Acceptance & Indifference.

We CAN learn from both.

Life is full of ups and downs. Acceptance means recognizing both the good times and the bad. Learning from both happiness and grief; excitement and disappointment. We all know this to be true yet we regularly find ourselves irrationally battling the very fact that hardship exists in our lives.

We even stubbornly struggle through the difficulties in our lives while understanding intuitively that "if only I could learn to accept what is, my life would be oh, so much more enjoyable".

"O.K.", I hear you say, "fine. I know it to be true that acceptance could help me through some rough times but... how the heck am I supposed to accept (your dilemma here)?!"

Some of the key elements in any addiction recovery plan are acceptance of who you are, where you are in your life, how you got there and what you're going through. Keep reading and we'll discover together how acceptance can vastly increase the potential for joy and love in your life.

Internationally renowned author Scott Peck writes "Life is difficult" in his excellent book The Road Less Traveled. This phrase appears as the very first line in the book, in point of fact.

Now, I have no intention of refuting his writing; the book is a wonderful source of wisdom for those of us who are searching. However, while we both profess to have similar goals with our writings, I do wish to shed some light on a somewhat different view on that subject.

It is important that this point of view be illustrated here as it is the foundation and central tenet of this strategy. Ready? Here goes:

That bears repeating. Life is. Plain and simple. And that's exactly where many of our problems lie: in our overwhelming tendency to complicate things by refusing to accept them as they are.

O.K. Let's take a closer look. Life, in and of itself, is neither difficult nor easy. It is neither beautiful nor ugly. It is neither plain nor elegant. It is neither simple nor complicated. Life simply is.

What can make it difficult, complicated and sometimes ugly is both our perception and interpretation of events, experiences and circumstances.

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