The Difference between Settling and Acceptance

When life is doing shit that we don’t like, acceptance is the jumping off point, y’all. Settling is the crash landing. Or maybe it’s the getting stuck on a sandbar landing. Settling is definitely muddy and gross, and I do not wish it upon any of you beautiful souls! 

Acceptance, on the other hand, is key to figuring our way out of the quagmire of settling. Once we identify and accept the things we cannot change, only then can we find our way to the areas in our life where we do have agency and choice. And way more often than we tend to realize, we do have choice! We just might not like the options. 

But not settling for bullshit means choosing what we’re willing to tolerate in order to get what we actually want.

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Transcript

Hello, my friend. Welcome to today’s episode about the difference between settling and acceptance. 

I’m super excited to talk about this, and before I launch in, I want to make a request. If you are enjoying this podcast on whatever platform you’re listening to it on, please, please, please leave a review. It’ll really help me to grow the podcast and spread the word. I know that every podcast says that, but, like, that’s because it’s true. So please, please, when you get to the end of this, or even right this second, if you could pause and leave a review that would make such a difference.

And if you get to the end of this and you like what you heard and you think someone in your life could benefit from it, sending it directly to them will also be so tremendous – because I’m offering this because I just, like, feel so lit up about all of you having joyful, awesome, amazing fucking lives. And word of mouth is honestly how this is probably gonna grow and become something big and cool and even more amazing than it already is. 

So that’s my little request for you today. Please, please, please spread the word, spread the love, spread the joy, the joy of not settling for bullshit. 

And in order to really lean into not settling for bullshit in our lives, I realized that we need to talk about the difference between settling and accepting, because there’s a lot of shit in our lives that we have to accept. And understanding the difference between acceptance and settling helps us identify the places where we are settling versus the places where we’re just accepting reality.

And the truth is, we can’t actually grow and change and lead fulfilling, amazing, beautiful lives when we are struggling to accept the things that we cannot change. To bring in the serenity prayer – you know, I was going there. Or if you didn’t, hello, I’m in recovery! And that’s a big part of my reality, is the serenity prayer. 

And whether you call it a prayer or a mantra, like it doesn’t actually matter if you’re saying it to an entity that you believe in. It’s really just a helpful mantra for: “help me accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Because there is a difference! And I realized I haven’t really talked about the difference on this podcast, and it’s an important one. So here we are, here we are today, talking about that. 

So this is actually like a little bit of a pep talk around acceptance. This is a great episode for when you’re in the struggle, when you’re on the struggle bus, and when the struggle bus is loud and honking and fucking with your life. 

My hope is that this episode is gonna help you get some perspective around, like, what it means to accept things, and what are the things that we have to accept, and then what are the things that we don’t have to accept? Because oftentimes, I think we really forget that we have choice, that we have agency, that we have power to make changes in our lives. 

And that’s what not settling is really about – is about finding the things that we can change and stepping into the courage to make those changes. 

When I launched Settling Is Bullshit in November of 2022, it started as a blog because I am a writer first and a podcaster second (although the podcast is definitely taking the front seat right now). But I wrote a post titled what the fuck is settling is bullshit? And I’ll link to that in the show notes so you can go back and listen to it or read it, but I’m gonna quote a little bit from it right now because man, past me was on point about what we mean by settling. And I think it’s a really important sort of just bit of context for the kind of emotional tenor of what I am talking about here, because we all deserve joy. And settling is giving up on joy. Fundamentally, that’s kind of what I mean. 

But let me quote past me here. Ahem, ahem, ahem. 

Settling is making concessions to your innermost desires. It’s saying, “I don’t think I can do/get/be better than this, so I guess I’ll just stay here.”

Settling is accepting less than you deserve, less than the universe has in store for you.

Settling is sinking instead of continuing to swim even though you can’t yet see the shoreline. 

Settling is giving up (on yourself). 

Settling, my friends, is bullshit.

You deserve better. You deserve more. You deserve the love and success and maturity and healthy ways of being that your higher self is striving for.

Mmm. Love it. So pleased. So pleased with past Cate and the little commitment to the universe that she made. 

And in the post I talk about the difference between settling and good enough and like that we have to find our good enough in order to make progress. I had to decide that the early episodes of this podcast were good enough in order to get them out in the world. Same thing with the blog posts. If I don’t decide something is good enough, I’m never going to get anywhere. 

But there’s a big, important difference between settling and acceptance. And so that’s obviously what we’re going to talk about today. And the key to understanding and recognizing acceptance is around agency and choice and action and capacity for change. It’s really around what are the unchangeable facts of my life, and what are the things that I actually can change? I just might not like what that means or looks like. 

So in recovery, we have to start with accepting the fact that we are alcoholics and addicts. 

I can’t actually make positive changes in my life if I’m fighting with the reality that I’m an alcoholic. And my very first sponsor really hammered home for me the idea that acceptance is not approval. 

Acceptance has nothing to do with how I feel about it. I don’t have to like it. I can be mad about it. I just have to stop fighting with it. 

And so the reality that, like, I have alcoholism and addiction, it runs in my family. It manifested in me. Accepting that fact means then the choices that I make are the actionable choices. Like, what can I do about that? I can go to meetings. I can not go to meetings and see what happens, you know? Like, I have a lot of choices that I can make, but until I fundamentally accept that reality, then I’m just going to be spinning my wheels. So that’s kind of the recovery perspective on acceptance, and I think that applies to all of us. 

And so to take it out of that context and into just a more general life advice perspective, I absolutely love the book Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans. They’re professors at Stanford who built a course called designing your life and then turned it into a book, shared it with the world. I read it when I was actually trying to leave academia in 2018 and figure my fucking life out. And it was really helpful because at the very beginning of the book, they ask you to think about what they call gravity problems in your life. And what they mean by gravity problems are problems that are not actionable, that there is not actually anything you can do about – gravity being one of them. 

Right? Like, we can’t change gravity. And so wanting and wishing to be able to fly isn’t going to pan out with our little flappy arms, because that’s just, like, not how gravity works. We had to go around and, like, build… well, somebody. Not us. People who came well before all of us built airplanes so that they could fly. And that was how they solved the problem of gravity. But that required a lot of effort and action and failure and struggle, and it was, like, a really big deal to learn how to build an airplane. I’m not great at history, but I know that was a big deal. 

And so, in this discussion of gravity problems, they separate out the difference between totally inactionable problems like gravity, and, functionally inactionable problems like the electoral college. Right? Like, yes, conceptually, we can make changes to the electoral college, but if we could do that easily, we would have done that already. 

And both of those gravity problems, or those, like, flavors of gravity problem, are where acceptance comes in. Once we have acceptance that something is a gravity problem, then we’re able to turn our thoughts and brainstorms and hearts and meditations towards what there actually is for us to do. Like, what is the place where we need the courage to make the change?

And I talked about this in my recent episode about patience that sometimes there’s just shit that we have no control over, that we can’t change. Right? The medical system and how long it takes to get a fucking appointment with a medical professional is a gravity problem. Like, we can’t actually change that. It’s bullshit, but we can’t change it. The current conditions of the job market. Gravity problem. Whether or not we have childhood trauma, gravity problem. 

Like, we can’t fix the past. We can’t change it. But I think a lot of us can get stuck in this idea of, like, well, this is how it is, and so this is how it’s just gonna continue to be. And I bring in trauma ‘cause, oh, man… Last week’s episode about trauma and joy? Chef’s kiss! Y’all please go listen. 

Because having trauma is a gravity problem. Like, we can’t change that it happened. However, how it’s impacting us now is not a gravity problem. We don’t have to just be like, oh, yeah, I have trauma, so I’m just gonna accept that. And this is how it is. That’s some bullshit. That’s where, like, the settling is bullshit stuff comes in. For me. 

The past is a gravity problem. The future is absolutely not. 

We have agency. We have choice, and we can choose to do the hard work of healing. 

Similarly, like, when we’re trying to change jobs or change careers or even thinking about that. So many of us get stuck in this idea that it’s a gravity problem, that, like, “oh, no, I can’t do this, that and the other thing because x, y, and z.” 

But the truth is, you can always leave your job. That is always an available option. It’s just a matter of what you’re willing to put up with in order to make that change. 

When I was leaving academia, I was not going to be able to change the nature of the academic job market. The way that that worked is if I wanted a tenure track job, I was going to have to go where the job was. I wasn’t going to have a lot of choice over where I lived. I could choose whether to apply for a particular job or not. So where I apply is not a gravity problem, but the functional nature of how jobs work in academia is a gravity problem. 

And for me, I ultimately decided that that wasn’t worth the trade off, that once I accepted the gravity problem of this is how these jobs work, then I could get to a place of choice of: is that worth it to me? Like, am I willing to continue to participate in that system once I hit the place of acceptance of, like, this is how it is. I don’t like that that’s how it worked. And I didn’t want to leave. I loved my fucking job in a lot of ways. But the problem for me was that life outside of work was just so hard to make worthwhile. 

And that’s what settling feels like, is when you have this area of your life that is just fucking hard to make, even moderately okay, that’s probably a sign that there’s some settling going on that we might just not be recognizing. 

The truth was, South Carolina wasn’t a good fit for me. I really struggled socially and culturally to find my bearings, to find my people, to find ways to make life outside of work really nourishing and fulfilling. And that wasn’t a gravity problem, but I was really holding on to this idea of, like, being a college professor and a tenure track job and blah, blah, blah. And it wasn’t until I let go of that and said, “this isn’t worth it to me,” that I was able to make big changes and take a leap of faith and do something different that has led me to where I am today. 

And like y’all, I’m having a great fucking time. Life is good. I’m building a business that I absolutely believe in and that I love. I have a nourishing and supportive community. I live in a place where I feel really comfortable and at home being myself and like shit’s good. 

And the truth is, like generally speaking, when we are making changes, we’re making trade offs in our lives. And so its so important to figure out whats important to us and what trade offs were willing to make. 

Having agency over where I live and my time was much more important to me than the stability and perks that came along with being a college professor during that period of time when I was kind of figuring all this shit out for myself. 

I also read Mark Manson‘s The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck – and I just want to like caveat that I do have a really hard time with the brotastic-ness of his writing sometimes… However, I got some really valuable gems out of it as well. 

And the one that’s really relevant here is that he talks about choosing our suffering – that rather than getting these like big beautiful visions of our dreams and our hopes and our pleasures and like what we want out of life – that’s all great and important – but we also really need to look at what are the tradeoffs were willing to make. What is the suffering we are willing to choose in order to get what we want? 

And that was really helpful for me to think about. I was willing to make the trade off of not having stable or consistent income to become a freelancer, to have to pay my own taxes and do my own accounting and figure out insurance. I was willing to do all of that if it gave me choice over where I could live and how I could live my life. But that was the like shit sandwich that I was willing to pick up in order to get what I wanted. 

So I’m gonna quote from the book because I do really like this. 

He says, “happiness requires struggle. It grows from problems. Joy doesn’t just sprout out of the ground like daisies and rainbows. Real, serious, lifelong fulfillment and meaning have to be earned through the choosing and managing of our struggles. Whether you suffer from anxiety or loneliness or obsessive compulsive disorder, or a dickhead boss who ruins half of your waking hours every day, the solution lies in the acceptance and active engagement of that negative experience, not the avoidance of it, not the salvation from it.” 

And so this is where getting clear on what are gravity problems and what aren’t really helps us find our path forward when it comes to acceptance versus settling. 

Having a dickhead boss, gravity problem. Having anxiety, having mental health issues, gravity problems. 

But we do have agency around what we do about it. You can leave your job. You can do that. The trade off might just be less money. It might be in starting over. But if I’ve learned anything in the last six or eight years of career pivots and following my intuition and my higher resonance and my just sense of joy and fulfillment and vibrance, it’s that change only happens when we let go. 

Another recovery saying is like, let go or be dragged. And when I can recognize that I am being dragged in an area of my life, that is usually a sign that I am not letting go and that I’m settling for some bullshit. 

Staying in a, like, really shitty boss situation is settling for bullshit. Yes, we all need to earn enough money to get our needs met, but I just encourage everyone to, like, ask ourselves, like, how much is my emotional well being worth to me? 

Because I think so many of us suffer through a bunch of shit because we’re afraid that what’s on the other side of letting go isn’t going to be better. And the, like, soapbox philosophy that I will always be preaching on this blog is that: believing that it’s gonna be better, that it could be better, that it’s possible that big, amazing, cool things could happen for us, is the way to make them happen. 

I believe in self-fulfilling prophecies. Like, if we believe it’s gonna be shitty, it’s gonna be shitty. If we believe it’s gonna be amazing, like, it’s gonna be surprising and probably cool and probably hard. 

In choosing our struggle, we understand that, like, things are going to be hard. There is no magic sauce to make everything in life easy and beautiful and amazing. But I do believe that we don’t have to deeply suffer in our jobs, in our relationships, in our general atmospheric way of being in life. That joy is a choice. Misery is a choice. It just… especially when we’re fucking miserable, it doesn’t seem like it. 

But I promise that a lot of the stuff that makes us miserable probably isn’t a gravity problem. It just seems like it because we’re really attached to it. I was really attached to being Dr. Blouke, and technically I still am Dr. Blouke, but nobody calls me that, and I kind of miss it. But that wasn’t as important as getting to live in the Pacific Northwest and getting to use curse words in my writing and my podcasting, and getting to show up more fully as myself. 

And I’m not encouraging everybody to fucking quit their jobs. But I am encouraging you, as I wind down this episode, to really think about, like, okay, in the areas that I’m struggling, like, the areas that are fucking hard right now, what are the gravity problems and what’s actionable if I’m willing to let go of how I think things are supposed to be, or what I think I quote-unquote “need” – what becomes possible? Like, what opens up? 

What suffering do I want to choose in order to get more of what I actually want? Because I do believe that, like, we can have it all. It’s just not the all that is perfect and shiny and unicorns, right? Like, I don’t like having to save money every month for my fucking taxes. Like, there are a lot of trade offs to being a small business owner. I don’t like the stress of the inconsistent income. I don’t like having to pay for my own healthcare. There’s a lot about this that I don’t like. But it’s worth it to me to have agency over how I spend my time to get to really be my own boss and choose how I want to live. 

And that’s not for everybody. I’m actually surprisingly good at directing my own time, which is funny for someone with ADHD. But it turns out when I’m doing something I love, it’s a lot easier. And that’s not true for everybody. That doesn’t work for everybody. I cannot show up at a place at a time just for the sake of being there. Like, nine to five jobs never worked for me. And that’s a gravity problem. I know I’m going to lose my mind under those conditions. And so what there was for me to do was to find alternative career paths. 

And so, as usual, it all comes back to self-awareness, self-acceptance, self-love, self-compassion, and getting clear on what you need and what you’re willing to put up with. 

But I just really want to underline that what you’re willing to put up with shouldn’t be settling. It shouldn’t make you miserable. It should just be the cost of entry. 

Being a solopreneur doesn’t make me miserable. It’s just annoying and hard and stressful sometimes. But fundamentally, it lights me up. 

Staying stuck in a job that wears me down every day because it’s stable or consistent or, you know… y’all, like staying in a relationship that wears us down every day because it’s stable and consistent… like, that’s settling. That’s what I’m talking about, about settling. 

We deserve joy in our lives, and I do believe we deserve joy in all, all areas of our lives. There just are going to be trade offs, and I can accept those trade offs. 

So I hope that this helped to clarify the difference between settling and acceptance. I hope that you are leaving this episode a little bit more willing to accept the things you cannot change and the courage to change the things you can. 

Because you can change things. You are awesome and powerful and amazing and beautiful and good at stuff. And you do have power and courage to make changes in your life. They just might be hard. 

There’s going to be some shit you don’t like about it, but like, we gotta keep our eye on the bigger picture. I don’t love being an alcoholic. I don’t love going to meetings. But I love being sober. It’s fucking great. Makes my life a lot better. 

So what are you willing to struggle around struggle for in order to quit settling? Fuck settling! I hate it. It’s bullshit. Don’t do it. Don’t do it! You don’t have to do it. 

And obviously, if you need help with that, like hit a girl up, I’m a coach, I got you. 

But in the meantime, just keep listening to these episodes because, like, that’s what I’m gonna keep saying. And the more you listen, the more it’s gonna sink into your soul and you’re gonna make some big, awesome changes in your life. And I can’t wait for that to happen for you.