I've been reading a lot the past few months in the area of what makes us happy and what keeps us in the opposite state: one of unhappiness.
The internet - especially YouTube, Ted Talks, and podcasts by authors like Robert Puff - offer an abundance of free information about how we can be happy. And what makes us unhappy.
And right here and now I'm going to give you the free formula, according to what I've gleaned. And I won't even charge you for it.
And the formula goes like this: accept your life - and everything about it - just as it is right now.
Now, of course, we see this in the Big Book and we hear it in 12-step meetings all the time. But even though many of us who live in the world of recovery may not pay much attention, the larger world around us shares our quest for happiness.
When I first started hearing about acceptance as a key to happiness it seemed overly simple. But the more I looked at it the more it made sense to me.
Now many of us believe that if we just have enough money we'll be happy. Or the right soul mate.
Or the perfect job. A beautiful home. A luxury car.
The list can be endless, but as many of us have experienced, externals don't bring us happiness. The new car starts to get scratches, the big home we coveted is a lot more work than we thought, and our new life partner shows personality traits we didn't notice when we were blinded by hormones.
So does acceptance mean that we shouldn't try to succeed, to do better, to get more stuff? Not at all the experts say. What it does mean is that we should enjoy the journey right now, in this moment.
Because if we're only happy when we have everything we want and life is perfect, then we're going to be unhappy when we don't have what we want.
In other words, accept what we have now and love what we have now - and happiness can be ours all the time.
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