Ep. 19 Coaching Lesson 5: Acceptance – Leaving Your Stuff Behind

We all have stuff from the past! No matter what you are struggling with; loss, grief, financial or relationship difficulties, childhood dysfunction and anything else, you have the personal power to create authentic and lasting change with the right tools and mindset.

To know what you no longer need or want in your life you must find value and meaning in all that you have experienced. In this coaching episode from Lesson 5 of the “Get Me Started” online course, learn how to make peace with your past and move on from whatever is tying you to your present to create the life that you do want. Starting right now!

Get the free mini-personal growth journal with action steps that accompanies the first six lessons of this coaching series here.

TIMESTAMP:

0:00    Welcome
0:25    Introduction to episode
2:19    Wanting immediate escape from the struggle
4:13    Creating real and lasting change
7:10    Acceptance
8:39    Key takeaway
10:07 Can't accept your stuff yet?
11:50  Closing

Books (by Vonne Solis)
Lessons in Surviving Suicide – A Letter to My Daughter
Divine Healing Transforming Pain into Personal Power – A Guide to Heal Pain From Child Loss, Suicide and Other Grief
The Power of Change

Resources (Blog, Course & Meditations)

COURSE discount

COACHING EPISODES:
Start at Lesson 1: Regrets - Letting Them Go Audio or YouTube
Go to previous Lesson 4: Hope – are you ready for change?  Audio or YouTube

Subscribe to the podcast! Share your favourite episodes! Connect with Vonne on LinkedIn and Facebook.

Transcript

Vonne Solis  0:00  
Hello, welcome to another Grief Talk Coffee Chat episode. I'm your host, Vonne Solis.

Vonne Solis  0:13  
So welcome, everybody to another coaching episode on the Grief Talk Podcast. Everything you want to know about grief and more. I am your host Vonne Solis. So welcome. I'm really happy that you're with me. 

Vonne Solis  0:25  
In today's coaching episode, I'm going to be delving into some key takeaways on Lesson Five for my online course "Get Me Started!". Now this is a course that is in my Beyond Bereavement series, but as I like to remind any viewer or listener, you know to this podcast, grief comes to us from many, many different situations. And my course, I designed to help anyone through loss or adversity that is presenting any type of struggle in their life. 

Vonne Solis  0:56  
So, up to this point in the coaching episodes one through four, we talked about letting go of regret in Lesson One. In Lesson Two, we talked about failure, your friend or foe. In Lesson Three, we talked about self-forgiveness and how you need it to change your life. And in Lesson Four, we talked about hope. Are you ready for change? Really? So this is Lesson Five. And today, I'm going to be sharing with you some key strategies in terms of "Acceptance - Leaving Your Stuff Behind". And at this juncture, I would just remind folks that there is a PDF journal that you can download. I call it a mini-personal growth journal. You can work on it on your own or you can follow along in these lessons. And that is entirely free for you to download and use and enjoy as your own little marker of growth. 

Vonne Solis  1:50  
But when we talk about acceptance, leaving your stuff behind, what is really key is you cannot move forward until you have made peace with your past, and what it is you actually want to leave behind. In order to do this, you must be able to find meaning and value in all that you have experienced. And of course, if it's negative, which is really what it is when we want to leave stuff behind, you have to no longer want it in your life. 

Vonne Solis  2:19  
So most people want immediate change when they are in adversity or any kind of struggle. Whether this is getting out of money difficulties. Getting out of a bad relationship. Changing a crappy job. Moving, so you're living location, whether it's just within the city you're in now or clear across the country. Finding a career. Whatever it is that is causing us discomfort, I mean, most of us want to end it immediately. Like now. And for a lot of people they really don't even want to put in the work. One of the reasons it's really hard to make change is because we haven't really dealt with what it is we want authentically aligned with our heart in our future. We just know what we don't want to experience anymore. 

Vonne Solis  3:17  
So when we're looking at making rapid and immediate change, and all the struggle, and for most of us, we wouldn't want to experience any kind of struggle again in our future. And by the way, you can actually make that happen in your life if you have the right mindset and tools, which is what my work is all about getting you there to that point. But life doesn't work that way. Nobody really escapes challenges and some kind of struggle. So it's really, really key to be able to recognize one) whether it is and what it is we may be struggling with. And two) whether we can get ourselves centered to find that place within us where we know we can come up with a really creative solution. And even if we can't come up with it today, it really changes your mindset when you understand, I may be experiencing this right now, but hey, I'm not going to be experiencing it for much longer. 

Vonne Solis  4:13  
Real and lasting change comes when we are ready to let things from our past go and we are ready for what's coming next. This is also the reason that some people might get a little bit impatient and disgruntled and frustrated because change isn't happening fast enough for them. But a large part of moving forward in life is being ready for what's coming around the corner. And often, we're actually not really ready for it, or not everything has really lined up perfectly for us to have something manifest in our life. But still, change always requires us to let go of something. And this is why we have to be very clear in our minds and in our heart about what it is we're actually ready to leave behind. 

Vonne Solis  5:04  
The other thing that's key to remember here is that by focusing on what you no longer want in your life, it shifts accountability for what you have experienced and what you are about to experience directly on to you. And speaking in general terms, us. Any of us that say, You know what, I don't want to experience that in my life anymore. I accept that this has happened. I accept that I don't want to experience this anymore. I accept that I have the power to create what I want in my future, we have to own that. So it shifts the entire accountability for our life, essentially, right back onto our shoulders. We can't blame anyone anymore for what has happened to us. Having said that, and that actually is quite a lot to deal with, you know. I mean, depending on what you're trying to let go of in your past. 

Vonne Solis  5:56  
And for anybody that's coming from a situation of loss, human loss, and they're really trying to let go of grief, I'm right there with you. It's really easy to say, let go of this let go of that to move on. But there are a whole lot of complications related to a number of situations that we deeply want the ability to accept what has happened and let go of it. But some things are just really, really complex. And it takes a little longer, and a lot more work to actually get to the point where we are 100% authentically aligned with what we're trying to create next in our life. Additionally, it can be really, really scary to leave things behind and go into an uncertain future. Change presents its own kind of struggle. Just a different kind of struggle. But the more naturally, we can face the fear about letting go of what it is we no longer wish to experience, the stuff we no longer want in our life, the more naturally we'll become aligned with opportunities with the confidence and courage that we can create that next big step. Or even small steps in our life. 

Vonne Solis  7:10  
One of the biggest lessons I learned when I was writing my last book, and so for anybody here that might be watching or listening to this, or you may know somebody who has lost a child to suicide, or even anyone to suicide really, or any death that they blame themselves for, my last book I published earlier this year called "Lessons in Surviving Suicide - A Letter to My Daughter", I explored a lot of the difficult emotions of having to let go of a lot of different things and leave my stuff behind. Which completely meant accepting the situation of my bereavement and a whole bunch of other situations as secondary losses that had occurred. So I never really had problems accepting that and taking responsibility for my life. I have long for four decades actually believe that we are the creator of our own circumstances, good or bad. So that wasn't the issue. The issue is that we're human beings. And we do have to deal with the complicated emotions and the complicated situations and environments we sometimes find ourselves in. And it can be a lot to have to pick up or pack up and make some pretty big changes in our life. It can be just as complicated to change our mindset. And in fact, it can take years to really adopt a much more positive, stabilizing mindset that we can turn to. Depend on, to focus us center us in whatever struggle or adversity we might be hit with in life. 

Vonne Solis  8:39  
So one of the things that's really key to take away from this, is that you cannot force yourself at all to do anything, or have anything happen for you or even to think differently. It's just going to create a lot of extra pressure and frustration, and probably delay the change. Because what we resist persists. Another key takeaway is that giving into what you are really feeling is its own form of acceptance. And that is key to remember. Because as we evolve. As we grow. As we become more confident and courageous to take those baby steps, if we're coming from something really, really horrendous, or those bigger steps when we've already got a pretty great life, but we're feeling like we need some change, and you know, maybe things aren't working out for us quite as fast as we want, it's really freeing to just be able to accept where we currently are or how we're really thinking for today. In other words, what we're really not ready to give up or what we're really not ready to adopt as our thinking. That is a huge form of acceptance in and of itself. And that frees you to go on to accept even greater things. Bigger things in your life more frequently as you feel called to do so. 

Vonne Solis  10:07  
Lastly, I just really want to say that what you don't feel ready to accept today, don't accept it. It's really a huge first step, or second or third, just knowing what you want to leave behind and recognizing that you're not quite ready to leave it behind. That in and of itself paves the way for you to, from subconsciously thinking about it, to eventually consciously think about it. And almost like prepare yourself for the moment, the day the moment, when you just really are so aligned with your truth for that specific moment in time, where you know, I can let this go. I can leave my stuff behind. I can accept whatever it is you may have been struggling with, and free yourself to move on from it. 

Vonne Solis  11:04  
If anybody out there is going well, how will I know? How will I know? You'll just feel it. Every one of us, when we become ready to really leave bad habits behind. Bad situations behind. Bad patterns behind. You know, when you've had enough. You may have to be a student of other philosophies, other teaching for a while to gain the mindset and tools to help you get to that place to let a certain something go, or adopt a certain type of thinking that you feel comfortable with for today. And that's okay. Each step along the way is a step farther along the journey to become who you're meant to be aligned with who you know you are in your heart. 

Vonne Solis  11:50  
Okay, that's it for today. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. Until next time,

Transcribed by https://otter.ai