My Uncle Sidney, a retired U.S. Navy physician and Vietnam veteran, has a military phrase he uses as advice for what to do when life is lousy: Embrace the Suck.
He’s dispensed this colorful guidance to me in several stressful situations—when I’ve been anxious on deadline, dealing with a difficult family member, and, most recently, struggling through the pandemic.
“The point is, when you’re stuck, surrounded or suffering, you need to assess where you are, learn to live with it, and try to advance,’’ Uncle Sidney says.
Pretty good advice for our times.
We’re still dealing with the whiplash of uncertainty and the emotions it provokes: frustration, anxiety, anger and fear. To help us through, psychologists recommend an approach similar to Uncle Sidney’s, which they call acceptance.
“Acceptance is the opposite of getting stuck,” says Ethan Kross, an experimental psychologist and neuroscientist at the University of Michigan and author of “Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why it Matters, and How to Harness It.”
Read the full article at the Wall Street Journal.
