Radical Acceptance: Embrace Actions Not Expectations

In my journal I recently wrote that I do NOT want to make my living as a writer full-time. Nothing spectacular in those words, except that I’ve had a fantasy of doing just this for years.

Finally I observed my actions: I don’t write every day. Nor do I save enough money. Still I clung to the fantasy that I wanted to make my living as a full-time writer.

I think it was easier to grasp at this fantasy of writing full time. It made me unique (so I thought). It also made me angry. Angry at the world, mostly. The world was keeping me from making my living full time as a writer. Not me. The world was at fault.

Then I wrote in my journal that, based on my actions, I do NOT want to make my living as a full-time writer. My actions support this statement: I don’t write every day and I don’t save enough.

With this revelation, I’ve tried to stay in this mental space of NOT wanting to make my living as a writer full-time. That is what is true for me based on my actions.

Now what has happened in this embrace of the NOT of radical acceptance? What happens now that I do NOT want to make my living full time as a writer?

Funny that.

I have written 750 words everyday for 12 days straight. I’ve created a spending plan and committed to not spending money on wants one day at a time. I’m also training my mind to focus on writing rather than why the world has failed me and eking out time in my schedule to write these blog posts.

The thinking about being a writer full time was the source of my problems.

With radical acceptance, I must do the work of embracing the opposite: I am willing to never earn my living full time as a writer.

In that radical acceptance, I can now write. That is what is behind accepting the full-time writer/NOT full-time writer conundrum. The energy to write with as little attachment to outcome as possible. As to whether I can make that full-time, time will tell.