During a sweat lodge ceremony last month, I received a message. “When you say yes to what you don’t want or don’t like, it becomes something else.”

After one of the rounds in the sweat lodge – a womb-like dark space with hot stones and water creating a steaming meditation space – each participant was ask to go out of the lodge for a dousing of three buckets of cold water, before re-entering for the next round. I was one of the last in the circle so I knew in advance what was happening.

I don’t like cold water on my bare back, even on a warm day. This is the story I ran in my head as I anticipated my turn. But something from inside me, prompted me to change my story. I knew there was no way to avoid the situation so I decided to embrace the experience, telling myself it would be exhilarating. As I sat on the ground with the cold water pouring over my head, back and body, that was exactly my experience. Bracing perhaps, but none-the-less exhilarating.

I have been contemplating this message for several weeks now, and as is my habit, I have tested it against worst case scenarios. If I say yes to something I don’t want, what does that mean? Say I’m alone in an elevator on the 44th floor of a high-rise and the electricity goes out. I’m stuck. I’m frantic. It is not a situation I want to be in. However, here I am. I say, “Yes, I am stuck in this elevator.” Then the circumstances shift from panic to acceptance. I can’t get out of the elevator but I can sit down, close my eyes, breathe, relax. In this calmer state new possibilities can emerge. My experience has become something else. Even if the elevator crashes to the floor and I die, I am grateful to be in a state of peace rather than panic.

I had a friend in South Africa when I lived there in the 90s just after Nelson Mandela was released from prison and the apartheid regime was being dismantled. I met Joe when he was working in the Justice and Reconciliation office of the South Africa Council of Churches. He had been involved in the struggle and in 1977 was detained by special government forces who tortured him for several days running. At one point he thought he was going to die and asked God to take his soul. In response, he heard a voice say, “I have given you life and they will not take it away.” The torture stopped immediately. There is no telling for what reason it stopped at that moment but Joe believed it was related to the shift he made within himself.

We can’t control other people’s behavior. We don’t always have control over the circumstances we find ourselves in. We do, however, have control over how we choose to respond to those circumstances. Accepting what IS, creates a shift within us that allows new possibilities to emerge. When we say yes to what we don’t want or don’t like, it becomes something else.