You Must Learn To Accept The Realities

When you are faced with something you do not like, you can respond in different ways. You can complain about bad luck, work to change it, or accept it and work on it so that it is not always in your mind. Maybe you talk about it or decide to ignore it. It is the ability to accept it in your mind or mentally interrupt anyone who talks about it. But after all, you have to accept the realities. Thus, there is often no way around it.

In other words, some things in your life will continue to exist, whether you like them or not. To prevent them from negatively affecting your well-being, your only real choice is to learn to live with it. You probably have experience with this. Having contact with other people will always mean accepting eccentricities that you do not necessarily like.

You must accept the realities: Imperfection

On a good day, when you feel generous and idealistic, you will consider yourself lucky to make mistakes. Without mistakes, you will never learn anything or move on. You messed it up yesterday, but you want to shine today.

Sure, that sounds great. But how often has forgetfulness made you angry? How many glasses end up broken on the floor because of your clumsiness? Or when you misjudge the distance and hit the car behind you. You did not realize that your doctor’s appointment was not until next week… However, it does not matter how angry these types of situations make you, or how much time and energy you invest in your frustration. You will continue to make stupid mistakes for the rest of your life. It’s not about great experiences from life. These are just things that happen and you have to accept the realities.

You have to accept the realities: Expectations

Things rarely happen the way you imagine them in your head. No preparation can prepare you for ALL unforeseen circumstances. If you made a list of all the things that could possibly happen, the last line will always be, “among others”.

It’s simply not worth it. Being overly cautious or withdrawn to try to avoid a simple reality: Most circumstances are unpredictable. Trying to always be prepared is an extremely heavy burden to bear. You want to move too slowly and plunder where you need to be dynamic and change. Human history has taught us the same thing: Duration is the exception and not the rule.

On the other hand, you can not just get rid of all expectations, just as you can not prevent yourself from getting first impressions and biases (such as the halo effect). Your expectations naturally condition different elements of the psyche, some as important as self-efficacy or your ability to control your attention.

Work with what you perceive instead of with the realities

A statue is not ugly. A person is not honest or a liar. They can behave like this most of the time, but that does not mean that they will do it all the time, or that they will not change according to the social environment or the gaze that sees. In fact, we all do this sometimes, and that does not mean we are selfish or have two faces.

When viewing an image on the screen, two dots may be closer or farther apart, depending on how much you zoom in. You can make Oslo and Bergen look very close to each other, or very far away from each other.

The advantage when it comes to geography is that you and I can agree to use the same reference point, and give an absolute value, meaningless. Transferring this method to the world of psychology has its problems. Imagine, for example, that Oslo and Bergen are constantly moving, so the distance between them always varies.

What do you want to use as a reference point? In all likelihood, your only available reference point will be what you see on the screen at the moment. Why? Because of how comfortable it is to work from your point of view alone, with only the information you take in at any one time. In other words, you tend to work with still images when what you want are videos with a 360-degree angle. However, this is not possible, and it is just another example of the need to accept the realities.

You want to forget things and you have to accept it

I have it on the tip of my tongue… The word I try to remember is like an island. I know where it is, but I can not find a bridge that takes me to the beautiful beaches. Meaning, the last time I used it, the letter it starts with or ends with. I remember all these details, but I can not get the word out.

You recognize the face and went to school with the person waiting in line. But what were their names? They sat next to Jon and the math teacher always yelled at them. Another reality you have to accept is the slightly anarchic way your memory works.

We have only covered a few of the realities you have to accept. When these things come up, they are very frustrating. Which ones do you want to include in your list and why?