Acceptance Begins with Awareness

[Russell Cox]

When I say : Happiness ( and change ) begin with acceptance and acceptance begins with awareness, what am I getting at?
See also 1, 3

First, by awareness I simply mean that you should take a look at your life and get a good understanding of who you are, where you are, and what is available to you. Most of us are either way to positive or way to negative when we do this sort of self assessment.

When I work with my entrepreneurs I ask them to develop their three budgets : their Time Budget, their Dollar Budget, and their Skills Budget. Most start-up projects go awry when they blowup one or more of these budgets. They try and do too much and burn out or don't get the job done on time. They spend more money then they have and the new money takes longer than expected. They take on projects that require more skill or resources than they actually have and the job is incomplete or not very well done.

This is good advice for all of us. So take a look at your three budgets. How much time do you have for something new ( most of us are ferociously busy, so to start something new we usually have to stop doing something that no longer serves us well ). Take a look at your dollar budget and make sure you are not over committing or getting too far behind. Take a look at your skills. What are you already good at. Can you achieve your goals by doing more of what you already know how to do well or will you need new skills and capabilities?

So, awareness simply means take a good look at who you are and where you are. Don't let yourself get too positive or too negative. To start we are just looking at an honest assessment.

Acceptance, simply means that you acknowledge and understand your honest assessment and choose to begin where you are, not where you wish you were or where someone else thinks you are.

Once you accept where you are, you can begin plotting a course for where you would like to be and if you are honest with yourself about your skills and goals and always stay within your three budgets you can even be happy as you walk your chosen path, no matter how long or difficult it may turn out to be.

Thanks
Russell Cox - Entrepreneurial Coach
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[Bruce Leonard]

Thanks Russell good stuff. Honesty with yourself is severly underated. Being where your at is the perfect place to start. awareness and clarity are Paramount in moving forward in anything.

[David Dusseau]

Thanks Russell, I could not agree with you more. The most powerful acknowledgment in life is to accept who you are and where we are at. It is the best place to start regardless of what change or improvement your trying to make in your life. I meet people every day that are in denial about who they are or who they wish they were and thus they cannot move forward. By accepting what is we open the door to what is possible. Thanks for your great post.

David Dusseau

[David Lim]

Very practical perspective on awareness AND life budgets: Time, Skills, Dollar. Sometimes what seems so common sense and easy to do is the most difficult to do. Our psychological stuff, emotional blocks, arrogance, fear ... make everything so complicated. Awareness as pointed out in Russell's blog is about acceptance --- and the time, dollar, skills budget works absolutely best when a person can do what Russell suggests ... accept where you are at, accept your blocks, fears, and do what you can ... and keep at it ... eventually it will grow into something more than you thought you could do!

Great post Russell!!!