Mindfulness Attitudes

Attitude Number Six: Acceptance

The idea of acceptance can mean different things to different people. In the realm of mindfulness and the MBSR workshop, however, acceptance “. . . simply means that you have come around to a willingness to see things as they are” (Kabat-Zinn). This sets the stage and cultivates a mindset that allows for possible healthy change to occur. Having this mindset can allow for more freedom and choices which might not have been available to us because we are struggling with an issue or a problem.

Many times we create a lot of our own suffering. And, we do this by bringing our own judgments and biases to a situation. When we endorse statements such as “I can’t stand this” or “why does this always happen to me?,” we trigger a cascade of events that occur within the body. This cascade of events which includes our fight-or-flight system, exacerbates our suffering and makes a situation more complex than it necessarily has to be. But, if we can bring an attitude of acceptance to a situation, or to a mindfulness practice, there is potential to experience something totally different and to see things more clearly.

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