According to social psychologist Dan Gilbert people who recently became paraplegics are as happy one year later as people who won the lottery.

The paraplegic adjusted expectations upward.

Lottery winners adjusted what they had anticipated it would be like to be rich downward.

We know by now that money doesn’t buy happiness and that we overestimate how getting what we want will feel.  Never mind that chasing success breeds anxiety that in itself causes unhappiness.

The solution is to not focus as much on getting what you want and instead develop the ability to see what comes your way as an adventure that leads you to places you never imagined.  These adventures never seem to disappoint when we open ourselves to them.

Accepting does not mean not caring.  It means being hyperaware that some new person, new opportunity, new thing or new adventure is about ready to visit us.

Will we be ready to see it and take it for a test drive?

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Read some sample chapters of my book Out of Bad Comes Good, The Advantages of Disadvantages here.

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