Acceptance

No Sunshine to walk out into this morning...except the sunshine in each of our hearts I suppose. And that my friends is a rather foreign concept to me. I was and still am a bit of a skeptic, a hard core realist I would have said as a way to define where i was coming from. I think I still am a straight forward or hard core realist....my reality has just changed. It has been transformed and though life hasn't gotten any easier or the world any NICER...I feel safer and more secure in my spiritual condition today.

Seriously, what will be will be...most of what happens in our world can't be changed. I can't changed what some people may say or do. But I can change how I respond to it. That for me has made a huge difference in my life today.

I know, regular readers are thinking that Thom's going to mention ACCEPTANCE again...Yep. I sure am because when I accept the reality of the situation, any situation then I can properly respond to it. Often when someone did something I didn't like, I would spend a lot of time talking and thinking about it. Whining, complaining, criticizing....in doing so my motives often were to make myself look better at someone else's expense.

But what did I really accomplish? Did it actually change anything? No...was the world a better place because I was pissing and moaning about someone... Nada. I was wasting my time trying to change something I had absolutely no power to change.

But when I changed the way I reacted to things I found that I was in a much better place personally. I no longer let people live rent free in my head and I could let stuff go. And hey, these were easy concepts for me to understand at first or accept but once I stopped obsessing and getting ticked off about the guy who talked too much in a meeting or the driver who was going too slow in the left hand lane....I found I was much more serene, content and yea, I felt better about things.

Why get angry over something that means absolutely NOTHING in the bigger picture of life...like somebody'd driving!? And I raged and yelled and cussed all the time about stuff. My blood pressure was up...for what?! I picked apart everything basically because I thought I knew better then anyone else...my way or the highway I suppose would have been my motto. What a JOKE, eh?!

Today, like everyday all I have to do when i get upset about something is think about that simple prayer that has often given me good advice:

God, grant me the serenity

to accept the things I cannot change.

The courage to change the things I can.

And the wisdom to know the difference.

A simple prayer, YEP. But the concept really is quite profound. Why get upset over stuff I cannot do anything about. There are obvious things I can change, my reaction being the easiest of course! And pray for the wisdom and knowledge to know what you can change and what you can't.

That darn prayer has simplified so many chaotic, drama filled situations for me, I can't begin to say how many. It simply is a philosophy I want to live by and honestly it's not that difficult to do so.

Got to run...Have a wonderful Sunday morning!