Holiday Happiness is All About Acceptance



Hope everyone has a very Blessed Christmas and Holiday Season. Remember to let go of expectations. Accept each moment and every person as they are by not demanding that they be as you want them to be. If you accept the moment as it is you will find joy in it. If you accept others as they are, you will find beauty in them. And if you accept yourself as you are you will find joy, beauty and complete peace!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

If The Eyes Had No Tears, The Soul Would Have No Rainbow

Image
I'm sitting in a Panera Bread in Los Angeles, eating my cinnamon scone and preparing to cut my trip here short. I'll have to return home tomorrow and then fly to Omaha, Nebraska for a funeral. A young father in his 30s died there last Friday, leaving behind a wife and three small children. There are always questions in these types of situations: Why? Why someone so young? Why someone who had a wife and kids? The "why" questions can be endless, and there's never a quantifiable answer.  I don't believe in "it was just his time" or that God called him home. There's too much cruelty to these pat answers and they make God seem like a beast. What purpose could there be behind such imagined acts of God? I see no redeeming purpose to seizing a young man from his young family. I do believe that life happens. When someone dies and there is no acceptable answer to "why," I believe it's simply the human condition. It's the way...
Read more

If You’re Unhappy, This May Be Why

Image
I’ve spent most of my life trying to make other people happy because I felt responsible for their feelings. And the above quote is spot-on true. I’m the one person who’s not been happy, as a result. We are not responsible for other people’s feelings. We aren’t their savior. They are responsible for their feelings and we are responsible for ours. Yes, we can express empathy and compassion for others, but we need to stop taking on their feelings and problems as if they are our own. They aren’t. Another person’s problems and feelings affect us indirectly. Our own problems and feelings affect us directly. If we are feeling directly responsible for another person’s feeling/problems, there is something wrong with us. In other words, if a friend is going through a divorce, that is their problem; not ours. If we feel responsible for solving their problem, or for owning their feelings to the point of neglecting our own problems and feelings, we are trapped in codependent caretaki...
Read more

If You're Panicking Over Coronavirus, Get Out of Your Subconscious Mind and Trust Your Higher Power

Image
So, how are you handling the coronavirus pandemic as a codependent? I'm actually surprised at how well I am handling it. A few years ago, my urgent codependent need to control my Higher Power's handling of the pandemic would have had me tied up in mental and emotional knots right now. Throw in the fact that I have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, which gives me an urgent fear of germs/viruses/bacteria, and I'd be on the verge of an emotional breakdown. But today that's not the case. Why? Well, through Recovery I've learned so much about how by brain functions. In particular, I've learned that most of my daily life and fears are controlled by my subconscious mind. We can spend 95% of our day reacting to chaos and drama that's playing in our subconscious mind, and not even begin to realize consciously what's actually going on. This is why we actually spend more time living in our heads than in reality. Years of Recovery are now paying off duri...
Read more

Own What's Yours to Own

“Feeling compassion for other people is not about becoming obligated to them or feeling responsible for their lives.” Howard Falco, I AM Codependents often confuse compassion with a strong sense of obligation. When we first enter recovery, we may believe we are responsible for the lives of everyone we have grown attached to, or taken hostage. We are so used to linking our compassion for others with a deep sense of being obligated to fix their lives. Their every feeling has become our feeling and their every disappointment, failure or hang-nail has become ours to own and heal. We have made ourselves responsible for making their world all sunny bright. As a result, separating feelings of obligation from feelings of compassion can be very difficult for many newly recovery codependents. Initially, compassion without obligation seems like a cop-out. We feel as though we are letting others down by relinquishing responsibility for their lives; when, in truth, we are showing true compassio...
Read more