The Power of Acceptance: The Secret to Happier Relationships and Inner Peace 🌸

Recently, my wife, Cherry Au, shared with me, a Chinese video that perfectly captures the lessons we've learned together over the past 20 years in marriage, family, and work.

It resonated deeply with me, so I took the time to transcribe and translate it for my English-speaking friends (thanks to ChatGPT Plus).

If you’re facing challenges, frustrations and pain in any area of your life right now, I truly believe these words of wisdom can offer you valuable perspectives that you might not have been aware of previously. 🙏

Here it goes:

🙏 The most profound mindset in life is this: Allow Everything To Happen As It Should And Will.

Allow and accept yourself to:

• take the wrong path 🌱,

• misjudge people 🙄,

• accept that someone you love doesn’t love you back 💔,

• face the fact that some efforts may yield no results 💪.

Much of our inner turmoil and pain comes from our unwillingness to let things unfold.

We expect everything to go as we wish, and when it doesn’t, we begin to dwell on it and suffer 😣.

🔄 In psychology, there’s this saying: "What you accept will disappear, and what you resist will persist."

For example, many parents see their children as rebellious or stubborn simply because their behavior doesn’t align with expectations. 🤷♀️

But when you see your child as "stubborn," it may be because you are imposing your own stubbornness onto them.

🧠 In Adlerian psychology, there’s a core concept called "issues separation."

This principle states that all interpersonal conflicts arise from interfering in others' issues or having your issues interfered with by others.

Once you learn to separate issues clearly, your relationships can shift dramatically 🌟.

👫 For example, if your relationship with your child feels tense, it’s often because you’ve interfered with their issues.

You want them to behave in a way that matches your expectations. To protect their boundaries, the child will push back 🔴.

😤 The more you try to control your child’s issues, the more defiant they become.

But if you adjust your mindset and let your children be themselves within the boundaries of legality and morality, you’ll find they’re not as stubborn as you thought. 😊

The same principle applies to romantic relationships.

💔 Many people believe their pain is caused by their partner, thinking that if only their partner changes, the pain will disappear.

We all hope to be healed by our partner and want them to become the version we desire. 🌱

In relational analysis, there’s a concept that every intimate adult relationship reflects our childhood relationship with caregivers.

For example,

• When you crave your partner’s attention, it mirrors the child in you who once felt neglected by a parent 👶.

• When you fear your partner doesn’t love you, it reflects the child who felt unloved by their parents 💔.

Subconsciously, you hope your partner’s love and attention will heal the inner child in you who was deprived of love and attention in childhood.

However, it’s important to recognize that romantic love should not be about compensating for each other’s childhood wounds.

It’s about our individual growth, so that we can complement each other in our relationship 🌻.

🚫 No one likes to be controlled or changed .

The only thing you can do is observe your own relationship patterns, and work on healing and nourishing yourself 🌱.

As you heal, you’ll notice your partner also changes positively due to your own personal growth and change.

Understand this: the more you try to control an issue, the more it controls you. 🔑

🌍 When you desire nothing, the world seems to fall into place .

So, the ultimate mindset is to allow everything to happen. 🌸

Let flowers be flowers, and trees be trees 🌳.

How do we cultivate this mindset?

🌊 The answer lies in issues separation and going with the flow .

Adler’s "issues separation" teaches us to identify whose responsibility the issue at hand belongs to 🔍.

Don’t interfere in others’ issues, and don’t let others interfere in yours. 🚫

🙏 Simply put, take care of your own issues and respect that others need to handle theirs.

For example, the choice of a partner and who you marry determines your future life, and you must bear the consequences of that choice. That is your issue .

Similarly, whether your child studies hard or not, or whether they get into a good university or not, is their responsibility, not yours 🏫.

🎓 Therefore, studying is the child’s issue, not the parents'.

Boundaries mean letting your issues be yours and my issues be mine 🚧.

Learn to go with the flow, recognizing that many things in life are beyond your control—like water flowing downward or air rising upward 🌬️.

When you refuse to let things happen as they should and insist they align with your expectations, your self-centeredness becomes the focus.

🌪️ And self-centeredness is the root of all suffering.

Life is uncontrollable, and interpersonal relationships are complex 🔄.

Whether you fear something or not, they are what they are. ⚖️

The best approach is to let thoughts and things pass rather than wrestle with them.

Remember, there are three broad types of issues in the world: other people’s issues, nature’s issues, and your own issues.

The only issues you can resolve are those that belong to you.

If you spend your energy trying to change others or defy the laws of nature, even if you live to 80, you’ll feel like your life was a failure. 😔

But if you dedicate your remaining time from now on to improving yourself and healing yourself internally, you’ll not only change your life for the better. 🌈

You will also start living in ways you never imagined possible. 🚀