Every time the world gets a little crazy (like right now), I’m reminded of a lesson I’ve had to learn over and over again: Our emotional state determines our experience. It’s a truth I return to again and again. And it becomes most important when things feel uncertain, overwhelming, or out of our control.
When I first declared “freedom” as one of my core values, I thought it meant autonomy, freedom to create the work I wanted, live how I wanted. That was important, of course.
But over the years, freedom has come to mean something deeper.
Freedom, to me, now means freedom from my ego. It means being able to surrender my preferences, judgments, and fears in service of something greater. And that kind of freedom? It always begins with acceptance.
Acceptance doesn’t mean apathy, nor does it mean condoning behaviors that are against your beliefs and values. It means seeing things clearly, without resistance, without denial, without needing life to be different from how it is in this moment, while still holding to your values. It means seeing the truth of your finances, your relationships, your habits, your fears. And accepting it all as it is at this moment. Not as you wish it were.
When I was first learning this lesson, I remember sitting on the floor of my apartment, staring at a stack of overdue bills and feeling like a complete failure. But here’s what I discovered: suffering doesn’t come from our circumstances, it comes from our resistance to them.
I stopped fighting reality. I accepted that moment as a starting point, not as a definition of who I was. And that decision, that moment of acceptance, was what made real change possible.
So today, whatever is happening in your life – whatever chaos is swirling around you – I invite you to pause and practice acceptance.
Say to yourself: “This is what’s so. I accept this is where it is.”
It’s the first step on the superhighway to freedom.
Spot on, Jackie. Accepting the “What Is, Is” marked a huge point in my evolution. The saying, “High Involvement & Low Attachment,” is the only way to make it through the quagmire. When we can be “highly” involved in the moment at hand without an obsessive attachment to what it “should” look like, we’ll experience the peace that passes all understanding!
Thanks for the reminder!
Peace, Dennis Merritt Jones