“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

Courage to change the things I can,

And wisdom to know the difference.”   

Reinhold Niebuhr

Through acceptance we get abundance in two different ways. 1. When we look around at our lives we can see many things to be grateful for. By concentrating on the things we are grateful for we feel abundance in our lives. 2. When we are relaxed and accepting in our lives we avoid some of the turmoil and anger that we might feel, making good things more likely to happen and more likely to be recognized by us as good.

Acceptance sometimes involves surrender but also involves acceptance of the efforts we need to put forth get what we want. Once we accept that we need to forgive someone to be able to have a positive ongoing relationship with them, we gain more abundance in our friendships. If we accept that we need to put effort in to get more education, or put more effort in to make more money to buy the house we want, that effort comes more easily. Sometimes the most difficult part of getting what we want is accepting the effort we will have to put forward to get what we want.

Acceptance of change can be the hardest thing to accept. When my first wife died I not only had to accept her death but I also had to accept that my lifestyle had changed forever. I wanted to find someone new to share life with, which meant that I had to change my lifestyle and life goals to fit with someone new. If we can embrace change, we can gain new abundance in our life in ways we had not dreamed of before.

Acceptance of negative things in the world is important to be able to feel that our life is abundant. If we accept the turmoil of politics as reported in the news, it can open our eyes to many of the great things going on in the world. I have often asked my students and others about our government and I usually hear a lot of criticism of our government. But, if I ask what other government in the world they would rather be subject to, they invariably think that our government is the one that they want. By accepting the negative it can open our eyes to an appreciation of the positive.

Acceptance is the key to abundance.