Brigid Slipka

Every time we face a problem or a situation or even hint of unpleasantness, we’ve got two good ways to respond:

Act to change it.

Accept it as it is.

Action addresses the problem.  Acceptance addresses how we feel about the problem.  Action works through the problem externally.  Acceptance works through the problem internally.

Usually, though, we don’t do either of these.  Instead, we spend huge amounts of mental energy resisting, resenting the fact that the problem exists in the first place.  We:

Blame.

Gripe.

Worry.

Stall.

Wish.

Stew.

All of these responses have zippo impact on the problem.  But the do have an impact on something else: how quickly our unhappiness about the problem skyrockets.

In fact, one might even go so far as to say it’s not the problem that makes us unhappy.  It’s how we respond to it.

Ok, I will go that far:

Problems don’t make us unhappy.  We do that all ourselves.

Ok, at first, the idea that my unhappiness is all foisted on me by me very own self sounds like a bunch of eye-rolling New Agey mumbo-jumbo*.  But then I realize, regardless of how trendy or ancient this perspective might be, it’s Phenomenal News!  Because I can’t do anything about the fact that life drops heavy, heavy problems on our heads.

But I can choose to not be unhappy.

Double Negative Scrub + First-Person Pluralize: We can choose to be happy.

We can choose to act.  Or we can choose to accept.

*It is (see: Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer).  And it’s also not (see: Lao Tzu, Buddha).