1. TWIL (This Week I Learned.)

   This week I learned acceptance. Not an easy one. I think one of the hardest things to tease apart is when to accept and when to agitate for change. I had lots of opportunities to learn this week, but my favorite and the one I want to share, looked like this:

   

2. Quote

   “Confronting lies sometimes means confronting difficult truths about one’s self and one’s own country. It is much easier to forgive yourself and condemn another, than the other way round; but this is something that everyone must do. I have made my peace with modern Germany, and hope that all Europeans can do the same.” — Stanisław Aronson, I Survived the Warsaw Ghetto: Here are some lessons I would like to pass on

3. Prompt

   What do you need to forgive yourself for? What do you need to forgive others for?
   Can you accept those things in your life that are uncomfortable?

4. Quest

   Here’s an exercise to help with acceptance with all your different “selves”:

   1. Sit quietly in a place and at a time where you won’t be disturbed.

   2. Bring to mind an image representing your Professional Self.

   3. Notice that image.

   4. Be aware that you are observing it.

   5. Notice that if you can observe it, you can’t be it.

   6. Say to yourself, “I let it go” and then observe the image ‘walk away’.

   7. Continue this way, bringing to mind your different “selves” — Ideal self, Good parent self, Bad parent self (Good/Bad son, daughter, sister, brother, etc) Suffering self, etc.

   8. The “selves” won’t go away for long, but if you continue with this exercise you will begin to see them for what they are and hold each self lightly.

This is an exercise from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy which is a super helpful and well-studied method for creating a rich, full and meaningful life while accepting the pain that inevitably goes with it.

1. Wayback
2. February 10, 1940 — Tom & Jerry debuts. (To my mind, the exact opposite of authentic vulnerability and a perfect depiction of an unsafe arena where you should never let your underbelly show :) )
3. POD  Poem of the day —

Acceptance — Robert Frost

When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloud
And goes down burning into the gulf below,
No voice in nature is heard to cry aloud
At what has happened. Birds, at least must know
It is the change to darkness in the sky.
Murmuring something quiet in her breast,
One bird begins to close a faded eye;
Or overtaken too far from his nest,
Hurrying low above the grove, some waif
Swoops just in time to his remembered tree.
At most he thinks or twitters softly, 'Safe!
Now let the night be dark for all of me.
Let the night be too dark for me to see
Into the future. Let what will be, be.'

1. Song (Acceptance.)
2. Video. (Music video for Angelique Kidjo’s cover of Talking Head’s “Once in a Lifetime”)
3. Hero?: Stanisław Aronson, Warrior
   Why?    He’s either a hero for having the courage to call us out on his fear that history is about to repeat itself…or he’s not. As he says “Given what I’ve learned over my lifetime I would, first, urge future generations of Europeans to remember my generation as we really were,  not as they may wish us to have been. We had all the same vices and weaknesses as today’s young people do: most of us were neither heroes nor monsters.”
   
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2. Read more at Our Underbelly on Medium.
3. Stay tuned for a podcast episode - dropping Wednesday. — Ha! not yet! Getting closer…