“Just accept it” is a common phrase lately that makes people’s eyes twitch and/or give up. First of all, it’s not that “easy” to accept a complex and sometimes insoluble situation, your thoughts and experiences in connection with it, or any other difficult thoughts and feelings that appear in each of us. Secondly, there is a certain stereotype that accept = come to terms with, which can lead to resistance to this idea or paralyzing powerlessness. I propose to analyze both points and explore. In this article, we will focus on accepting internal experience, but first, a few lines about external circumstances. First of all, I would like to say that acceptance is not a passive position, not defeat or refusal to change. Acceptance is an acknowledgment of what is happening, a statement of fact: “ yes, it is.” Acceptance does not mean that you approve of the current situation, painful thoughts or feelings. Acceptance is your active choice and refusal to fight reality, as well as making specific efforts to improve the situation where and to the extent possible. That is why, when faced with crisis, difficult life circumstances, it is so important to find a balance between accepting what is happening and purposeful changes. This requires an analysis of the situation, possible options for further developments and your real possibilities: what happened? What do I think and feel about this? what would you like to achieve in this situation? what is possible to achieve? What can I influence? What resources (external, internal) do I already have to improve the situation? What other resources do I need and what should I do to get them? what steps am I ready to take now? So, you recognize real circumstances, your thoughts and experiences in connection with them (acceptance), and then transfer your focus directly from the problem to options for resolving it and your capabilities (targeted changes). If we speak about acceptance in the context of internal experience (thoughts, emotions, feelings, sensations that we would not like to think and feel), a logical question arises - why accept them? As follows from what was written above, we learn the skill of acceptance not in order to make yourself worse and worsen your condition. It’s exactly the opposite: through acceptance we can come to personal meanings and values, in the short term make our well-being more acceptable, and in the long term increase satisfaction with our own life. By accepting, i.e. By giving up the fight against negative thoughts and feelings (or avoiding/suppressing them), you have the strength and space to take actions that contribute to the life you want to live. Imagine a situation: a girl wants to become a photographer, she has several years of experience in shoulders, photographs for a portfolio and, unfortunately, merging with the thoughts “I won’t succeed, it’s too difficult,” “what if someone doesn’t like the photos, I won’t stand it.” Thoughts provoke feelings of anxiety and fear. Let's say she has never heard about the influence of thoughts on feelings, that thoughts are not instructions for action, and that fighting anxiety makes the situation worse. From time to time, a girl thinks about creating a profile on social networks for work, inviting people to test photo shoots - and then these thoughts are joined by the already familiar ideas with negative forecasts + a strong surge in anxiety. It is very uncomfortable to experience anxiety: since childhood, most of us have learned that there are “positive”, pleasant emotions, and there are “negative”, respectively, unpleasant and unwanted. Our brain automatically looks for a solution to this “problem” in the form of an emotion: what should we do to get rid of anxiety? The answer is found quickly: you need to give up the idea of ​​​​trying to do anything, do not create a profile, do not publish advertisements, do not take photographs of people - then you will not have to come into contact with new disturbing thoughts and experiences when communicating with clients and in potential work in general. Such refusal?