17 Dec 2025 · 4 min
Cynthia Occelli distinguishes acceptance from resignation: you can embrace who you are now while still committing to change. She talks about how disciplined boundaries support growth, and why self-discipline is an act of love, not punishment.
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This is not resignation. So imagine that what you're accepting is some disheveled, unkempt child part, right? You accept that child fully. You love it just like you would in the world, okay? Or a goat in your case. Or, you know, something comes into your life, you accept it fully, but it poops on the carpet. You're gonna train it, you're gonna improve it, you're still gonna grow, you're still going to get the resources. It's not a resignation of I accept and resign. The optimizing is a way of life. Like, my goal is always to evolve, always to become better, always to grow. But I have another goal. I want to be at peace while I'm doing it and I want it to be true. I don't want it to just be the shell that I present the world. I want to take it to bed with me at night. I want to live it. So yes, accept everything. And then, sure. It's like, you know, when we have a problem with our say we're having struggling with weight and we're fighting ourselves and we're shaming ourselves and we're telling ourselves horrible things. You're going to do so much better when you accept and love yourself and then decide, you know what, I'm going to add 5 servings of vegetables to my diet every single day. And I'm going to edge out the other stuff. And so I'm not going to feel deprived. I'm going to do this in a loving, supportive way. I'm going to be kind to myself. I'm no longer going to take myself down. But I'm not resigned. Not resigned to just stay in places I don't want to be with qualities I don't want to have.
Yep. Yeah. Amen. And I think that's awesome because I. Some people say to me like, I can't believe you're so disciplined, like with your food and whatever. And I get it. But for me, that has been just an expression of my essence, of what I have discovered, makes me feel alive. And it's not even a. It doesn't feel like a struggle. It doesn't feel like I'm forcing it. It feels like an act of self love and self knowing of what I need because I Think there's. There is a lot of that. And we're trying to force ourselves. And when we do have that acceptance and that connection to who we are that you were talking about, there's a flowering, a blossoming and opening and unfolding of who we are and how we're going to live our best life.
Absolutely. You are going to. I mean, discipline is. I don't want to underrate discipline. It's part of the structure as we. As we look at femininity. To me, it's like the masculine and the disciplines are the river edges, the banks, and the femininity flows in them. And so if you don't have the banks, you're just everywhere. And, you know, it's really hard to get where you want to go. So discipline is a value. But I want to have joy. I want to be in the process instead of being outcome oriented. When I get there, I'll be happy. No, I need to make this as pleasant as possible, as joyful as possible, as rewarding and fulfilling as possible today, right now, and in all these moments going forward so that I can make this marathon of a journey.
Yeah, I love that you said that, because as you were talking earlier, that popped up for me of. Is where I am in my life. And I've been in this process for a while, but the feeling of wanting to experience it now, like, I have delayed gratification and I have used my masculine, which I have a strong, awesome masculine, but I've also destroyed my body in that process. But to, like, experience the joy and the. The not to just do things because it's going to be better then. I want to be like now. Like, I want that. To experience the joy now.
Yeah.
So I love that you said that.
No, that's really huge for me. And it came to. It's. It's been presented. I feel like our lives sort of give us continuous insight, feedback and signs as to what we are to learn and know. And for me, something that has been set in front of me in too many ways was. Is the idea or the fact that our lives have to be enjoyed in the present. We cannot always look for the outcome to be somewhere else. It started with Bronnie Ware's the Top Five Regrets of the Dying. I interviewed on my radio show years ago and I read the book and it. It took me down for days. It was one of those books that really just rearranged me. Inside, I was sobbing. And the top regret of the dying was, I wish I had lived the life that I wanted to live, not the life that others expected of me. Then I had my husband. I had this meteoric rise. And then the man I was married to had a brain aneurysm and everything was changed in an instant. And then years later, my mom had a brain tumor. Diagnosed very young, died very young. I have had repeatedly the message of now like joy is now, living is now, fulfillment is now, fullness is now, and who knows what comes? But I have witnessed the tragedy of people not having joy as a part of their daily reality. And not that I'm trying to be like Pollyanna, because sometimes bad things happen and joy is not on the table. But often it is. And we're not looking at it because we haven't earned it yet. Because we haven't suffered enough yet. Because we haven't done the things to check everybody else's boxes. For us to sit down and indulge ourselves in things that make us feel good. That's backwards.
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