– An alternate 4-step process to practice radical acceptance and manifest your next best version.

New years often begin with setting goals & revisiting visions. Sometimes, it is like repainting the walls to hide the cracks of an old building. New goals help in overcoming the guilt of the unmet old lot. New visions create a temporary high necessary to forget the unrealistic pain created in pursuit of last year’s rhetoric.

Corporate culture has taught us to set stretch targets that would lead to creative tension and push us to achieve more.

Now, read the last sentence again. Do you feel the pain and subtle violence in that?

Often, goal-setting and visioning start with discontent with our current reality. Be it an increasing waistline or declining profit margin. In some cases, it’s reframed as love. Like “This year, I will spend more time with family.” Every “more” has an unacceptable “less” that sets us up on a war against self. An illusory new self will wake up at 4 am, run a marathon, save every nickel, and so on… to liberate the not-so-good old self.

That’s the story of most New Year resolutions. Most wars fade away as we exhaust our resources. Only a few survive the first month.

What if there is another way to pursue what we most long for?

What if we could start our new year with full acceptance of our current reality? We could say to ourselves… “Well, right now, I am here, and that’s great!”. Even in the most gruesome life conditions, there is something to celebrate. There is breath, and there is hope.

We could end the old year with gratitude for the many gifts that life has given us— failures with lessons, relapses with messages, successes with struggles, and so on.

And we stay in the space of acceptance & gratitude for a while… without planning a different reality. We stay in the richness of now. We see it fully— the hidden beauty. We witness our struggles, pain, and regrets, and we embrace them as part of being human.

Radical acceptance of the now is not a passive surrender to an old pattern. It is a deep acknowledgment of the whole being. It’s the courage of a warrior to see life as it turned out to be, without judgments. It’s the confidence of a sailor to stand and witness the massive tide in silence before adjusting the sail and riding the next wave. It takes the wisdom and humor of a sage to chuckle and accept the mess. A child could do it with ease.

How do we overcome our current patterns and strive for a better future?

We can’t stay in the current reality even if we want to. Striving is a problem, though. It’s a recent human construct. Nature never strives. It only evolves towards holistic well-being. Human striving is driven by our ego needs and messes up with nature.

I am, therefore, proposing to myself and my readers an alternate way to evolve. Like nature does. And children, too.

Practicing radical acceptance of current reality gives way to a new future.

By following our evolutionary impulse, we learn to ride the wave to our next stage of well-being. I learned this from a contemplative movement practice called 20-Minute Dance from my teacher, Arawana Hayashi. Let’s try a short version now.

Notice your body while sitting in your chair (or whatever posture you are in while reading this blog), and let go of all agendas for a while. Notice your breath and physical sensations as your body rests in this still shape. As you become aware of your resting body, after a while, something, some part of your body, might move. Slowly taking you to a new, still shape. Be it stretching, contracting, standing, walking, dancing… it’s all beautiful and you don’t have to plan or strive for that. Keep alternating between still shapes and movements for a while.

When we let go of all our plans and witness the body, it rests for a while and then naturally moves to the next stage of well-being. Let’s take this embodied wisdom to all aspects of life. Here’s a contemplative practice that I started experimenting with some years back:

Step 1: Sit quietly on your chair with an upright back and a soft, open heart. You may keep a journal/ notebook and a pen handy. Let go of all agendas and fully accept the current reality of where you are with the particular life context— health, relationship, profession, spiritual. Notice your thoughts, but let them go and keep returning to the sensations of your breathing body. Feel the joys and struggles reflected in your body. Let all judgments and ambitions drop away. Be a witness to your own drama of life. Appreciate its beauty and ordinariness.

Step 2: As your attention rests on the body and you fully embrace your current reality, there may be brief moments of blankness. Embrace this cluelessness. Not knowing is the starting point of something new to be born. Stay with it as long as you would.

Step 3: Pay attention to the micro-movements of your body or any flashes of consciousness. Somewhere in your body or your consciousness, you may feel an impulse. Something that would tell you to move, take a baby step, toward the emerging future. It could be an urge to wear dusty running shoes, make an unplanned call, cook a healthier meal, take a walk in an unknown street, sing a song, touch the soil, confess it all in an open journal, or whatever. Follow it. Just do it fully and without any expectations. Feel your body as you do so. Let the act find its own completion.

Step 4: Go back to Step 1. Before your mind seduces you into planning the next thing, take a short break. Be still again. Be the witness to this new reality of yours. Having followed your first natural impulse, how does it feel now? Accept this moment fully. Appreciate its beauty. And wait… till you get the next impulse.

Sometimes, you may need to nudge a little for step 3 to start. Like a trekker taking baby steps, aware but detached from the mighty cliff. Or a painter making brush strokes in oblivious anticipation of what may come.

This approach may sound counterintuitive to some. Instead of big goals and painful schedules, what if we follow the next natural impulse? And then the next and next… with stillness, acceptance, and appreciation of wherever we are in between.

Let your body, your relationships, and your work find its own rhythm. With no promises to keep except a deep commitment to love self and naturally evolve every moment!

I wish you a beautiful new year!

Manish Srivastava