Acceptance

In the past several months I have done quite a bit of searching within myself to figure out what the real reasons for my unhappiness always were.  Obviously living a life riddled with drug and alcohol use can hardly ever be a success, but I always knew there were underlying reasons as to why I used such an escapist coping mechanism to deal with my life.  In this time of introspection I have realized that perhaps the thing I most struggled with in life was accepting anything that I found to be contrary to the way I wanted it to be.  I expended vast amounts of energy trying to control the people, things and situations in my life to suit my wishes and desires.  I had unrealistic self centered expectations of everyone around me.  It was honestly as if I truly believed the world revolved around me, and I never considered that the people in my life weren't there specifically to cater to my every desire or expectation.  Every problem I had and every situation I encountered that was upsetting to me (which was pretty much everything) was in some way the fault of another human being or institution outside of myself not acting in accordance to what I saw to be suiting to myself.

I saw a quote recently that is one of the most accurate and profound statements I have seen during the last four months.  It said "I have found that my serenity level is almost ALWAYS inversely related to my expectations.  The lower my expectations, the higher my serenity level...the higher my expectations, the lower my serenity level."  I have found this statement to be an undeniable truth. 

I in no way mean to insinuate during any of these posts that I have mastered any of these concepts.  I still stumble, and struggle.  I still lose my way on occasions and have tremendous difficulty dealing with the situations in my life that aren't the way I wish them to be.  The point for me is that I am learning these things, and when I DO apply them to my life, they work and the quality of my existence increases dramatically.  The more and more I practice them, the more and more natural they become...and unlike previous times in my life, when I fail at implementing some of these things, I do not give up on them and condemn them as worthless.  Now I just try to reset my mind, learn from my struggles and mistakes and continue to practice a better way of living.

Every day I try to set my expectation level as low as I possibly can in regards to the people in my life and the situations that I care about.  What the world has in store for me every day is out of my control, and the only thing I have any authority over is my own behaviors and reactions.  I try to prepare myself each day for the worst possible scenario, and find acceptance in that situation before it even happens.  When I do this, and the worst outcome does arise...I am prepared and have already accepted it as a possibility.  On the other hand, if something better than the worst case occurs, I feel grateful and blessed.   This is the opposite of how I used to live my life 100% of the time.  I would wake up with an attitude of entitlement as if the world owed me a favor.  I would go through my day with complete expectation that every single situation I encountered would cater to my exact desires, and when it did not I was appalled. angry, and felt slighted.  This attitude led to inevitable unhappiness essentially every single day.  When I take this attitude into my days now, I am almost always disappointed, and react accordingly.  I find I can still be abrasive and cause damage to the relationships in my life in this manner.  I have faltered on this front on occasion in the past four months, and it has not benefited me.  It is especially difficult to maintain serenity in situations that don't go my way when the situation is extremely important to me.  It's all a learning process, and I continue to try to grow and make consistent this new way of thinking and reacting.  It is not easy, but the days I do master it, I have a serenity level that I never thought possible...and those days are becoming more and more numerous as time goes on.

The bottom line is that in order for me to be happy, I must be willing to accept the world outside of me exactly as it is.  I have to be able to accept other people's feelings, desires, and actions, and not take them as a personal attack upon me.  I'm not that important.  The world, for the most part, does not give a shit about what Ryan wants.  Everyone is just trying to be happy and to live the best lives they can.  I have to be accepting of other people's flaws and difficulties.  I am certainly in no position to judge anyone for having character defects...I still have plenty of my own to work on.  I have to accept the decisions people make, whether they are painful to me or not.  Again, the world doesn't revolve around me, and aside from my mother, I'm pretty much the only person who's primary priority is Ryan Eriquezzo a good percentage of the time.

Most importantly, I have to be in acceptance of the damage I have caused to the people I love, their reactions to me, and the lack of faith that they sometimes have in my ability to live life well.  I have done a lot of damage, and I have hurt a lot of people in my life through years of living in a self seeking, self centered, self destructive, fear and resentment driven existence.  I cannot expect anyone after four months of attempting to live the correct way and making better decisions to have complete and utter faith that I'm "all better."  The truth is, I'm not yet, and I still have a ton of growing and work to do on myself. 

For the most part, I don't try to focus on things I cannot change or have no control over anymore.  All I can do is continue to try to become the man I aspire to be.  That process is nowhere close to over, but the mere fact that this is the direction my brain goes now in times of pain and adversity is a very good sign.  There are certain situations in my life that are so painful to me that I am positive they would have incapacitated me 6 months ago.  There are a bunch of things I wish with all of my heart were different.  So often I wish I could take the 20/20 hindsight I have right now and go back one year of my life and live it optimally all over again.  The only thing I can do now is something that I was never capable of choosing to do before...Find the silver lining in every situation, continue to grow and move forward, and have faith that no matter how unpleasant a certain situation in my life is...I will be able to help another person with this experience someday.  No matter what comes at me throughout the course of the next 24 hours..."acceptance is the answer to all of my problems today"