REALITY FACING SECURITY

 

The phrase “secure enough to face reality” refers to the ability to know within yourself that you are okay as a person and that you are capable of handling the challenges of life.  Are you that secure?  If you have these two personal and internal resources, then you will be able to face reality without falling apart or getting into a highly reactive state.  That’s what happens when a person does not have sufficient ego-strength to face reality.  With this inner security, then the external challenges will not question you as a person (your worth or dignity) or overwhelm your ability to cope with life. 

 

Knowing your unconditional value and having developed coping abilities—now you can face reality for what it is and take effective actions to deal with things.  Now you can accept life’s challenges.  Acceptance is what indicates that there is sufficient internal security to face reality.  Conversely, rejection of life and its challenges actually makes it impossible to deal with life.  When you reject what is, you are fighting reality itself and as long as you are in a fight with reality, you are expending your energy, thought, creativity, problem-solving skills, etc,. in a realm that is self-defeating.  Why?  Because reality is what it is.  No matter how much you dislike it, hate it, wish it would be different, it is what it is.

 

If a loved one has died, then a person you have loved has passed on and is no longer alive.  If your house was destroyed in a hurricane, then the house is gone.  If you get a diagnosis of cancer, that is what you now have to deal with.  And this is where the magic of acceptance enables you to cope and move forward in life.  You don’t have to like the situation to accept it.  You only have to acknowledge it.  This “acceptance” is not the same as resignation—that is completely different. Nor does it even suggest condoning the situation.  Acceptance is an acknowledgment of what is.  And that makes it the beginning place for healing and resilience.

 

All of the previous stages of grief that Kubler-Ross identified in her classic study on grief —denial, anger, bargaining, and depression are actually unnecessary for grief resolution.  You will only experience these to the degree that you don’t accept life and its challenges for what they are.  When you accept, you don’t have to deny, rage, bargain, or depress.  Yet with acceptance, these become unnecessary. [They also become a waste of your time and energy.]

 

What does it take to face reality?  I’d recommend that you begin with unconditional self-esteem and a set of coping skills.  After that, you will need a healthy dose of acceptance.  But even without the first two, you could start with acceptance.  Acceptance can be the starting point for facing reality.  That’s because when you accept yourself, your skills, your powers, your situation, etc., your acceptance ends the fight.  It ends the inward fight against yourself, your history, things from your childhood, etc.

 

Acceptance is powerful for many reasons.  As a change principle: You can’t change what you don’t accept.  So acceptance begins the change process.  Also, you can’t face what you don’t accept.

 

What drives the pre-grief stages of a loss (e.g., denial, anger, bargaining, and depression) are cognitive distortions.  These arise when a person exaggerates a loss, personalizes it, emotionalizes, awfulizes, develops a tunnel vision about it, etc.   To experience security inside—out, begin by welcoming and embracing reality as that which is.  Acknowledge it.  The paradox is that when you begin with this kind of acceptance, all of the internal fighting against what’s real ends, and you can focus on coping.  Now you’re ready to do some high quality problem-solving.

 

 

META-COACHING NEWS

·       With this blog, we welcome another 20 or so new Meta-Coaches who have just graduated from ACMC in Kaula Lumpur.  The team in Malaysia were very gracious hosts and worked overtime to deal with the challenges that arose with the hotel.  This was the first ACMC in some 10 years in Malaysia so it was as if beginning for the first time.  Our hope is that the new Meta-Coaches will become the Community there and do such quality coaching that it will spread the word.  Then the trainers will keep busy training NLP as well as Modules I and II.

 

 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

ISNS Executive Director

P.O. Box 8

Clifton Colorado 81520 USA

(970) 523-7877