Acceptance and agency

Happiness lives in a powerful paradox: learning how to make the most of life in any circumstance, while also learning how to create the circumstances that help you make the most out of life.

This balance begins with presence, allowing you to meet your circumstances with acceptance. Now that acceptance is the gateway to resourcefulness, creativity, and grace. You can stop waiting for the perfect conditions that will never come and start using your creative power and agency entirely, especially when things feel turned upside down. The first half of freedom comes from knowing you can create meaning anywhere.

Once you master acceptance, transformation becomes possible, and in the absence of resistance, you can create. Your job is to take responsibility for doing your best to create the conditions in your life that help you expand, grow, thrive, and contribute. Happiness is the dance between acceptance and agency that we find by meeting life as it is, and being courageous enough to create with intention.

Which side of your happiness paradox would it be valuable to practice?