Accept It.

First things first: August is National Black Business Month! If you’d like to find a list of my favorites, you can do so here.

There are about 2.8 million for you to choose from. Go find one, get your card out, and swipe it. Then repeat.

Imagine if we all did that just once every day. Let’s make it happen.

Do you still have trouble with the difference between accept and except? Well, today’s post may help you with that inadvertently. So let’s get started with a definition (courtesy of Google):

accept

[əkˈsept]

VERB

  1. consent to receive (a thing offered).

    "he accepted a pen as a present"

    synonyms:

    receive · agree to receive · welcome · take · take receipt of · get · gain · obtain · [more]

    • give an affirmative answer to (an offer or proposal); say yes to.

      "he would accept their offer and see what happened"

      synonyms:

      take on · take up · undertake · tackle · take on oneself · shoulder · bear

    • dated

      say yes to a proposal of marriage from (a man).

      "what if Elizabeth accepted Darcy the first time?"

  2. believe or come to recognize (an opinion, explanation, etc.) as valid or correct.

    "this tentative explanation came to be accepted by the group" ·

To make a very long story short, I have a hard time accepting just about everything. Compliments, change, help, all of it. Just this week, I was going through a rough time, and I had more than one friend offer to be an ear to listen, or offer to hangout to take my mind off of things, and of course I said “Yes, thanks so much, I’ll definitely take you up on that!” Did I? No.

That sound familiar?

You may be thinking “Well that’s dumb”, and yes I agree. Here are a few reasons why you (I) have a hard time accepting help when offered:

  1. I always feel like a burden for “putting my issues” on someone else.

  2. I’m not used to having people offer genuinely care about how I’m feeling.

  3. I don’t want to feel like I’m only bringing drama or negativity to my friends.

  4. I don’t want to look weak or helpless.

If you have a hard time accepting anything, like I do, I have two words for you (followed by a few other phrases 😂):

Accept it.

Accept the help.

Accept the compliment.

Accept the support.

Accept that you are awesome, talented, amazing, beautiful.

It can be difficult to just shift your mindset when you are used to seeing yourself in such a different way than others seem to see you. I’m not going to promise that it’s going to be easy, but what I can say is that it needs to be done. In the end, you’ll only end up hurting yourself, and distancing yourself from your support system.

Here are a few tips to help you accept (whatever it is):

  1. You’re going to have to be vulnerable. It’s going to require you to give up control. Accepting help doesn’t make you any lower than the person offering you the help.

  2. Look within yourself. If your first reaction is to deny help, ask yourself why. Maybe you didn’t see much gracious behavior growing up, so you are suspicious of it, or maybe you’re used to seeing people help others only to bring it up later in a malicious way. It may require you to ask yourself some hard questions, but getting to the root of any issue is key to eradicating it.

  3. Stop telling yourself you don’t deserve help. If someone is offering, that means they already deem you worthy. Just accept it.

  4. Don’t rob someone else of the opportunity to give. Accepting is not only about you, but it could help the giver as well. Have you ever been excited to give a gift and the receiver of the gift declined? You probably felt pretty bummed out. Now reverse that scenario. Don’t take away the joy that someone else feels by giving.

Here’s to learning how to accept.

Love always,

CDOG