A short audio/video segment by Brian Johnson (Heroic +1) introducing the concept of radical acceptance, highlighting Marsha Linehan’s role in popularizing it within Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). Johnson connects radical acceptance to stoic practices and Byron Katie’s work, and recommends using small everyday annoyances (e.g., a broken AC) as opportunities to practice distress-tolerance skills and build resilience.
Chapters
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another Heroic one. In our last couple ones, we talked about my strong preference for a good night of sleep, along with my commitment to practicing some stoic indifference when the heroic gods decided to amuse themselves by shutting off the AC in the middle of the night after a 105 degree day. Now, as I was doing some pull ups after writing that first plus one, which for the record, I I wrote on my iPhone while sitting on my concept 2 after hammering a quick row, I was thinking about another way I could have approached my micro challenge. I could have radically accepted it. Technically, I did radically accept it. I just wasn't thinking about this explicitly until those pull ups. Now, we've talked about radical acceptance before. It's a major theme in my work with Phil. Of course, it's also a central theme of stoicism. They call it the Art of acquiescence. And Byron Katie's work, she calls it Loving what is. Now check out the ones for more on the subject, including Singer's Stoicism, Big Wave Writing, and How to Make a Pearl. But I can't recall ever hearing anyone else use the phrase radical acceptance as a central part of their work. And until I read Marsha Linehan's great book Building a Life Worth Living. Now, Marsha's story is mind bogglingly heroic. Get this at 18 years old, she was admitted to a mental health institution for what was supposed to be a couple weeks of evaluation. Now, two years later, she got out and made a vow to God that if she was able to escape her personal hell, she she would do everything in her power to help others escape their hells. In her memoir, she tells the story of how she created a life of deep meaning and purpose and how she created something called Dialectical Behavior Therapy, or DBT that has helped countless people suffering with suicidal ideation build. As per the title of her book, A Life Worth Living, it's one of the most powerful books I've ever read. Now here's the point of today's 1. One of the reasons Marsha's DBT is so effective is that she teaches people skills that will help them navigate life's inevitable challenges. One of the skills she talks about as much as any other radical acceptance. Marsha tells us that we must cultivate this skill to tolerate distress. She calls it the distress tolerance. Now why is developing the skills of distress tolerance so important? Because if we can't tolerate distress, we'll make a challenging situation worse. Now how do we develop the skills of distress tolerance we start by radically accepting your current reality. Then when we quit arguing with reality, we can decide what we're going to do to create a better reality. And that's today's plus one. Is there anything you need to radically accept in your life? Let's start with something tiny, perhaps the most recent, or the next little nuisance that arises in your life, like an AC that decides not to work on a hundred plus degree day. Then let's use that next micro moment of distress as strength training for the big stuff. When, as always, all day, every day, especially today.
