I worked in a t-shirt shop when I was in high school. It was called the Top Shop, and we used big square irons to stick on transfers and letters to all kinds of things. I got the job when I was 15, because the owner, Mr. Smith, was a life-long friend of my parents. One day, he called up my mom and asked if I would like to come to the store and hang up shirts for a few hours. For money! Of course, I said yes, and then, because I did an okay job, and I was a good student, Mr. Smith hired me as a regular employee. I worked there for two and a half years. And I had an impressive t-shirt wardrobe to show for it!
Mr. Smith was a pretty funny guy. One of his favorite sayings was, “Don’t expect anything, and then you won’t be disappointed.”
While this sounds very cynical, especially to me, the original Pollyanna (yes, before the original original, there was I), but there’s some truth to it.
You know that Law of Attraction teaches that you must expect what you want, that you have to believe as if you have received, and that “believing is seeing”, not the other way around. Refer to any modern spiritual teachers or philosophers, such as Deepak Chopra, Abraham-Hicks, Dr. Wayne Dyer, and others.
But it’s also important to accept what is, here and now. Check out Byron Katie’s book, Loving What Is. I’m not saying you shouldn’t be optimistic. Like I said, I’m a cock-eyed optimist, and for me, hope springs eternal. But there is something to be said for looking at your current situation and saying, “Yes, it is.” And then go on to imagine and feel and attract what you love, or, if you like where you are, to attract even more of that.
Several years ago, my friend Mollie was finishing her degree in psychology, and she told me there had a been a study done on people who lived to be 80 years old or older. The most important thing these people had in common was an ability to accept loss and move past it.
Acceptance, in other words, increases your life expectancy.
And when it comes to relationships, romantic or otherwise, acceptance is usually more important than understanding. (For a video in which I expound on this idea, click here.) I try to live by this, accepting others as they are, and I appreciate being accepted and/or included, as well.
I realized not long ago that “inclusion” or “acceptance” is kind of “my thing”–“my Pollyanna thing”–and I started doing it consciously, catching myself if I judged someone or wanted him or her to behave differently.
Think about acceptance–and remember to accept yourself as you are, too! Love yourself and others as they are, and your life will be far better!