EMBRACE, ACCEPT, MOVE ON....

I have a good friend that I've said those same words to a hundred times. I was thinking, today is a good day to share with everyone else.

This is a process of handling problems. It's simple, easy to understand, requires no medication, no self-inflicted torture, no deals with the devil, yet will ease the pain of not knowing what to do. Full disclosure – I am NOT a professional head doctor nor do I practice voodoo. I am just like you - a victim of my own, awful, sometimes destructive behavior. When I had something come up, I would analyze it to death. WHY? WHY? WHY?

Then I realized, “why” is irrelevant. Most times the issue involved a young lady who didn't like me or some other seemingly-terrible issue that I could do nothing about. When the catastrophe happens just think of these words...

EMBRACE – This means you must take ownership of whatever it is that bothers you. The irritation shouldn't cripple you, depress you, or annoy you to tears. It's OK to be affected, just not to the point of personal paralysis. You should embrace your reaction, as it is a GOOD thing to feel emotions! If you have the blues, enjoy doing nothing constructive, watch some sappy movies, eat some chocolate marshmallow ice cream and KNOW that the feeling is very temporary. No matter if there is death in the family or you are sitting on the side of the road while the police officer writes you a ticket, there is no problem that can't be resolved one way or another, no alcohol required!.

ACCEPT – This is where we tend to fall short. Accepting the cause of our displeasure is the magic pill in curing the unhappiness in our life. I recently had an issue with Mom. She REALLY made me angry by the choices she was making. It was bad enough that I had to step away from it. As usual, when I have time on my hands, the mind never stops thinking! My conclusion was to follow my own advice – It was MY problem so I accepted her decision and moved on. Embrace, accept, move on....

If you made a bad decision, accept that fact, know YOU were responsible, and don't try and explain it away as someone else's fault. Hopefully you thought about the possibility of it not working out quite like you wanted BEFORE you did what you did. Accept that it was a learning experience, and you wouldn't do it again.

When heartbreak rears it's ugly head, you have to accept that a relationship takes TWO people to work, so if one of them isn't into it, there IS NO RELATIONSHIP. Accept the fact you can't do ANYTHING about it or accept you have done EVERYTHING you COULD do, Either way, the next step is to....

MOVE ON – The hardest part is to move on. We might have worked hard at a project or a person, and, now matter how much sweat we put into it, we fail. If you TRULY know you did all you can do, you have to move on. If it's out of your control, move on. Why torture yourself with feelings that will not change a thing? Why feel bad when you SHOULD be celebrating a good effort? Why be crushed when you did your best and things didn't work out like you thought they should?

All of this is so logical, right? So why don't we do it?

Why DO we drop into the pit of despair and wallow in it until we drink too much prescription booze, lose our jobs from calling in hung-over, lose our apartments because we lost our jobs, and have friends in our face performing an intervention at our box (not homeless yet, if you have a box!) on the corner of Second and Elm?

We know better....

Embrace, accept, move on.