"Everything is as it should be."

 

Dialectical behavior therapy combines zen wisdom with scientific behaviorism.  Within this approach, radical acceptance is a practice of opening yourself up to what is and letting go of judgments about this reality and how you think it should be instead.  This does not mean that you have to agree with the reality or like it.  Sometimes life hands us immense cruelties and hardships.  You do not have to love this, and yet you can free yourself from suffering through accepting it and giving up the fight against it.  We cannot change the past, and yet we can learn from it, choose whether to forgive, and move forward to create the present that we want to be living.  This type of acceptance is called radical because it is complete and from deep within.