From Being Driven by Experience to Taking the Wheel: Accepting Reality but Choosing how to Move Forward.

Have you noticed how, when a difficult emotion shows up — anger, guilt, shame — we tend to brace ourselves for what’s to come?

We argue with what we feel, try to push it away, judge ourselves for having it, or look for ways to get rid of it as quickly as possible.

The urge to resist our most difficult inner experiences is deeply human. An ancient Stoic philosopher, Cleanthes, captured this tension very wisely, more than two thousand years ago:

“The fates guide the person who accepts them and hinder the person who resists them.”

In Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), this tendency is called experiential avoidance — the understandable attempt to escape inner discomfort.

The Stoics noticed that suffering increases when we spend our energy fighting what we cannot control. ACT arrives at a similar conclusion through psychological research: the more we resist our experiences, the more they tend to dominate our attention and drive our behavior.

Acceptance, in ACT, does not mean giving up and just becoming victims of our experiences. It means turning toward what is going on, right now, so we are no longer spending our energy trying to avoid it. In this sense, acceptance allows life to “guide” us — not because the reality has changed, but because our relationship to it does.

Awareness is an important first step. We notice a pattern, a thought, a feeling, a reaction. But awareness alone does not always lead to change. Otherwise, whoever tried to quit smoking, drinking, yelling would succeed.

It is acceptance that turns awareness into an engine that fuels change. When we stop fighting our inner experiences, we can direct our energy into choosing how we act. When we stop fighting shame, anxiety, frustration we can refocus our energy on how to act.

When we are no longer locked in an inner battle, we can ask a different question:

Given what is going on, how do I want to respond?

ACT calls this values-based action — choosing behavior aligned with what matters to us, even when things feel uncomfortable inside.

What might change if you didn’t need your inner experience to disappear before you moved forward?

This movement — from awareness, to acceptance, to choice — is at the heart of much of my work. I would love to hear from you, if you find yourself in the grip of experience.