The One Word That Is Keeping You From True Happiness
By: Dawn Bevier
Tags: Self, Self Improvement, Life Lessons, Change, Inspiration

The One Word That Is Keeping You From True Happiness

The good news is to reach your best life, all you have to do is get out your eraser

Image by Thanasis Papazacharias on Pixabay

Imagine yourself sitting at a table with a cup of poison. You know it will kill you. What do you do? Do you drink it?

Of course not.

You might think I’m crazy for asking you this question. The answer is so obvious. You don’t want to die. You want to live.

Yet this same situation is presented to us every day in our lives, and most of us choose to drink the poison.

And just what is the poison we so willingly consume day after day and year after year?

Acceptance.

And I’m sure that I’m ruffling a few feathers because this is a word right now with extremely positive connotations. For example, how many messages are sent through the media either telling us to do things such as accept our bodies or to make peace with our (fill in the blank)?

The messages above reveal that accomplishing self-acceptance isn’t easy. For instance, the phrase “make peace” implies a struggle, making it is safe to say that acceptance is a skill most humans can only cultivate with effort.

But have you ever wondered why we have to work so hard to accept things? Well, the easy answer is that maybe we really don’t want to live with the way things are. Maybe we really want to change them instead.

And deep down, we know more often than not, that this is the truth of the matter. Nevertheless, we still continue to exert all our energy into accepting our circumstances rather than in changing them.

Why do we choose acceptance?

Because it’s easier. A heck of a lot easier.

Acceptance is easier because it involves less physical work.

Okay, so I mentioned that acceptance is a struggle. A struggle that is totally mental. And yes, it’s hard. But as difficult as it may seem, it is always less grueling than change. Change requires more. Because change involves not only an exhausting mental effort but a physical one as well. And truly, often we just don’t want to have to work that hard.

Acceptance is also easier because once we can manage to accept something, the work is over. Finished and done with. For the rest of our lives, our relationship with whatever it was we struggled with will be peaceful (or at least that’s what we tell ourselves).

But change doesn’t let us off the hook that easily. Again, it demands more from us because it is not our natural state. And this means the fight is never truly over because our old ways of being and doing are much safer and less exhausting.

Acceptance is easier because it involves less honesty.

Acceptance simply requires giving in to a lie. What is the lie? That we are impotent and powerless.

For example, we accept our bodies. We accept that we will be overweight forever. We accept that our twenty-year marriage is boring and stale. We accept that we’ll be stuck in a dead-end job forever because we dropped out of school or didn’t go to college.

Acceptance says, “This is the way things are, and we’re going to have to deal with it.”

Think about how truly deceptive this statement is.

For the rest of our lives, do we really have to deal with the extra exertion of climbing up a short flight of stairs or the burden of things such as high blood pressure and type two diabetes brought on by added pounds?

No.

For the rest of our lives, do we and our spouses have to deal with the fact that married life away from our jobs consists solely of sitting at home like zombies, staring at the television screen for hours? Do we really have to accept the fact that the best years of our marriages are over — that the passion and adventure and excitement we once had as a couple — are gone?

No.

For the rest of our lives, do we really have to work the same job, one with terrible pay, horrible working conditions, and no chance for upward mobility?

No.

Don’t get me wrong. To accept that we are in the position that we are at this point in our lives is good. Underling reality is accepting the truth of a past that we cannot change. And no one, no matter how hard they try, can change the past.

However, to accept that we have to be this way forever is a lie. By accepting the past, we realize that our choices up to this point have determined our starting points in our journey towards change. But the truth is, whether we make it to our destination is completely up to us. Are we finished fighting for a better body, a better marriage, a better job? Or are we finished making excuses and pretending like we are happy with the lives we’re living? To quit fighting for change means our journeys will be shorter, but to continue to fight for our best lives means that the destination we reach will be much more rewarding.

And plenty of us manage to brainwash ourselves into believing that our lives can’t change, but in ninety-nine percent of cases, this is untrue. For example, Nelson Mandela said of change that “it always seems impossible until it’s done.”

And guess what my friend, those unhappy circumstances we’ve chosen to believe are impossible to change? They’ve been done.

The extra thirty pounds that we accept will weigh us down forever, both physically and emotionally? Someone else has lost three or four times that weight.

That monotonous boring married life we accept as a product of age and time? Many couples have rekindled the spark, changed a once bland relationship into one with more excitement, passion, and intimacy.

That job that we have accepted we are shackled to? Many people have left similar jobs and found more wealth and more happiness in their work lives.

It’s been done by others. And it’s a lie to say it can’t be done by us too.

Acceptance is easier because it is effortless to be a victim and excruciating to be a hero.

Acceptance is a “kind” lie, one that allows us to see ourselves as victims of irreversible circumstances. Of our DNA. Of our past. Of our age and our situation.

That’s the poison we put to our mouths every day. That’s the thing that’s killing us. And it may mean either a physical or emotional death. Either way, it’s destructive.

But the truth is we don’t have to drink the poison. We don’t have to accept a life that leaves us unhappy. We don’t have to be a victim to our circumstances. We can change if we are truly willing to put in the work.

One of the most powerful poems proving this is written by late rapper-poet Tupac Shakur. It is entitled “The Rose That Grew From Concrete.”

Did you hear about the rose that grew

from a crack in the concrete?

Proving nature’s law is wrong it

learned to walk with out having feet.

Funny it seems, but by keeping its dreams,

it learned to breathe fresh air.

Long live the rose that grew from concrete

when no one else ever cared.

This poem reminds us that no matter how hard growth and transformation may be, it can happen. We can “bloom.”

Image by congerdesign on Pixabay

The bottom line:

Acceptance is safety, a cheap consolation prize for simply existing. Change is the only way to win true happiness. As Gail Sheey says, “If we don’t change, we don’t grow. If we don’t grow, we aren’t really living.”

And I don’t want to drink the poison. I want to live. Truly live.

And I know deep down, so do you.