And acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing, or situation--some fact of my life--unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment. Nothing, absolutely nothing happens in God's world by mistake. Until I could accept my alcoholism, I could not stay sober; unless I accept life completely on life's terms, I cannot be happy. I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world as on what needs to be changed in me and in my attitudes.
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"LOVE" devoid of self-gratification, is in essence, the will, to the greatest good...of another.
That is easy to say, and we keep saying that allll the time,,, but,,, it is harder to do,, and, in my experience, I often fail to be able to do that, or see that other people do that with me.
We have to keep working in this one,, constantly, eh? God, help us.
in recovery,
amanda
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do your best and God does the rest, a step at a time
It's a matter of making a conscience choice and effort.. for instance; Just Accepting the fact that my mother drives me insane was half the battle. Then, once I was able to accept the fact that her disturbing me was partly due to ME, I made HUGE progress.....She rarely 'gets to me' anymore...and with continued practice and prayer, the day will come where I can say 'she never gets to me anymore!"....Practice, practice, practice........makes for ......progress, progress, progress......thanks, Phil.......
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Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass... It's about learning to dance in the rain.
LOL, yeah, I'm very very good at acceptance---as long as all is going my way. I can doodle around for weeks, patting myself on the back, "yeah, this or that person annoyed me, but hey! I accept them for who they are, and ain't I just a walking poster child for "acceptance"! Ah, but then...here comes so and so, for years I've been allowing them to curdle my morning milk, and all my bravado slips into nothingness as I re-experience my first perceptions, and the word acceptance is often the very last word in my mind. One of those things I'll work on forever. I have found, for me, that it is in accepting the reaction within myself and not labeling it either "good" nor "bad", just a reality of my personality, it is then easier for me to find others acceptable. My lack of acceptance is oftimes a mirror of what is going on inside of me. If I can jack my original perception around, look within at why the defensiveness happened in the first place, then I can gain a better understanding of what I'm finding less than acceptable in another---it's actually some conflict in myself that I'm finding unacceptable, and I just quietly transfer it onto someone else. I will never be perfect,LOL, but my Higher Power knows, I try, I try, just to go in the right direction......hugs, Wren
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"Never argue with an idiot... They'll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience..."
Between every stimulus and response there lies a space. In that space we have the freedom to choose our response. In that freedom to choose lies our potential for growth. Victor Frankl
Paraphrased- I'm too sleepy to find the original response, and this one sums it up well enough. It has been used by lots of successful people in many different facets of their lives. Anthony Robbins and Stephen Covey both liked this one and use it a lot, for whatever that's worth. Essentially this little rule gives you the power to choose. A person gets all confrontational with you and you can walk away, you can smile and ask if they're going to be OK, you can blowup at them, you can break their leg (I dont advise this one- messy and not super pro-active)- you get to choose. No one controls your responses but you. A very empowering rule, once you get it ingrained. Believe it or not, I learned it in a kickboxing dojo.
I cant stress enough how great some of the information from Stephen Covey's "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" is for day to day living. Covey takes it a little far in my opinion- expecting that most people are some sort of pillar of virtue- but the bare ethics taught in that course are some really great rules to get you through your daily stuff out and about.
It can also make you highly annoying if you want to be, but that's in the advanced course.
