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ACCEPTANCE is one of the most powerful tools that you can have in your psychological welfare arsenal.

I discovered this many years ago and I regularly use phrases like ‘it is as it is’ or the infamous teenage phrase of ‘whatever’ much to the chagrin of my family and friends.

The Irish love to complain about the weather, but at the end of the day, complaining about the weather isn’t going to change the weather so one would be much better off accepting the weather as it is and investing in a decent raincoat and going out and enjoying oneself.

The song ‘Singing in the rain’ by Gene Kelly is a metaphor for accepting the situation as it is and enjoying the moment.

One must ask ‘why does acceptance work?’

To answer this, one must investigate the whole area of stress. Many people talk about stress or treat stress on a daily basis.

In fact there are billions of euros being spent on or lost to the economy around the world in the whole area of dealing with stress.

This is a problem in itself! Most people, if you asked them to define stress, would be unable to do so.

Continued below…

Again ‘What is stress?’ The best definition I have ever heard of stress from a ‘working’ point of view is Stress is ‘being Here and trying to be There’.

If that is true then surely the opposite is true. The secret to a stress-free life is being Here and not trying to be There.

It all comes back to living in the ‘NOW’. Acceptance of a situation is the one tool that will always render us in the ‘Now’.

It is easy to accept a situation when it is pleasant but may not be so easy if the situation is difficult. However it is in acceptance of a difficult situation that we come to realise the real power and benefit of acceptance.

Without doubt acceptance is always the better choice over the only other choice which is ‘non acceptance’. Non-acceptance of a situation will inevitably lead to some form of stress as we are ‘Being here and trying to be there’ as explained above.

At the end of the day there are three ways we should best react to any given situation;

1. Accept the situation as it is.

2. Change the situation (in other words take action and so something about it)

3. Accept that we are unable to change the situation (Note we always retain the power to change how we Think about the situation i.e How we React!)

Non Acceptance is never really a good option as it can result in much pain, stress and confusion for both an individual and a country.

Many great leaders have used the Power of Acceptance to great effect. Nelson Mandela brought about the Freedom of South Africa from the terrible regime of apartheid and he achieved it by accepting his situation in a prison cell.

Ghandi achieved the freedom of India by accepting that ‘non- violent’ means was the best way forward for India.

Jesus Christ used the symbol of ‘Acceptance of The Cross’ to spread the message of eternal love and to save the souls of mankind.

He died and gave His life without hesitation to teach this message. Millions of Christians around the world celebrate this message every Easter.

Next week I will write more on the subject of Acceptance.

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IN the last article I wrote of the benefit of gratitude and why it works (read it here).

I want to write more on this subject as this is the keystone to true happiness – that is how important gratitude is and it will not only improve our own lives individually but it is absolutely essential for global peace and the survival of mankind.

Every single cell in our body (and there are millions of them!) is a piece of energy and thus has a vibrational energy frequency.

There is nothing unusual about this as for e.g. Sound and Light are both energy and also have an energy frequency.

Our thoughts are energy and they communicate energetically with the cells of our body and thus cause our cells to vibrate accordingly.

If our thoughts are positive in nature then obviously our cells will vibrate with positive energy and the corollary is also true – if our thoughts are negative in nature then our cells will vibrate with negative energy.

We must be very careful here as to how we assess a situation. What is positive and what is negative? There are many examples of how a perceived difficult situation can turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to us.

I am currently training for the Ring of Kerry cycle and may regard cycling over hills as difficult but If I change my attitude and regard the hills as being a most important and beneficial part of my training I know that come the Ring of Kerry Cycle I will be grateful for the hill training as I approach Moll’s Gap hill outside Killarney.

In this situation I have turned a negative into a positive (internal alchemy!) There is a very good short video on Youtube about this called ‘Welcome The Rain’ (click here).

It is also important to appreciate that each of our cells has a memory in its own right. This can be called cellular intelligence or is often referred to as emotional intelligence, where our body will always decide what is best for us when left to its own devices.

A clear example of this is the scenario whereby if you cut your hand your body will begin the healing process instantaneously.

There is a scurry of instant messages from the brain to urgently send to the hand whatever is required – red blood cells, white blood cells, albumin, serum etc and the exact location as to where the ‘help’ is to be sent.

When we appreciate the power of our own body with deep gratitude we come to realise that there is a ‘miracle’ going on in our own bodies.

Even the most sophisticated computer in the whole world could not heal us as well as our own body’s can –wow!

After a while, a scar is formed and within about two weeks, in most cases, the wound is practically invisible. For our cells to do this they must act out of cellular memory (intelligence).

Once we come to realise this we then come to realise how important it is to send good positive messages to our body particularly in difficult times i.e. Gratitude for the Moment.

So in short we should train our bodies to live in the moment and fill our bodies with carefully selected positive thoughts which will inevitably result in good energy vibration. This is the secret behind the film ‘The Secret’!

Next week I will be talking about the importance of ‘Acceptance’.

• Roger Harty is a life coach and can be contacted on 087-6128336, on twitter at @Innerjoyz1 or by email rogharty@gmail.com 

ONE of the greatest gifts we can bring to our lives is, without doubt, the ‘Power of Gratitude’.

You might well ask why is this so? The answer is because it is a ‘truth’ and the truth works. We can play with this and say it works because it is a truth or it is a truth because it works.

The next obvious question is ‘why does it work’.

In the life of a normal human being there are two parts to our existence. There is the thinking mind (the ego) and there is the body (self).

In our everyday unaware lives we treat these as two separate entities. An example of this is when we say things like “I(ego) love myself (body) or I hate myself when I do that. We must thus ask who is the ‘I’ and who is the ‘self’ in both of the fore mentioned statements.

The answer is the I is the ego thinking mind which always has an opinion and doesn’t actually exist as thoughts don’t exist and the self is our physical body (a conglomeration of cells) which does exist. There is a strong school of thought which says that these cells don’t exist either and that we are each just a ball of vibrating energy but that is for another discussion.

I align myself with the concept that we are a conglomeration of cells which in reality is a ball of energy vibrating at a particular frequency.

This is what is known as the ‘inner self’ or the inner child which is present in each one of us. I find it a very useful tool to give this inner child a name, in my case I call it ‘Martin’ as that is my middle name.

It is important to appreciate the concept of the inner child in order to appreciate why gratitude works.

In my routine everyday life if I am regularly unhappy and complaining about my situation and even though I might be completely unaware of it, I am sending subliminal messages (Ego) to ‘Martin’ that all is not well.

My thought process (Ego) – and remember we have over 60,000 thoughts in a day – is sending messages to Martin that I am unhappy.

When I came into the world I was absolutely and completely born happy and ‘Martin ‘was happy but now I am sending strong messages of unhappiness and eventually and inevitably I will wear ‘Martin’ down and he will feel totally dejected.

This is often played out in the field of the subconscious and we are often completely unaware that we are doing it to ourselves. If you scolded a child on a regular basis it is obvious that that child would be unhappy too.

The good news here is if we change our thought process and increase the positive thoughts and reduce our negative thoughts we can send different energetic subliminal messages to Martin and we can effectively make Martin happy (the practice of meditation and mindfulness is vital here as it teaches us to observe our thoughts and not get caught up in them).

To do this we must show gratitude as regularly as we can during each day for as many situations as we can. Even when life appears difficult we can show gratitude for the moment as often difficult situations are great teachers in life.

Rather than judging the situation we could ask the question ‘what is life teaching me now?’. Being ‘grateful for the moment’ on a regular basis will cause the cells of our body (Martin) to vibrate at a different and happier frequency.

Like many things in life this change in inner happiness does not happen overnight but with constant vigilance, awareness and non-judgemental practice of meditation it is guaranteed to work. Why? Because it is a truth! If ‘Martin’ is happy, I’m happy!

More on gratitude next week.

• Roger Harty is a life coach and can be contacted on 087-6128336, on twitter at @Innerjoyz1 or by email rogharty@gmail.com