The Virtue of Acceptance

The Serenity Prayer, which AA popularized, has made acceptance a fashionable word in psychology and the self-help movement. As with everything that becomes popular, we will find a wide range of opinions about what it means.

For us alcoholics, of course, the question is first of all what it means in AA, and in particular, how it is practiced as we work the Steps. To answer it, we obviously need to turn to those Steps as they are explained in our two basic texts, the Big Book and the 12&12. What do these books say we need to accept, why, and what things do we actually do or not do?

Let’s start with Step 1. We know the Step says we need to admit we are powerless over alcohol if we are to get sober. But we can admit it and not accept it, in which case we will sooner or later find a reason to drink again. Thus, the Step specifies that we also need to accept our powerlessness, which it characterizes as the “stark fact” about us. Little good will come of our joining AA, we read in the 12&12, unless we have "first accepted this devastating weakness and all of its consequences (our emphasis).” Linking acceptance to humility, it adds that, until we so humble ourselves, our sobriety will be “precarious.” We will find no “real happiness” at all (p. 21).

In Step 2, we accept “spiritual help” (Big Book, p. 25), we accept a “spiritual remedy” for our problem (id., p.39). It is as a result of accepting this kind of help that we gradually come to believe that a Power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity. If we don’t accept such help, if we reject it, where is the help going to come from? Haven’t we tried everything else? Hasn’t it all failed us?

In Step 3, we accept our powerlessness beyond alcohol, our “dependence” in so many other areas of our lives (12&12, p. 36), and our ultimate dependence on God. As rebels and hyper-individualists, most alcoholics can’t stomach the idea of having to depend on anybody. We are bothered by the idea of having to lean on a Power greater than ourselves, thinking that it makes us look weak or cowardly (Big Book, pp. 45-46). Accepting our dependence upon a Higher Power and surrendering the illusion of self-sufficiency and self-reliance is what enables us to surrender our will and our lives to the care of God.

In Step 4, as we make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves, we discover that we are very flawed human beings and that we have inflicted a lot of damage on ourselves and other people. We don’t like that either. But we need to accept it. We need to accept ourselves and come to terms with our past. This includes both the things we were responsible for, and those circumstances or “conditions” which may not have been of our own making and over which we had no control (12&12, p. 52). An inability to accept these facts about ourselves and our lives can only lead us to deny them and thus to deceive ourselves and continue to be and do what we have always been and done.

In Step 5, as we admit the exact nature of our wrongs, we accept guidance and “direction” (12&12, p. 59), from God and from another human being. Here too we are accepting our dependence, for without such guidance and direction we simply cannot understand who we are, what we have done, and how we can change.

In Step 6, we gradually come to accept the “entire implication” (12&12, p. 68) of what it means to become entirely ready to let go of our defects of character: that we are striving, not for a “self-determined objective,” but for the “perfect objective” which is of God.

In Step 7 we accept the need to humble ourselves and ask God to remove our shortcomings, for no human power can remove them from us. We also need to accept the fact that God may not do so when and as we wish, but as it may be his will for us. Thus, rather than allowing ourselves to become discouraged, we continue to take the action and we let go of the results, for we are not in charge—God is. Holding on to our faith and hope, we continue to surrender those defects and persevere in our prayer one day at a time.

In Step 8, we accept the fact that, if we are going to ask forgiveness from those we have harmed, we need to forgive those who have harmed us, even those who caused us or our loved ones the most egregious and otherwise seemingly unforgivable harm. For we will never heal unless we do forgive. Instead, we will continue to direct our unresolved anger and resentment at others, even those who have never hurt us.

In Step 9, we accept the limitations of what we can do about the harm we did in the past; we accept the reality that there are hurts which cannot be healed and relationships which cannot be repaired, that our amends may be rejected, and that though God will forgive us, others may not.

In Step 10, we accept the perhaps unsettling and unwelcome fact that recovery is a life-long undertaking and that we need to continue taking inventory of ourselves. As we do so, we will repeat much of the process of acceptance of the preceding Steps as we admit and make amends for any new wrongdoing.

In Step 12, we extend the practice of acceptance to all our affairs, so that in time we may come to accept failure without despair, success without pride, all the joys of life with gratitude, and all of its trials and tribulations with courage and serenity.

This quick overview of how acceptance is practiced through the various Steps suggests a number of ways we can properly conceptualize it. First, and contrary to the way it is seen elsewhere, acceptance is not a “technique” or a “strategy.” It is a principle. It is in fact one of the principles which are embedded in the Steps. Two, it is practiced through the disciplines which are also embedded in those Steps: e.g., surrender in Step 3, self-examination in 4, confession in 5, and restitution in 9. Three, like the disciplines, acceptance is specifically a spiritual principle. This aspect of it is most evident in Step 3, which introduces the Serenity Prayer, which revolves entirely around God and makes prayer a key discipline in the practice of acceptance.

The goal of this practice is to ingrain acceptance in us, to make it the kind of inner disposition or habit traditionally identified as a virtue. A virtue is a quality or trait of character which fosters our flourishing as human beings by adapting us to function well in the types of situations we typically face in life.

The Serenity Prayer reveals the kinds of situations where acceptance is a necessary virtue. They are those which contravene our desires but which, for a variety of reasons, we are in no position to alter. In plain words, they are situations we would like to change but cannot. These abound and, if we don’t handle them constructively, if we don’t accept life on life’s terms (Big Book, p. 417, 12&12, p. 112), we are simply not going to do very well. We will have no peace of mind, and we will be unhappy a lot of the time. We will be pitting ourselves against reality, and that never produces good results.

Acceptance is confused with three other ideas. The most common is perhaps approval. Some think that if we accept the way a person, place, or thing is, we are approving of it. In the case of bad behavior, it means we condone it. But this misses the entire point of acceptance. As the Serenity Prayer makes abundantly clear, this is to free ourselves from the self-defeating burden of trying to change what we cannot in order to change what we can.

If we are in an abusive relationship, to accept that fact is not to consent to the abuse and allow it to continue. It is to acknowledge it for what it is and to focus on what constructive action we can take to change our situation. Denying that it is abusive, deceiving ourselves about it, or trying to change what we cannot in it, will only perpetuate it. To approve, condone, or consent to a bad situation is in effect to agree for it to continue unabated. To accept it is to take the first step to change what we can about it.

The second idea we may conflate with acceptance is resignation. Again, the Serenity Prayer points to the essential distinction. Acceptance and resignation are in some ways coextensive. Both involve a change in perception which brings to light an adverse circumstance we would wish to be other than it is. Both may involve unfulfilled expectations, or emotions of loss such as disappointment. Both implicate an accommodation that mitigates the negative impact.

But though both may start with the perception of a negative we cannot alter, with resignation we remain stuck in that perception. Our accommodation to it is permanent. So are the emotions that may accompany it (disappointment, regret, grief, depression), though, again, in a less painful form. Resignation is a passive submission to the aversive fact which blunts its impact. We reconcile ourselves to it, and that helps. But we don’t look forward to changing what we could about it. In fact, we don’t see there is anything we can do. Our fate is sealed, as the etymology of the term suggests.

But that is not always and not necessarily the case. And that is where acceptance is different. Again, it is a first and necessary step toward changing what we can in a given situation. Once we have fully accepted something—the loss of a relationship or of a job, our failure to achieve a desired goal—we are ready to move forward. Any emotions which may have initially accompanied the contravention begin to dissipate.

Thus, psychologically speaking, resignation entails a predominantly negative and pessimistic attitude in the face of an undesirable situation and further engrains such an attitude in us. It is a situation where, to use Dante’s words, we abandon all hope. Acceptance, on the other hand, balances the negativity and the pessimism with the possibility that a change may be brought about once we accept what we cannot change about it and thus free ourselves to change what we can.

Rather than giving in passively to our feelings of defeat, with acceptance we accept the defeat, let go of the feelings, and look for what we are able to change so that we can make things better. With resignation, we are left with a lingering hurt, even if it is greatly diminished and thus more bearable. We still would like to change what we have resigned ourselves to, even if we know we can’t and won’t actually do anything about it. With acceptance there is no lingering hurt or desire. Instead, we look to something else we can change and we act on it. Often that something is simply ourselves.

In short, with resignation we don’t distinguish between what we can change and what we cannot. With acceptance, we do. As the Serenity Prayer makes clear in this regard as well, our ability to make the distinction is a function of a higher virtue underpinning and guiding acceptance. This is the virtue of wisdom, the cardinal virtue which enables us to discern the human good in a situation and to pursue the proper means to its attainment.

The third idea that is confused with acceptance is surrender. This is limited to AA and originates in the early fellowship’s avoidance of the term “surrender” because of its association with the Oxford Group, a story we touch upon on our post on surrender on this site. Harry Tiebout, who was Bill W.’s psychiatrist and would later write a lot about surrender, reports that he learned of the concept and how it differed from acceptance from two women alcoholics he was treating who had experienced a spiritual awakening.

One was Marty M., who experienced hers as a result of a line she read in the Big Book’s as-of-then-unpublished manuscript. The experience led her to attend a church service, something she wouldn’t have done otherwise, as she was an atheist. As she later told Tiebout, “I know what happened to me. I heard it in a hymn yesterday.* I surrendered when I had that experience.” A second woman, whose name and experience remain unknown, explicitly replied “I surrendered,” when asked by Tiebout to explain what had happened to her. “They call it acceptance around here,” she added, “but that still leaves a piece of you.”

As these early reports suggest, surrender was intimately connected with hitting bottom and experiencing a liberating spiritual awakening. On the heels of an emotional collapse, the alcoholic would feel totally defeated and admit her powerlessness over alcohol. That would open the door to a Power greater than herself intervening in her life and restoring her to sanity. Surrender subsequently becomes an ongoing practice as the alcoholic gradually realizes her powerlessness, not only over alcohol, but over herself, over other people, and over much of life.

The reason it’s natural to conflate acceptance and surrender is that, in one significant respect, the two concepts and practices overlap. Both have to do with giving up a fight we cannot win. But even in this one respect, the relationship between the two principles is not the same. Surrender is foundational, acceptance derivative.

In Step 1, for instance, our ability to accept our powerlessness over alcohol is a function of our having surrendered that power, or more accurately, the illusion of such power, for if we are alcoholic, we actually never had it. Put differently, our acceptance of defeat depends on how badly we have been defeated. If we have been thoroughly whipped, driven to our knees, and forced to throw in the towel, the chances we will accept our powerlessness is bound to be that much greater. If we haven’t—if we haven’t hit a low enough bottom—our chances of accepting our defeat are just not as good. We may still harbor the idea of making a comeback, of finding a way to drink safely. As the second woman's comment above intimates, there's a piece of the self still left intact.

We can see this relationship between the two principles in Step 3 of the 12&12, where, having surrendered our will and our lives over to the care of God, we have laid the necessary spiritual foundation for our practice of acceptance through the Serenity Prayer, which concludes the Step.

A comparison of how acceptance is practiced through the Steps as detailed above and in the post on surrender will reveal other differences between the two concepts.

The final point we’ll make here is fundamental to understanding those differences. Surrender and acceptance are two entirely different kinds of principles. Surrender is a discipline, a series of acts of commission or omission whereby we give up things, let go of them, turn them over to God. Acceptance is a virtue, a character trait or interior disposition we develop through certain acts of commission or omission, some of which may involve surrender. That is, the discipline is one way of practicing the virtue. Thus, practicing acceptance involves, among other things, surrendering the defects of character and of emotion which get in the way of such acceptance.

This applies to all the virtues, however. To practice and acquire a particular virtue (say honesty) involves surrendering the defect (dishonesty in its various forms) which is opposed to that virtue. If we stop lying and start telling the truth, for instance, we will be taking the kind of action which will gradually make honest people out of us. Thus, to practice and acquire acceptance as a virtue involves surrendering the self-will which we habitually try to impose on situations and seeking knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry that out. That power will be characterized by serenity in those circumstances we cannot remedy, and by courage in those circumstances we can as God would have us do.

* There is no record of what that hymn might have been, but the best known is entitled “I Surrender All."

[Image: Bill W. and Ebby T., Vermont drinking buddies in their youth. Ebby carried the message of a spiritual awakening from Rowland H. to Bill and became his sponsor. To hear Ebby tell his story, please click on link. For a biography, see Ebby T.: The Man Who Sponsored Bill W., by Mel B. For an audio of this post, please click on link.]

"Our very first problem is to accept our present circumstances as they are, ourselves as we are, and the people about us as they are. This is to adopt a realistic humility without which no genuine advance can even begin. Again and again, we shall need to return to that unflattering point of departure. This is an exercise in acceptance that we can profitably practice every day of our lives." – Bill W., ABSI, p. 44

"Until I could accept my alcoholism, I could not stay sober; unless I accept life completely on life’s terms, I cannot be happy." – Big Book, p. 417

"We know that little good can come to any alcoholic who joins A.A. unless he has first accepted his devastating weakness and all its consequences. Until he so humbles himself, his sobriety—if any—will be precarious. Of real happiness he will find none at all." – 12&12, p. 21

"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." – The Serenity Prayer, 12&12, p. 41

"Thy will, not mine, be done." – Matthew 26:39, Big Book p. 85, and 12&12 pp. 41 and 103

"Acceptance—that is the great lesson suffering teaches." – Sophocles, in Oedipus Rex

"An oak and a reed were arguing about their strength. When a strong wind came up, the reed avoided being uprooted by bending and leaning with the gusts of wind. But the oak stood firm and was torn up by the roots." – Aesop

"When you are outraged by somebody’s impudence, ask yourself at once: ‘Can the world exist without impudent people?’ It cannot; so do not ask for impossibilities." – Marcus Aurelius

"Let us train our minds to desire what the situation demands." – Seneca

"Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: some things are within your control, and some things are not." – Epictetus

"He who cannot do what he wants must make do with what he can." – Terence

"If the alcoholic can truly accept the presence of a Power greater than himself . . . and sustain that feeling of acceptance, he can and will remain sober for the rest of his life." – Dr. Harry M. Tiebout

"Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune." – William James

"We cannot change anything unless we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses." – Carl Jung

"Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them." – Albert Einstein

"Some people confuse acceptance with apathy, but there’s all the difference in the world. Apathy fails to distinguish between what can and cannot be helped; acceptance makes that distinction. Apathy paralyzes the will to action; acceptance frees it by relieving it of impossible burdens." – Arthur Gordon

"Ah, when to the heart of man / Was it ever less than a treason / To go with the drift of things, / To yield with a grace to reason, / And bow and accept the end / Of a love or a season?" – Robert Frost

"Being happy doesn't mean that everything is perfect. It means that you've decided to look beyond the imperfections." – Anonymous

"Accepting oneself does not preclude an attempt to become better." – Flannery O’Connor

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself." – George Bernard Shaw

"[T]he best thing one can do when it is raining is to let it rain." – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is that things are what they are and will be what they will be." – Oscar Wilde

"Part of the happiness of life consists not in fighting battles, but in avoiding them. A masterly retreat is in itself a victory." – Norman Vincent Peale

"He is happy whose circumstances suit his temper; but he is more excellent who can suit his temper to his circumstance." – David Hume

"Accept what is. Let go of what was. Have faith in what will be." – Anonymous

"It is what it is. But it will become what you make it." – Anonymous

"Only by acceptance of the past can you alter it." – T. S. Eliot

"The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them." – Thomas Merton

“Nothing has changed now that you know you are sick---except that now you know you are not in control.” – Tim Keller

"Accept both compliments and criticism. It takes both sun and rain for a flower to grow." – Anonymous

"When we accept rather than expect, we have fewer disappointments." – Anonymous

"The curious paradox is that when I accept myself as I am, then I can change." – Carl Rogers

"Whatever comes, let it come. Whatever stays, let it stay. Whatever leaves, let it leave.” – Anonymous

"A secret to happiness is letting every situation be what it is instead of what we think it should be, and then making the best of it." – Anonymous

"If you can’t do anything about it, then let it go. Don’t be a prisoner of things you can’t change." – Anonymous

"Accept the situation and move on." – Anonymous

"There are three solutions to every problem: accept it, change it, or leave it. If you can’t accept it, change it. If you can’t change it, leave it." – Anonymous

"Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s,when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book." – XYZ

"Acceptance: The way to serenity and peace of mind." – Vincent Paul Collins

"When I accept situations as they are, not as I wish them to be, then I can begin to grow and have serenity and peace of mind." – A.A.’s Daily Reflections

"Acceptance does not mean submission to a degrading situation. It means accepting the fact of a situation, and then deciding what we will do about it." – One Day at a Time in Al-Anon

"Yes, but . . .’ These two words have become a signal to me that I am refusing to accept something over which I am powerless." – Al-Anon’s Courage to Change

"It becomes easier to accept other members’ frailties when we remember that we ourselves rarely turn over our own character defects until we become painfully aware of them." – Just for Today: Daily Meditations for Recovering Addicts

"The proper relationship between understanding and acceptance then is that acceptance comes first. That is the point of departure. We can paraphrase Augustine and say that we accept in order to understand, and we understand the better to accept." – PTP123

"Acceptance of what we cannot change opens the door to changing what we can." – PTP4

For more PTP123 passages on acceptance, see pp. 76–79 and 202–213. For PTP4, see pp. 107, 185, 192, 194, 223, 247–248 (in relation to regret), 249, 250, 326, 366, 379, 397, 403, and 404. For more Big Book and 12&12 passages, click on 164andmore.com and search acceptance and its cognates. See also entries under acceptance in As Bill Sees It. For differences between acceptance and surrender, see "The Discipline of Surrender," in Practice These.

Additional Resources

“Women Suffer Too,” Marty M.’s story in the Personal Stories section of the Big Book, pp. 200–207
“Acceptance Was the Answer,” in the Personal Stories section of the Big Book, p. 417 (lines 8–20)
"What Is Acceptance?" in Language of the Heart: Bill W.'s Grapevine Writings, p. 269
Reflections for 01/05, 03/22, 05/29, 06/22, 09/19, and 11/01 in A.A.’s Daily Reflections
Meditations for 05/08, 07/07 and 09/12 in Al-Anon’s Courage to Change
Acceptance: The Way to Serenity and Peace of Mind, booklet by Vincent Paul Collins shown above

To return to Practice These, please click on link.