By Tanner Enderle
GCU Office of Student Care
#Askingforafriend
The chaos, distress and uncertainty that has filled 2020 has made knowing ourselves and others even more critical and urgent.
Although many of us desire this knowledge, we might not know how to obtain it or the pathway to getting there. The 3 A’s – Attend, Attune and Accept – are tools, attitudes and actions that will help you increase your emotional regulation, emotional capacity, empathy, outlook on life and relational quality.
These may seem like fancy terms, so let's break them down one by one:
Attend: being present with and navigating your experience and with your body, sensations, emotions and thoughts. We go through most of our day without attending to our own experience, rushing from one thing to the next. If we are not aware or aligned with ourselves, it may be difficult to understand and relate to others. Mindfulness is one way of attending to ourselves.
Attune: the ability to reactive, respond, capture and move toward another person’s experience, inner world and internal state. We can see an example of this when we witness the way a mother interacts with her baby. Attuning looks include staring into the baby’s eyes, relating to their facial expressions, picking up and meeting their needs. Empathy is another valuable way of attuning to others. Being present with them despite now sharing the same experience can be very meaningful.
Accept: receiving rather than resisting current circumstances, thoughts or feelings. Acceptance does not have to mean liking, wanting, choosing or supporting. Acceptance is an active process. It must be practiced. Acceptance doesn't mean that you can't work on changing things. We can practice acceptance toward our experience, people, appearance, emotions, ideas and more. Often, the things outside our control that bother us are the things hardest to accept -- but they also might be the most needed.
Let us move toward each other by knowing ourselves and relating to one another in a healthier and more whole way.
