Accountability

A VITAL key for me being able to accept reality was accepting accountability for the direction my life has gone. Louise Hay's You Can Heal Your Life is a must for anyone who feels like a victim, or at the mercy of the vicissitudes of life. She claims that anything "wrong" in our life (illness, accidents, misfortunes, disease, addiction etc.) is caused by us, by our own subconscious thought processes. When I first read this I got ANGRY. "Why in the world would I do (blank) to myself?" But read her whole book before you put it down, and if you are still angry, let me tell you why this book is the most empowering thing I've ever learned: if I am the cause of this (blank), then I can undo it! This my friends is the most empowering pep talk any self identified victim will ever hear. But quite frankly, if you like being a victim, in believing that you are so important that the very laws of nature and god are conspiring against you, then I doubt you'll want to stop this train of thought. Have a nice day:)

Acceptance

I like to say people from an Eastern spiritual paradigm have a huge head start on most of us that were indoctrinated in the Western spiritual paradigm (praying, having faith, hoping that it will come to pass, bargaining, weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, and more praying, throw in some fasting, tithing, or hail maries and you get what you want) when it comes to acceptance. Acceptance is the key to finding peace in the present moment. How long did I live my life unhappy about the way it was going, about what had happened to me or what I had done or said? And frankly, even though I have accepted (lol) acceptance as my road to peace,  I still get angry some times about "stuff". But I am very quick to identify these negative mood states, identify the thought or belief that triggered them, and get back to Loving What Is.