386: The Acceptance and Resistance Survey, Part 1 of 2

Rhonda and David  are joined in today’s podcast by two dear friends, Dr. Matt May, a popular regular on our show, and Matt Pierce, a co-founder of the soon-to-be-released Feeling Great App

Brief bio sketch of Matt Pierce goes here, should you wish to include it in the show notes. Matt,. A pic would also be great, but not required. People get tired of the same pics each week, so a fresh face to illustrate this episode would be cool!

You’ve probably heard about acceptance. It’s a popular buzzword in the mental health space these days. In fact, some experts claim that it’s THE key to happiness and enlightenment.

It’s NOT, but it can be incredibly helpful.

I wanted to learn more about Acceptance and put some numbers on it’s effectiveness, or lack of effectiveness, so I recently sent an invitation to the 45,000 people on my mailing lists to complete a new survey on acceptance and resistance. More than 1,000 quickly responded, which was great. I hoped the data could provide some answers questions like these:

• What is acceptance?
• How interested are we in accepting themselves, other people, and the world?
• Many people, and perhaps most of us, strenuously resist acceptance. Why?
• What are the things that we have the most trouble accepting about ourselves and others?
• Is all the hype about acceptance justified? Does it actually have meaningful effects on how we feel?
• Can money buy happiness? And if so, how much, exactly, does it cost?
• Why are single people more depressed and unhappy than people with partners? And if so, is it because of the lack of a loving partner? Or was there some other reason?

Thanks for listening, David, Rhonda and Matt