A Step Closer to Acceptance

AcceptanceLearnExpectPeaceRelated QuotationsRelated Pages6 Groups of Topics9 Skills & Topics

A Step Closer to Acceptance: Things Don’t Have to Be Right


A step closer to acceptance begins with understanding the irrationality of demands. Things don’t have to be the way they should be.


  • Truth be told, things only have to be the way they are.

  • Read and discover the best diagrams and maps of how people control and manipulate you.

A Step Closer

A Step Closer: Learn Acceptance, Repeat this Saying Often:

“Because it should be, does not mean that it must be.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice


A Step Closer: What Is Acceptance?

Acceptance is the willingness to face reality as it is.

  • Accepting that something exists is not the same as condoning it or thinking it should exist forever.
  • Things are often not what they should be.
  • That proves that things don’t have to be what they should be.
  • Yes, it is often preferable if things are right instead of wrong, but that does not make it right to demand that things be right.
  • Work to make things right, but accept the results when they do not measure up.
  • After accepting the results, you might work some more in the hopes of better results.
  • Demanding that things are right is wrong since few things in life can measure up to being right in all ways.

  • Read and discover the best diagrams and maps of how people control and manipulate you.

A Step Closer

A Step Closer: Expectations Need Interventions

  • Click for quotations on coping.

expect the worst


  • Read and discover the best diagrams and maps of how people control and manipulate you.

A Step Closer

A Step Closer: Peace in Every Thought

  • Click for quotations on acceptance and coping.

Peace in every thought


  • Read and discover the best diagrams and maps of how people control and manipulate you.

A Step Closer

A Step Closer: Quotations Various Sources

Listed Alphabetically

“Each of us does, in effect, strike a series of ‘deals,’ or compromises, between the wants and longings of the inner self, and an outer environment that offers certain possibilities and sets certain limitations.” —Maggie Scarf

“For what glory is it, if, when ye be buffeted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently? but if, when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God.” —I Peter 2:20

“Happy is the man who early learns the wide chasm that lies between his wishes and his powers.” —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“If you want peace, then put peace over being right.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice

“If you want to be happy, then put happiness over being right.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice

“If you want to change others, then change yourself.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice

“If you want to control others, then control yourself.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice

“Let us not burden our remembrances with a heaviness that is gone.” —William Shakespeare

“What has always made a hell on earth is that man has tried to make it his heaven.” —Friedrich Holderlin

“When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing, or situation–some fact of my life–unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment.” —Alcoholics Anonymous, 3rd Edition (The Big Book), p. 449


  • Read and discover the best diagrams and maps of how people control and manipulate you.

A Step Closer

A Step Closer: Related Pages

  1. Coping Skills: Free Help
  2. Quotations: Acceptance & Coping
  3. Stress for Success, 2nd Ed. for 99¢, will teach you how to make stress work for you.

  • Read for a complete system on how to garden your mind.

A Step Closer


  • Read and discover how CBT, REBT, & Stoicism evolved into one system: STPHFR.
  • The stoic principles in this book will bring you more than a step closer to acceptance.

 width=


  • Read and discover the best diagrams and maps of how people control and manipulate you.

A Step Closer

A Step Closer: 6 Groups of Topics Menu


  • Read and discover how CBT, REBT, & Stoicism evolved into one system: STPHFR.
  • The stoic principles in this book will bring you more than a step closer to acceptance.

on Acceptance


  • Read and discover the world’s best breathing exercise for centering and peace of mind.

on Acceptance


  • Read and discover the best diagrams and maps of how people control and manipulate you.

A Step Closer

A Step Closer: 9 Skills & Topics Menu


  • Read and discover how CBT, REBT, & Stoicism evolved into one system: STPHFR.
  • The stoic principles in this book will bring you more than a step closer to acceptance.

on Acceptance


  • Read and discover the world’s best breathing exercise for centering and peace of mind.

on Acceptance


  • Read and discover the best diagrams and maps of how people control and manipulate you.

A Step Closer