“Serenity comes when you trade expectations for acceptance.” – unknown

When I talk about acceptance being a life goal for me, I mean acceptance of circumstances that I have found very difficult TO accept. It’s been a hard-won task, and one that I have periodically revisited over the years since I first identified acceptance as something that I wanted to find. 

Now I’m not talking about others accepting me…that bothers me less and less as I get older, but, instead, my own acceptance of either myself, or things outside of myself, or even things that are entirely out of my control.

When I first started my own journey toward personal acceptance, I found the lack of it in my own life to be, at times, nearly intolerable. I often would torture myself with “whys and why nots!” It was this discomfort and cognitive dissonance that motivated me to choosing this as one of my two lifelong life lesson tasks, balance and acceptance. It’s taken me years to achieve some modicum of “success,” and I find myself so much more at peace and filled with calm reassurance and peace. This is not to say that I do not have to take a “refresher course” in my own acceptance, because I do have to, but it’s generally a short time frame.

What has your journey of acceptance been like?