Acceptance

The Path Principles continue with Acceptance - because emotional wellbeing depends on our ability to acknowledge and respond to the circumstances of our lives.

What Acceptance IS NOT

When acceptance is first introduced in therapy, it often brings initial wariness. It can sound like I’m suggesting that people give up - and let go of hopes or efforts that matter to them. Life often involves some striving - it might be to get a job you want, or a partner, to become a parent, to overcome struggles with mental health - or many other things that might be of value to you. In this way, talk of acceptance can feel like the opposite of the change you long for.

In therapy, we can take time to untangle this. Because acceptance is not about abandoning what matters to you, it is about meeting your life with greater clarity and courageous responsiveness.

A Story About Discernment

There is a teaching story from the Buddhist tradition that captures this distinction well.

A young monk, walking through the woods one day, comes across a hut on fire. Remembering his teacher’s guidance on acceptance, he sits down beside the hut to meditate, believing this is a chance to practice acceptance. When his teacher passes by moments later, he shakes his student and says, “What are you doing? Can’t you see the hut is on fire?”. The teacher then rushes to extinguish the flames. Turning to his student he says, “The art of acceptance is discernment. You needed to accept the reality of the fire—and your responsibility to respond.”

Acceptance as an Active Practice

Acceptance is not passive. It is active and discerning. Sometimes it calls for action, even when that action feels uncomfortable. At other times, it asks us to acknowledge a reality we wish were different and to adjust our relationship to it. In both cases, acceptance means turning toward life rather than away from it.

Acceptance as Emotional and Practical Responsibility

In therapy, discernment of action often shows up as learning what is—and is not—ours to carry.

Emotional responsibility means allowing our feelings to be present and experienced as they are, without fighting them, numbing them, or judging ourselves for having them. It also involves recognising the difference between taking responsibility for our own emotional experience and taking responsibility for the emotional states of others. Many of us learn, often very early on, to try to keep people happy, calm, or protected through self-sacrifice. While it is important to act with care, kindness, and awareness of our impact on others, this does not extend to carrying responsibility for other people’s inner worlds. In therapy, we can take time to explore what this subtle but important distinction looks like in your own life.

Practical responsibility involves identifying what actions are genuinely within our control and committing to those where it feels right, while accepting that outcomes are not fully ours to determine.

Together, these forms of responsibility allow us to stay engaged without becoming overwhelmed—to play our part without carrying the weight of everything alone.

Acceptance Means Letting Go of Demands

Acceptance often involves loosening our grip on how we believe life should unfold. While preferences are natural, suffering grows when they harden into demands: I can’t cope unless this happens. Acceptance reminds us that, though disappointment can be painful, we are often more resilient than we realise.

Acceptance and the Inner Path

Acceptance is a subtle practice of caring deeply while holding outcomes more lightly. In The Path Practice approach, it grows naturally from Presence and opens the way to the next principle: Trust. As we learn to meet life as it is, with discernment rather than resistance, trust begins to develop—in ourselves and in our capacity to meet what comes.