ACCEPTANCE

There is a happiness that does not depend upon what happens.

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When our happiness depends on what's happening around us, we're setting ourselves up to feel bad as soon as things don't go our way.

Think about watching your school's basketball team play. The home team fans and the visiting team fans are watching the exact same game. But when the final buzzer sounds, each group leaves feeling totally different. It's not the game itself that creates their mood—it's what they wanted to happen and how they thought about what they saw.
 

Here's something that might sound backwards:
 

Wanting only good things to happen actually makes us feel worse. Being okay with difficult things actually makes us feel better.
 

The most powerful thing we can do in life isn't really doing anything at all—it's letting things be.

 

Being okay with whatever moment we're in, even when it's not what we wanted, sounds like giving up. It feels like we should always be fighting for something better. But when we fight against reality, we usually just create more problems and way more stress. Someone once said we're strongest when we're like an avalanche—we let go and flow with what's happening. We're most beautiful when we're like a flower—we open up instead of closing off.
 

We can see what's really happening without deciding if it's good or bad.
 

Think about a hurricane. It's incredibly powerful and can destroy entire cities with its winds. But right in the center of that hurricane is a place of complete calm—the eye of the storm. There, you'd see blue skies and sunshine, even while chaos spins all around. When we accept whatever moment we're in instead of fighting it, we find that same peaceful center right in the middle of life's storms.
 

Fighting against what's already happening is pointless.

Working with what's happening is wisdom.