Acceptance means acknowledging what happened is real and unchangeable, not approving of it. Exception means you're not exempt from life's hardships like everyone else is. Together they kill self-pity and let you respond to adversity without the story you tell yourself about why it shouldn't have happened.
Adopt this A&E formula into your life, and I promise you, you'll never look at things the same. And so the first part of the formula is acceptance. And see, people struggle with this word because you think that because you accept that something has happened, that you agree with it or somehow you like it, and that's not what it is. Accepting is having an understanding on a deeper level that it's already happened and that it is what it is. The other part of the A&E formula is exception. It's understanding that you are not an exception to life. You are not an exception to the rule. A lot of times You get bummed out because you think it's not supposed to happen to you. You think that somehow you were exempt from life's challenges. But you know, because when you turn on the news every single day, you hear disturbing news, you see tragedy strike, you see things happen to people all the time. But when it comes to you, somehow you don't accept that it's possible to happen to you. So when you practice emotional intelligence on a deeper level, you adopt the A&E rule. You learn to accept things for what they are, not what you would like them to be, and you understand that you are not an exception to the rule. Peace.
I was literally kicked off a Southwest flight before for being disrespectful.
