Acceptance vs. Surrender: A Fresh Perspective on Embracing Change

After the concept of acceptance came up in several client sessions recently, I thought I’d share some thoughts on how acceptance can profoundly impact your ability to create - or not create - changes in your life.

A common misunderstanding is equating acceptance with surrender. While people often use these words interchangeably, they are distinct and carry very different meanings.

What is Acceptance?

Acceptance is a vital step in personal growth and achieving your ambitions. It means acknowledging your current reality - your strengths, weaknesses, successes, and failures - without judgement or self-criticism. It’s about embracing where you are now as a starting point.

When you practice acceptance, you create space to pause, reflect, and clarify what you truly want. It frees you from the weight of shame, guilt, or regret and allows you to focus on the present moment. You can’t let go until you’ve fully acknowledged and embraced where you are.

In Tantra, acceptance is a foundational practice. Whether it’s connecting with your breath, observing sensations in your body, work, life or deepening intimacy, the practice encourages you to embrace the present moment fully. Tantra reminds us that resistance creates tension, while acceptance creates flow.

What Acceptance is Not

Acceptance is not about giving up, surrendering, or settling for less. It’s not resigning yourself to your current circumstances. Instead, it’s a way of redirecting your energy to what you can control and using that focus to take purposeful action toward the changes you desire.

How Acceptance and Surrender Plays Out in Life

Here are some real-life examples of the difference between surrender and acceptance:

1. Illness

• Surrender: Feeling hopeless, giving up on treatment, and believing there’s nothing you can do.

• Acceptance: Acknowledging the illness, taking responsibility for your well-being, seeking treatment, and making lifestyle changes to support your health.

Tantric Perspective: Instead of resisting discomfort, Tantra encourages embracing bodily sensations and emotions, allowing healing and transformation to happen from a place of awareness rather than fear.

2. Sports Injuries

• Surrender: Stopping all activity, dwelling on frustration, and deciding you’ll never be as strong again.

• Acceptance: Recognising your current limitations, focusing on recovery, adapting your training, and finding new ways to stay active.

Tantric Perspective: Injury can be an invitation to slow down and listen to the body rather than push through pain. Acceptance allows space for healing, whereas surrender can lead to stagnation.

3. Divorce or Breakups

• Surrender: Feeling like a failure, closing off emotionally, avoiding relationships, and believing love isn’t for you.

• Acceptance: Acknowledging the pain, learning from the experience, allowing yourself to heal, and remaining open to love in a new way.

Tantric Perspective: Tantra teaches that relationships are dynamic and impermanent. By accepting change rather than clinging to the past, you open yourself to deeper self-awareness and future connections.

4. Sex and Intimacy

• Surrender: Avoiding intimacy due to judgement, past experiences, shutting down desires, or believing pleasure isn’t available to you.

• Acceptance: Embracing your body and desires as they are, exploring pleasure without judgement, and communicating openly with partners.

Tantric Perspective: Tantra sees sexuality as a pathway to deeper connection and self-discovery. Acceptance of your body, sensations, and vulnerabilities can lead to more fulfilling intimacy.

5. Work and Career

• Surrender: Sticking with an unfulfilling job because change feels impossible, resigning yourself to stress, or believing success isn’t for you.

• Acceptance: Acknowledging dissatisfaction, identifying what you can control, and taking steps toward a career that aligns with your values and passions.

Tantric Perspective: Work, like life, is a flow of energy. When you accept where you are and remain open to possibility, you allow new opportunities to unfold rather than forcing them.

6. Aging

• Surrender: Resisting change, focusing on loss, and fearing the passage of time.

• Acceptance: Embracing aging as a natural process, adapting to new strengths, and cultivating wisdom and self-love.

Tantric Perspective: Tantra teaches that beauty and vitality are not fixed states rather energies we can cultivate at any age through presence and connection with our bodies.

The Power of Acceptance

When you embrace acceptance, you empower yourself to take responsibility for your life. It puts you in the driver’s seat - a place that can feel both exhilarating and intimidating, especially at first.

From experience, I know how hard it can be to accept without feeling like you’re surrendering. Our inner victim, ego, pride, or sense of injustice often get in the way. However the more you practice acceptance, the easier it becomes - and the more liberating it feels. And the result? A sense of freedom and flow that’s incredibly liberating.

My Journey with Acceptance

For me, accepting my circumstances has been transformational. It freed up energy I once spent resisting or fighting against reality, allowing me to open myself to new opportunities, achievements, and deeper fulfillment.

Tantra has played a key role in this process. By cultivating mindfulness and body awareness, I’ve learned to embrace myself and my circumstances more compassionately. It has made me kinder to myself, shifting how I see myself, others, and the world around me and by recognising that everyone faces their own challenges, I’ve become more empathetic in my relationships and interactions.

The Surprising Benefit of Acceptance

Choosing acceptance doesn’t mean losing - it means everyone benefits. By embracing where you are now, you gain the clarity and freedom to move forward with intention and purpose. In fact, when practiced through a Tantric lens, acceptance becomes a gateway to richer, more meaningful experiences.

What could change in your life if you embraced acceptance with curiosity and openness?

Enjoy the day you create.

Until next time

Martin