Make Peace with Your Life
Every day is an invitation to partner with reality.
Notice how your mind and heart respond when life brings you bad surprises. My own responses tend to be a litany of “No”s:
Not me.
Not today.
This can’t be happening.
This shouldn’t be happening.
I’m not the kind of person this happens to.
I never expected to lose my hair in my early twenties, or develop a chronic health condition in my forties, or start the first week of 2026 laid out with back pain. I’ve never planned to get a migraine, have a terrible night’s sleep, or wind up with one more commitment than I have the energy for.
I know your life has its share of things you wouldn’t have chosen for yourself, such as:
a mental health condition
a physical disability
a family betrayal
a challenging child
a financial crisis
the loss of a loved one
On top of these major disruptions, you deal with daily hassles and injustices like uncooperative technology, annoying traffic, stubbed toes, obnoxious strangers, and an imperfect immune system.
None of these things is fun to deal with. And yet so much of the pain from unwanted events comes not from the events per se but from fighting against them.
An unexpected evening commitment can be daunting; grousing about it the whole time is miserable (believe me, I know). Anxiety is taxing; continually telling yourself you “shouldn’t feel anxious” is overwhelming. Having a cold is unpleasant; calling it a catastrophe makes it awful.
Rather than fighting against what is, you have the option to roll with it—to say “all right” instead of “no.” Responding with acceptance won’t make the problems go away, but it can radically change how you experience them.
That’s not to say it’s easy to make this shift, even when you know you’ll feel better if you do. Speaking for myself, there are times when I feel too bitter to let go of my resistance, as if I can’t forgive life for rewriting the script I gave it.
But with luck and grace you’ll find there are times when you decide to release into what life is bringing you. You’ll accept that a child’s sickness will completely overwrite the day you’d planned, or that you don’t have the stamina to do everything you want. You’ll choose to work with life instead of against it.
And in the process, maybe you’ll see life not so much as an antagonist but as an ally. You’ll feel like you’re aligned, rather than at odds, as if you’re skiing down a difficult slope for the first time. And the tension and strain you otherwise would have felt will just disappear.
Look for an opportunity today to make peace with life as it finds you. What happens when you let your heart open to the unexpected?
With love,