In any tough situation, you can choose to look for joy. To find the brighter side. To not get discouraged by the setback. To put yourself in the other person’s shoes. To think slower, not faster and suppress your lizard brain reactions. To shape your own reality.
Or you can choose to look for sadness. To interpret cynically. To believe the worst of others. To mourn the past, or damn the future. To point out what’s going wrong, not what’s going right. To be Eeyore.
Acceptance is a dynamic act. You’ll find both joy and sadness if you look for them. Unless you’re battling a mental illness like depression – you get to choose. And your choice doesn’t just affect your reality. It influences the reality of those around you. So, which will you advocate for? Joy or sadness?
We humans like to flock together. We naturally give into peer pressure to fit in, like in the famous Candid Camera elevator experiment. So it’s very easy to follow along with the sadvocates. To nod your head as they tell you why your jobs all suck, or why the old way was better, or why this will never work.
Don’t.
