You Must Choose, And You Must Choose Now.
The path through a life that feels intolerable.
Read enough books, and you’re sure to find quotes that hit so perfectly, they embed themselves in your life, forever shaping your perspective.
For many people, one such book is Eckhart Tolle’s The Power Of Now—and it was for me, too. Years ago, it changed my life in teaching me that I am not the voice I hear in my head, I am the one who sees that.
But the quote I want to share with you isn’t about any of that, it’s about the practicality of facing hardship—a simple frame of thinking for when things get tough. Used in moments of dysregulation, it has as much a meditative effect as a functional one.
If you find your here and now intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally. If you want to take responsibility for your life, you must choose one of those three options, and you must choose now. - Eckhart Tolle
Remove Yourself
It’s been a hard lesson to learn, but sometimes the only option left is to leave love behind. Toxic family members, unkind partners, friends from a time before you were who you are now—any relationship that is depleting rather than uplifting. If all attempts at repair have been rejected, when a person has proven themself unable, or unwilling, to find common ground, there comes a point when any love that still lingers is outweighed by pain you’re forced to endure in pursuit of it.
Your goodness as a person isn’t based on how much you give in relationships, and it isn’t selfish to set limits on people who keep on taking. - Lindsay C. Gibson
Change It
There are only two things that can bring me suffering: my external circumstances and my experience with it inside myself.
Changing the external, when possible, is relatively straight-forward: decide what needs improving—going to therapy with my partner, requesting a transfer to another department, going no contact with my parents—and taking the appropriate action to the best of my abilities. Don Miguel Ruiz, author of The Four Agreements, adds:
But keep in mind that your best is never going to be the same from one moment to the next. Everything is alive and changing all the time, so your best will sometimes be high quality, and other times it will not be as good… Regardless of the quality, keep doing your best—no more and no less than your best.
According to Tolle, changing my internals—the way I think, feel, and act—begins with the recognition that there’s a voice inside my head masquerading as my true self. The same voice I’ve been listening to my entire life, the one who says this is ME, when it is, in fact, not.
How can it be me, if I’m the one who sees it?
How can it be me, if I’m the one who hears it?
How can I be the voice inside my head if I can watch, direct, and ignore it?
I can not.
I am not.
It is not me.
By building that awareness through repeated reminders to ourselves over an extended period of time (aka forever), we create the space necessary to observe who we truly are—the real Me beneath the ego and self-protection—and redirect our attention toward changing the parts—thought patterns, impulses, and beliefs about ourselves—that keep us from experiencing more joy. Or as Eckhart writes, enjoying myself can be read as in joy in my self.
Accept It Totally
Sometimes life sucks. Sometimes it sucks a lot. We know this. We understand that nobody gets out without some measure of suffering, the exact amount dependent on what fate dictates is our fair share. That being the case, in moments when we can’t change or remove ourselves—when we must face what Viktor Frankl called unavoidable suffering—why add more of it for ourselves by letting it dominate our inner narrative as well?
Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: Some things are within our control, and some things are not. It is only after you have faced up to this fundamental rule and learned to distinguish between what you can and can’t control that inner tranquility and outer effectiveness become possible. -Epictetus
Acceptance, it’s important to note, does not equal inaction. It only asks us to look reality in the face and say it is what it is, as the TikTok generation so brilliantly distilled. It’s not about toxic positivity or pretending things are okay when they’re not, but about acknowledging that although I might not have control over what fate brings my way, I always have the ability to dictate my internal response. Fortunately, most times, that will be all I need to march forward, breathe through the discomfort, and find a measure of tranquility—even within the pain.
By removing ourselves from unhealthy relationships, changing the aspects of our circumstance that allow it, and accepting the unchangeable for what it is, we accomplish the most important thing: choosing the energy we carry with us through this life.
In doing that, I believe, we learn that we are far stronger, far more capable, and far more resilient than we ever realized.
Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. -Viktor Frankl
I hope you have a beautiful day,
Will Watson
Chasing Surrender (Subscriber Feature)
It’s nearing two decades since I first read The Power Of Now and there’s no one left in my life who does not belong there…