Good morning, Team! It’s Friday!

We are in week 3 of cultivating emotional resilience, from the text by Dr. Amit Sood, Handbook for Happiness.

A few salient points in the excerpts from this chapter,

Acceptance is:

•Finding contentment as you strive to progress (paradox)

•Dancing with life rather than feeling like you are being pushed around.

•Practicing acceptance requires both objectivity and willingness.

•Choosing to play the hand you have been dealt because the only other choice is not to play.

•Experiencing more, evaluating less.

I’m reminded of the serenity prayer,

by Reinhold Niebuhr:

“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.”

This one is extremely hard for me. It feels a little like giving up. If we aspire to greatness, and if I suffer from perfectionist tendencies, the idea of acceptance feels like I’m lowering expectations. The only way for me to back down is to be conscious about giving myself grace. Perfection is the enemy of good and we live in a broken world. Just because we want everything to be perfect doesn’t mean that will ever happen.

If you are known as a control freak, accepting the fact that the one thing you can actually control is the way you react to the things that happen to you. As the quote goes recently shared with me, “Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.”

Have a blessed weekend!

Eric