Willingness and Willfulness: Acceptance in Action
United States Department of Homeland Security
Key Points
- Everyday acceptance is dealing with minor issues before they become major issues.
- Everyday acceptance conditions us to become better at radical acceptance.
- Everyday acceptance can be more difficult than radical acceptance.
- Willingness is doing whatever it takes to get the job done.
- Willfulness is doing things your own way even if you make things worse.
- Willingness is effective stubbornness, willfulness is ineffective.
- Radical acceptance is acceptance plus action.
- Willingness is the action.
- All other DBT skills flow from willingness.
Materials Downloads
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Transcript
Greetings, and welcome to the fourth video in this module. In the previous lesson, we introduced the coping mindset of radical acceptance. In this lesson, we will introduce the concept of everyday acceptance and contrast the concepts of willingness vs willfulness. So, let’s get started.
In the previous lesson, we introduced radical acceptance. Whereas radical acceptance refers to acceptance of drastic life situations such as major traumas or tragedies, everyday acceptance, in contrast, refers to acceptance of normal everyday situations that may arise. Such as, maybe, minor irritations, setbacks, disappointments, delays, or changes in your plans.
Linehan, M. M. (2015). DBT skills training manual (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.
Everyday acceptance refers to dealing with minor issues before they become major issues. You can think of everyday acceptance as sort of a daily attitude adjustment which conditions us to becoming better at radical acceptance. In other words, if every single day we practice accepting the little things, it then becomes easier for us to also accept the bigger challenges posed by life.
Linehan, M. M. (2015). DBT skills training manual (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.,Reutter, K. (2019). The dialectical behavior therapy skills workbook for PTSD: Practical exercises for overcoming trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (1st ed.). New Harbinger Publications.