quite a ‘masculine energy’ philosophy that resonates, but I’ve been reading a little on Spirituality and found some pretty interesting concepts.
Great piece - I love the way you make sense of masculine and feminine energies through the prism of self acceptance and personal growth. Thanks for sharing
Thank you. The masculine and feminine energy aspects are new to me, and they make sense in how I digest seemingly contradictory forces.
Really appreciate your thoughtful exploration of this tension, Adam, including how it plays out for you, but also bringing in various perspectives and approaches.
For me, everything is ultimately contained within my spiritual practice - which is less "religious" and more oriented around non-harming and doing what I can (in thought and action) to live more beautifully. I see this as a life-long practice, not something to complete or solve - including as relates to myself, my current and past addictions, my current and past patterns. I find true faith, refuge, and even joy in this path and the un-ended nature of it. Without it, my default would be to try (futilely, harmfully) to solve myself and turn life into a (self-constructed, self-oriented) linear project.
I’m inspired by your writing Dana. I’ve just read your recent post again to digest it further. I take it in. Your post, along with others on related ideas has helped me gain more understanding of what spiritual healing may entail. I absorb the principles and integrate them into my understanding, which is more like ‘a secular or humanist awareness of how to be’. I’m always learning.
I fight a daily battle not with addiction but with the fact that at my age, 73, and professional/financial situation, I could just cruise into retirement and ultimately into death. However, I have been a person of hopes and aspirations my whole life. I can’t seem to regroup to being more than becoming.Also, I have some new motivation in a new grandson (15 months). I need some way to balance my self acceptance and aspirations. I plan to pursue my lifelong interest in flying and for now to continue working at my usual job, NASA astrophysicist. That cannot go forever though and,nas well, I am suffering from retirement FOMO. We are always told to build toward retirement but I am there and can’t lose my need to improve myself and to advance. I look for enlightenment in various places including here. I am completely nonreligious but Zen teaching, freed of Buddhism, attracts me. So does stoic philosophy.Thanks for your lessons!
A lot to unpack there my friend. Hopefully you’ll figure that both can exist, and in fact harmonise, and that these perspectives may help as they do with me.
This a wonderful newsletter! I have learned a great number of things from it. I only hope I can process and save them internally!
Glad you enjoyed it, John. I learned a great deal putting it together too.
It is good to accept yourself while also trying to improve.
A great reminder, Adam.
Thanks Tinashe. Sometimes a little pat on our own back goes a long way.
Great piece! I've felt a tension between these two ideas for a long time, and have been searching for an answer - a way to re-orient my thinking so that these ideas could coexist. I was still in the process of pondering when I found this! You articulated what I felt unconsciously very well. I was gonna write something related to this, to help me think through it, but maybe I'll switch gears a bit and focus on how the culture in the US tends to encourage too much self-development. Sometimes so much to the point that people go to the other extreme, being complacent. It's all about finding the balance, which you have so eloquently illuminated.
Thank you for your writing!
Thank you for your reflections. On the face of it, these two concepts don't seem to coexist, but looking into the nuances they fit perfectly and nourish one another. Hey if you want to write about a topic then you write about it. Why not share your approach and your ideas? Thanks for the feedback.
Thank you Sarah!