Happy Healthy YOU
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Kelly Spencer - Happy Healthy YOU
It’s been a good year with my ball team. We have played well together. Personally, I have been hitting pretty good, defensively solid while being a little slow around the bases due to 30 years of ball and knee problems. Perhaps my age is a factor too. None the less, it’s been a strong year and I am excited for Provincial play-offs in Niagara Falls and our Ladies “A” division finals.
Day two of the Provincial tournament and my knee is more sore than usual. If I am to be honest, it’s been increasingly bothering me for several weeks but like many of us do, I ignored the issue. Game two on day two, and my knee is throbbing. I try and play despite the pain. Finally in the 5th inning, I pull myself from the game.
After icing, analgesia and essential oil pain relief spray, I am given little remedy to the small golf ball swell that is now sticking out of the side of knee. I cannot walk without strain.
After a night of rest, the team is up early after a couple players do a coffee run for us all. I am thinking the night of elevation in my leg was most likely all I needed. We head to the diamonds and as I am limping towards the bench I have a delusional inner dialogue with myself. “It’s fine. It’s better today. You can play.” Then I hit a very small divot in the grass that causes an acute pain to shoot from my knee to my ankle.
Finally, acceptance wins.
Perhaps if I had accepted something was up with my knee and rested it a couple of weeks ago, the injury would not have progressed. But I didn’t, and it did. Leaving me asking: Why is acceptance such a jagged pill to swallow?
At certain times in our lives we find ourselves having trouble moving on, getting over or accepting life as it presents in the current reality.
When we reject reality, it is because things are not how we want them to be. But to move forward with any degree of contentment, we require a level realism and sensibility of what is, as is. So why is this so hard and what gets in the way of acceptance?
Our ego, our driving force, is enraged. Enraged, because we want things a certain way. Any other way, simply won't do. It's almost like a small child within you shouting angrily "NO! I don’t’ want this.” Then we mask the inner tantrum of unacceptance with denial logic and fantasy.
Denial can take us down a slippery slope. When we are walking a tight rope of reality-rejection and as we try to manipulate and control actuality, we can fall and hurt ourselves even more than the present circumstance which displeases us.
Whether it’s a knee injury, the end of a job, the dissolving of a relationship or any other situation we wish were not living as truthful existence of the now, acceptance can bring you contentment.
Accepting, is quite simply calming your Ego.
“Of course there is no formula for success except, perhaps, an unconditional acceptance of life and what it brings.” ~Arthur Rubinstein
Part of the real beauty of life is that it’s unpredictable and ever changing. Life reacts to our every thought, movement and energy. Nothing is permanent, everything changes and of course, a lot of things can happen that will transform who you are and have an impact on your life. One way that life can be lived with more ease is when we cultivate the ability to truly accept whatever comes our way and embrace it.
Easier said than done sometimes, right?
Some experiences are not easy to embrace when we’re suffering and wishing those things would have never happened. If we are in the opposite mind space of acceptance, we are in a state of resistance. Resistance, of reality. Seems a little crazy to think we ignore, deny or resist reality, doesn’t it?
If we start cultivating acceptance in our lives right now, we’ll likely cope with future challenges in a different way and view them from a different perspective. We will accept instead of resist.
Deepak’s Chopra’s book, “The 7 Laws of Spiritual Success”, dedicates one complete chapter (Law #4) to describing how we need to receive with open arms what happens to us, because if we fight and resist it, then we are generating a lot of turbulence in our minds. He explains that we might want things to be different in the future, but in the present moment we need to accept things as they are. That’s the way you can make your life flow smoothly instead of roughly.
I have discovered that I am happier and more peaceful when I acknowledge what is happening instead of fighting to change reality. Whether the inner fight is with a physical limitation or emotional hurt, if we can develop the habit of looking at our current existence through a positive mindset instead of a negative and defeatist one, we feel better.
When we can accept life as is, we feel better. That simple. We make the choice. Yes, it is absolutely a choice—a hard one sometimes, but a choice nonetheless. When faced with a challenge of something we wish wasn’t happening, we have two ways to deal with it: accept what’s happening, see the positive, and choose a peaceful state of mind; or cultivate denial, fight against it, be miserable, and struggle against the universe. Doesn’t seem much like a choice does it?
Let go of judging the situation as good or bad and instead accept it. This is one of the keys to convert momentary happiness to enduring happiness. It helps you move from feeling happy to actually being happy.
Once my ego calmed and acceptance that my ball season was done for this year due to a meniscus and collateral ligament tear in my knee, I was able to move forward peacefully rather than with resistance. I was still able to coach the team, support them in way that the reality of the current situation allowed me to and cheer them on.
We came in 5th at Provincials out of 18 teams and we won the Tillsonburg Ladies “A” Division Championship.
I can accept that.