Let me explain what I mean:
radical acceptance: ever think about how your coworkers are morons, your elderly parents have declined beyond recognition and actively work against you and seem to live to ruin every single one of your days, your boss is an insufferable, exploitative ass, your uncle has lung cancer but keeps smoking a pack a day, your teenager daughter is doing drugs because is trendy, just like you did when you were her age? You cannot change how any of those actors in your life behave, people are free to do whatever they want, even to do stupid crap like that. Trying to change any of those actors is futile and guarantees your mental health decreases overtime and they resent you for caring about them. The better but not ideal solution? Radical acceptance. They are what they are, don’t try to change them, accept them how they are. Let them fail.
This was suggested to me while talking about relatives with dementia and other mental illnesses, but I don’t know if I’m stretching the definition too much.
Spineless conformist: if there are things I cannot control nor change, like climate change, lack of a public healthcare system in America, fptp, maga… why even try? I’d be both radical accepting reality while being a spineless conformist.
Where’s do you draw the line?
I think it’s not drawing the line but rather choosing your battles based on what is realistic for you.
Right so the main trap that happens is you never allow yourself any stillness (call it whatever you want: rest, calm, acceptance) because there’s always something of urgent importance you think you should be doing.
But that’s a classic recipe for burnout, and what happens is people crash super hard and then they’re not only doing nothing for the problem that stressed them out in the first place, but everything else in their life suffers as well.
You can’t carry the weight of needing to take care of your aging parents and work a demanding job and dedicate your life to climate activism and anti genocide activism and voting reform and human trafficking and animal abuse and and and and and…
You just can’t. The same way you just can’t deadlift a thousand pounds. Accepting that fact doesn’t make you spineless, it just means you know how much your spine can take before it snaps.
In short: radical acceptance is taking time to read a novel and spend time with your kids even if the world is ending. It’s not an endorsement of ending the world, it’s accepting your limitations and deciding that life is worth living regardless