This site will feature content about one subject. I expect to have the opportunity to generate thousands of words on this one subject and never once run the risk of running out of more things to pontificate on the subject.

The subject is "Freedom From Worry". The solution, I believe to be, is "Acceptance". There you can now close your web browser or move on to another web site.

So why continue? Well, as some say, "the devil is in the details". Many questions may remain such as, "accept what?".

Accept the Future

I wanted to stop worrying. It is very stressful to worry. I read books on the subject and found much help in Eckhart Tolle. Eckhard Tolle basically tells us that all we have is "Now". The past is over, and the future is not here yet. However, all your problems are in the future. All your worry is thinking about things in the future.

So stop thinking about the future and live here, in the "Now".

But Daniel Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness, says "One of the human brain's most glorious and unique talents is its ability to look backward and forward across great swathes of time, to examine its own history and to imagine its own future, to engage in mental time travel". He is right when he insists that thinking about the future is something that, at least I, cannot stop doing. Give me 5 seconds of inactivity and I am thinking about the future.

So if the problem is thinking about the future and worrying about it, but we cannot stop doing it, the solution is to accept it... "the future" I mean.

Accept what?

If the future is not here how can we accept it? When we we worry about the future, we actually worry about what will happen when "the future" becomes "the present". Eckhard Tolle has sold me about $60 in books where he clearly points out that I cant do anything, about anything, that is not happening "Now".

Daniel Gilbert points out that I am assuming that I will feel horrible when a imagined "bad thing" actually happens, but actually I probably will not feel as good or as bad because I only imagined part of the "movie" and that, for example, the fact I just won the Lottery makes the news of my car breaking down not be such a horrible thing.

With acceptance, I need to accept the future... what ever it may be.

There is no such thing as "Change", only that Stuff-Happens

One day I was having a discussion with friends about change and how we deal with it. Some people said they liked change and talked about positive things that changed in their life. Some disliked change and concentrated on the negative aspects.

It then occurred to me that there really isn't change, stuff just happens and we perceive it as change. Every moment to the next moment could be called change. In reality, as we navigate from one moment to the next, stuff is just happening.

The Experiment

As an experiment I decided to go through the day and every few moments I would see something happen and I would just say "stuff happens I have to accept it". When the car in front of me does not start moving when the light turns green I shake my head and say "see stuff just happens, and in 5 minutes more stuff will happen".

And then I felt the stress disappear.

My level of acceptance was directly related to my level of worry.

It was actually possible to keep this "total acceptance" for an entire day. It was possible to be worry free for an entire day.

"Stuff-Happens" (notice the hyphen, it's my trademark :)

So I made this website for me. I will write about this one subject and "beat it to death" because it provides me a lot of peace. As with anything it is easy to slip back into "old habits" so I want to document what works so I can refresh my mind when needed.

If anyone else finds this useful I welcome you to join me.