The client is guided to reflect on her greater purpose to actively and mindfully seek a way of dealing with the situation. By standing back to review the bigger picture, the client can be encouraged to review her appreciation for what is good in her life and show gratitude. From this position of appreciation and understanding of what is and is not within her control, the client discovers through Acceptance that she can unburden herself from responsibility for the situation.
Insightful questioning can stimulate the client to withdraw from the detail of the conflict and view the situation from a new perspective. So, while the conflict is still there, the client can shift her emotional response by accepting it and adopting a position where he finds she no longer needs to be burdened by the powerful and destructive emotions attached to it.
The coach could also nudge the client toward thinking of the needs of her parents causing the frustration – what can she learn about those emotions?
By living with Acceptance we can learn to live with difficult situations, not allowing emotions to dominate or inhibit our greater sense of life purpose. This does not mean that we toss aside or ignore life’s difficulties. By living with Acceptance we pay attention to the areas of conflict, but through purposeful living, understand where our priorities lie.
Cultivating this calm, non-reactive view of circumstances requires a healthy look at negative emotions – accepting them by not trying to escape or deny them – and placing them in context. Daily attention and mindfulness are required to maintain a healthy separation from our destructive emotions.
Viewing this situation from the perspective of Acceptance, the client can find the confidence by seeing her parent’s views in an adjusted perspective. The new position sees that the parent’s opinions, while significant, are small within the scale of the client’s life purpose and her relationship with her parents.
Acceptance takes an adaptive approach and re-orients the client into a state of greater understanding of the whole rather than the single perspective view. This reframes the situation. By accepting her own emotions, good and bad, the client can take constructive action to act on her beliefs with a deeper understanding.
Acceptance is important to coaching because it is not people, situations or events that cause our problems but the beliefs we hold. It is truly liberating for our emotional life to release those beliefs and judgments through greater self-understanding.