A Lesson In Acceptance
A reminder that we all teach the thing that we need to learn most
If the truth be told, I resented it.
At the end of this particular Thursday evening class, I felt I was at the end of my tether—at least, that’s how it seemed to me at the time.
The Aikido mat, my go-to place to get out of my head, a place to leave my labels1 behind, a haven to connect at a human level, was—at this point—the last place I wanted to be.
I left the mat in a funk and grunted silently as I headed downstairs to the locker room, the living embodiment of the song lyric “acts like summer and walks like rain2.
My Hakama was tossed in a tousled and unkempt mess into my kit bag as emotions of frustration and agitation cascaded through my body like a breaking wave in the ocean. Any call for dojō etiquette in removing and caring for my training attire had - temporarily - fallen on deaf ears.
The problem?
One might say we had been ‘beasted’, a military slang term for prolonged, arduous exercise used for training. Although it only lasted 60 minutes, it felt much longer by the end.
This evening’s hajime training class had pushed me beyond the boundaries of my current physical and mental capabilities.
I had been training for just over 5 years and, at age 59, was grateful that I was in relatively good physical shape. Yet whatever gas had been in the fuel tank at the start of the class had been used up, and it was now definitely empty.
Not only had I failed to rise to my expectations, but I had also fallen to the level of my training. I clearly no longer knew my left from my right, and the relentless pace, physical tiredness, and mental exhaustion had turned my brain to mush.
Brain fog tinged with a hint of shame and inadequacy had found a home, however temporary the arrangement.
Was this an age thing or something else?
Whatever it was, it was decidedly uncomfortable3.
I left the dojō under a self-imposed cloud of dissatisfaction, with my ego bruised as I stepped out into the night to find where I’d parked the car.
While the earlier rain showers had cleared, the cool and unsympathetic evening air did little to lift my mood as I headed home.
The distance between arriving home and heading to bed was much shorter than usual, as ablutions were hurried, and the path to bed via the stairs was traversed as fast as my body would allow.
I knew that a night’s sleep would be a helpful way to reset, even though I couldn't see how as my head hit the pillow.
Lights out, literally and figuratively.
The Lesson
The following day, as I continued to think about the events of the previous evening and my own responses to them, I wondered what lessons my mind and body were trying to teach me.
What did I need to learn from this experience to strengthen my resolve the next time I stepped onto the mat? What caused me to lose my centre, and how would I go about recovering it and regrounding myself in future sessions? What needed to be embodied to be able to recall what needed to be recalled without thinking? How would all of these things help me to create with less fear in the moment?
As was often the case in these situations, dipping into my personal music vault was a helpful way to begin the process of learning and letting go. A line from a song lyric came to mind.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
~ 'Anthem’ by Leonard Cohen
Wise words.
So, where was the light from this experience, and what was needed to let it in?
By mid-morning the following day, a small epiphany had made its gentle presence felt. Eventually, later that day, after enough uninvited moments of waiting and percolation, a breakthrough finally floated to the surface.
Acceptance. That was it.
Eureka! (Archimedes would have been proud).
The lesson was learning to accept to be able to improve at Aikido.
Acceptance
The skill of acceptance is about being mentally flexible when facing unwanted feelings about people, events, or even ourselves. It means acknowledging these feelings without judging them and approaching them with curiosity instead.
If we consider the word accept, it means to take what is offered willingly.
To me, the word 'willingly' holds significant meaning as it represents a pathway to immense freedom when we opt to embrace what is offered to us.
When someone gives us a reward for doing something well, we usually accept it happily. Here's a little something for you to show gratitude for who you are or what you've done. It could be a piece of cake, a book voucher, or tickets to a concert.
The act of acceptance in these contexts is easy, isn’t it? Who doesn’t enjoy receiving a gift? We take it willingly and do so without judgment, often with thanks and without trying to change anything about what is offered.
When you're faced with something new, like a different job role, a change in company policy, or an opportunity to develop, you get to decide how to respond. You can say yes or no or decide to think it over. It's all about how you choose to react to what's presented to you.
When we accept something - a person, a situation - we:
Take what’s offered
Take it willingly
Take it without judgement
Take it with gratitude
Examine what lessons there are to be had from the offer made to us
Explore what lessons are there to be had from the choice(s) we make
You're probably aware that not everything presented to us is easy to embrace. Each person has their own range of what they find acceptable, shaped by their upbringing, social influences, and surroundings.
In the GROW coaching model, the ‘W’ stands for ‘the way forward’, which includes the idea of will, expressed as commitment and determination to achieve the goal defined in the first step, the ‘G’ of the model.
There’s something admirable about commitment and determination.
In Western business culture, we highly value them both. After all, how could we achieve anything without them?
And that's valid up to a point.
Yet, I suggest that there is insufficient room being made for grace to play its part, to almost undersell and underestimate what might be possible through the commitment and exertion of our will when harnessed from a place of acceptance.
Imagine what could become possible if we provided space to accept, harness grace to accomplish and make a statement rather than achieve.
The Difference That Makes The Difference
Willingness in the context of acceptance has a more nuanced meaning.
Willingness isn’t the same as the emotion of wanting to be OK with something. It is a conscious stance we take toward what we’re being offered.
Sure, here's a simplified version:
Willingness involves accepting what is offered, even if it causes physical or emotional discomfort, rather than trying to avoid the internal feelings it may bring up.
It’s the sort of sitting with the discomfort that poet and writer Oriah Mountain Dreamer addresses in a line from her poem, The Invitation:
“I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it.”
Not every offer creates discomfort, but when discomfort is present, we can prepare the ground within us and around us to allow grace to work its magic.
If we can make sense of what’s happening inside us and sit with our feelings, we can experience tremendous freedom when we are willing to accept what is offered.
When we choose not to accept the offer, there are consequences for us, the people around us and for the system in which we operate.
Everything Everywhere All At Once
So, what was being offered during my time in class on the mat?
The founder of Aikido’s words provides the answer to this question.
The purpose of training is to tighten up the slack, toughen the body, and polish the spirit. - Morehei Ueshiba, O-Sensei, Founder of Aikido
Yet, I had experienced having the mirror held up in my face so I could see my level of progress in my Aikido practice and the fragility of my physical fitness.
Growth comes from discomfort. This I knew well.
Acceptance was needed in three ways:
The initial step towards acceptance began when I shifted my focus to acknowledging and embracing both my physical and mental imperfections and limitations during my practice. Trying to match the pace of individuals twenty years my junior was futile and driven by ego. Similarly, the sense of shame of not being able to keep up took its toll. It's wiser to train within my boundaries to prevent injuries and ensure I can continue practising without quitting altogether.
The second way I learned to accept things was by changing how I saw my teachers and classmates. I realized they were giving me a chance to improve. When I felt exhausted and frustrated during intense practice sessions, it was tempting to let negative feelings towards my teachers get in the way of clear thinking.
Lastly, I needed to accept our training system is deliberately devised to maximise the opportunity for progression and growth as a martial artist.
Yet, whilst this was all true, the real epiphany underneath it all was my reactive response to the discomfort of being exposed to not knowing how to do something when placed under pressure.
Afterword
Personal and professional growth demands discomfort. We must be pushed out of our comfort zones to develop our capabilities and leadership capacity.
When we sit ‘cabaret style’ in our training rooms focused on PowerPoint slides and flipcharts, conducting a ‘Hajime’ style class seems incongruous (not to mention unhelpful) with the context and purpose of the training being delivered.
Yet, I suggest a healthy dose of tightening, toughening, and polishing for those seeking to lead in formal roles would be more likely to help grow leaders’ capacity and capabilities from offsite sessions.
I encourage those of us charged with the responsibility of developing people to consider how these principles might be woven into future leadership training to address the clear disconnect between what happens in the training room and how that is translated into day-to-day leadership practice.
And so, as I head off to the mat for this evening’s training session, this lesson of acceptance and its impact on the other elements of GRACE will be a helpful reminder to reframe the inevitable moments of discomfort as moments of opportunity for personal growth.
____________________________
Acceptance is one of the core foundations of the GRACE Framework™️ . The Framework helps us think about ‘the how’ to do and increase our capacity for emotional intelligence, a cornerstone of effective leadership.
The GRACE Framework's design incorporates interdependence. All its elements interact with each other. Wherever I start my work, it impacts all the different elements all at once.
The starting point is to consider where the most energy for change lies. In this example, the energy focused attention on acceptance. The Framework is not directive.
The start point could easily have been ‘E’ for embodiment, which would have involved examining what components of specific techniques (e.g., footwork, weight distribution, timing, distance, speed, etc.) were flawed and beginning by practising specifics.
Read more about what it is and why we need it here.
Labels here are taken to mean those words in language that contribute layers to our identity - those given and received - that create the story of how we see ourselves and what we choose to believe within it is true.
Lyric from the 2002 Grammy award-winning song ‘Drops of Jupiter’ by Train
The use of harsh Anglo-Saxon language was resisted in the writing of this post 😀