Accepting Reality: Why This Is So Important

When faced with something that you don’t like, there are several ways you can react to it. You can complain about your unhappiness, work to change the situation, or accept this reality and try to deal with it in the best possible way so that it doesn’t keep you thinking about it .

Maybe you will talk about it or choose to just ignore the situation. You can accept it in your mind, or you can remove anyone who talks about it from your mind. Whatever you choose, one thing is certain: at some point you have to accept reality . Often there is no getting around it.

In other words, some things in your life will continue to exist whether you like them or not. Ultimately, to avoid them negatively affecting your wellbeing, your only option is to learn to live with them. You probably already have practice and experience with it. When we develop and maintain relationships with other people, it always means that we have to accept certain idiosyncrasies that we do not necessarily appreciate.

You can accept reality by accepting imperfection

If you are feeling generous, idealistic and having a good day, you will consider yourself lucky you made a mistake. Because without mistakes, you cannot learn or move forward. Yesterday you screwed up, but today you will shine.

Sure, that sounds wonderful. But how often have you been angry about your own forgetfulness? How many glasses have you broken because of your clumsiness? You misjudged the size of a parking space and hit the car behind you. Your doctor’s appointment wasn’t this one, it wasn’t until next week …

It doesn’t matter how much you get angry about these situations and yourself and how much time and energy you invest in frustrating them. The fact is that you will keep making such seemingly stupid mistakes in your life. However, the point here is not that you can learn great lessons from them for your life. These are simply things that just happen. And you have to accept this reality.

expectations

Only rarely do things develop exactly as you envisioned them in your head. No amount of meticulous planning can prepare you for ANY unforeseen situation. When you make a list of all the things that could possibly happen, the last item will always be “among other things”.

So it’s just not worth it. If you are overly cautious or reluctant just to avoid certain events, you are overlooking a simple reality: most circumstances are unpredictable.

Therefore, in trying to be prepared for anything, you put an extremely heavy burden on yourself. In addition, this behavior means that you react slowly and slowly, although you should actually act dynamically and flexibly. Human history has taught us one thing over and over again: constancy is the exception and not the rule.

Of course, you can’t just throw all your expectations overboard and erase them. Neither can you avoid getting a first impression and having certain prejudices (such as the halo effect). Because your expectations naturally determine various elements of your psyche, including important ones such as your self-efficacy or your ability to control your attention.

Accept reality: We often only work with what we ourselves perceive

A statue is not ugly. A person is not honest or a liar per se. Although he or she may act like this in most cases, it does not automatically mean that this person acts like this always and in every situation. Or that he would not adapt his behavior to the respective social environment. In fact, we all act like this sometimes, but that doesn’t automatically mean we’re selfish or hypocritical.

When looking at a photo on the screen, two points may be closer or farther apart, depending on how much you zoom in on the picture. Depending on the perspective and zoom, Hamburg and Vienna can be very close or very far apart.

The advantage of a geographical view is that we can both agree to use the same point of reference and an absolute value. Then our personal opinion will not play a role. However , it becomes far more difficult when we try to translate this method into the world of psychology. For example, imagine that Hamburg and Vienna are constantly moving, which means that the distance between them is constantly changing.

In this case, what would you use as a reference point? In all likelihood, the only point of reference would be what you see on your screen at that moment. Why? Because it is very convenient to act only on the basis of your own perception and perspective and only use the information that is available to you at that particular moment. In other words, you often work with a still image when you would actually much rather have 360-degree video. However, this is not possible and thus just another example that you have to accept reality.

You forget some things and you have to accept that too

It’s on my tongue … The word I’m trying to remember is like an island. I know exactly where it is, but I can’t find the bridge that could take me to these beautiful beaches. I know the meaning of the word, know exactly when I last used it, which letter it starts or ends. Even though I remember all of these details, the word just doesn’t come to mind.

You recognize this face in the queue and you also know that you went to school together. But what is this person’s name? He sat right next to Johannes and the math teacher always called him by name in class. You see, this is another reality that you have to accept: this slightly anarchistic way your memory works.

In this article, we’ve only touched on some of the realities that you need to accept. When these things happen they can be very frustrating and annoying. Which ones would you add to your list and why?