The most important lesson that I have learned outside of school is that my inner peace is directly proportional to my level of acceptance. This way of thinking revolutionized my life.
When I was younger, I believed the opposite and lived my life trying to control everyone and everything within my little sphere of influence. I surmised that if I could just control the external environment, the internal environment would then become comfortable. Only it never did.
Instead, I was always entangled in one drama or another – each with the same bottom line: To “fix” it. My kids referred to me as their “Drama Mama,” and I was incapable of living life on life’s terms.
There used to be an exercise club near my home, and in front of it was a huge statue of Atlas carrying the world on his shoulders. One day as I sped past Atlas, he looked different, and then, from the back seat, my son cried, “Look Mom! Atlas lost his ball!!” Atlas’ world was, indeed, missing, and now Atlas — hands held high — was carrying an imaginary world.
I once heard a phrase that said, “There is no panic in Heaven.” If that was true, then why was I behaving as though I was Atlas carrying my world on my shoulders? Why was I manipulating every thing and every one in my environment to do things my way? My “control issues” exhausted me time and time again.
Ultimately, though, and with the help of some key people, I learned to live in a calmer, more reasonable way. I realized that when I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place or thing unacceptable to me. I can find no serenity until I accept that fact of my life as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at that moment – that nothing happens in God’s world by mistake. I am only responsible for one person in the universe, and that person is me.
As long as I adhere to this belief, life flows along fairly smoothly. Now I accept the good and the bad. I have stopped diving into the deep end of everyone’s problems and trying to micromanage them. Besides, cause-and-effect is a much more efficient manager than me.
I find my serenity inversely proportional to my expectations — the higher my expectations, the lower my serenity. I need to concentrate not so much in what needs to be changed in the world as what needs to be changed in me. And when I do that, life is good.