Detachment & Acceptance

I thought I would stir off topic a bit from the apprentice to get into one of my favorite subjects. Life! I can talk about this subject for hours!

Recently I was talking to a friend of mine about how we many times take ourselves and things so seriously. We give so much meaning to things that it holds us back from being as “care free” as we would like to be. In fact in our society being carefree many times is looked at as bad. If you are not busy and stressed you are not being productive and there is something wrong with you. Plus, everything we do must have a goal or an end result in mind or else you are "wasting time".

Most people think that wanting and focusing on an end result will make it happen faster or assure it happening. However, so much of our energy is wasted on wanting an end result that it adversely affects the quality of everything we do. Think about it, when you are involved in something doesn’t the fear of failure or the desire for success take an enormous amount of your thinking? Notice the last time you screwed up in something important for you and you will probably find that during the situation you were probably saying to yourself “I hope I don’t screw this up” or “I have to succeed or else I’ll be dissapointed”. This attachments and fears actually prevent people from giving it their very best.

Now, I do not mean to have no motivation to succeed or not to have goals in life. In fact it’s the complete opposite. I often use the phrase “being committed to an outcome but yet not attached to it”. I got this phrase from one of my mentors and it reminds me every time to focus on the journey not the destination. The byproduct of this practice is that everything you do is more enjoyable (instead of stressful) and the end results end up being much better than you can imagine!

How do you stop being so attached to an outcome? Every time you are trying to get to a goal you must be o.k. with whatever happens and realize that it doesn’t have to determine your happiness. I have been asked this many times “how do you do it to be so happy?” or “how do you stay positive with people even when they might not be?”. ACCEPTANCE. I accept situations as they are and people as they are. Granted it is more difficult with some situations and people than with others.

How do you begin doing this?
Value the simple things and lower your standards/expectations for what makes you happy. Value the fact that unlike other people in the world you will never starve or be hungry, you will probably always have water to drink, and it is unlikely that you will ever be without shelter. Same with validation, value a simple smile from a stranger or even better a smile from YOURSELF. So if you were to realize that you will always have everything to be happy what would you be afraid of?

Once you build the capacity and realization of needing less you will have far more power over your life. Why? Because, you will have NOTHING to loose and thus nothing to fear.