That Time a Kid Threw a Rock at My Face

PLUS, THE KEY TO A MORE SATISFYING MIDLIFE

If I asked you where your midlife satisfaction comes from, you’d likely rattle off a list of accomplishments:

Promotion at work
A loving partnership
Feeling fit
A big nest egg for retirement
Climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro

Okay, maybe you hit pause on that last one. But I imagine you’d feel pretty great once the altitude sickness wore off, right?

It’s a perfectly natural assumption. We’re taught to believe external accomplishments create happiness...and I'll admit winning the district spelling bee in 8th grade felt pretty effin' fantastic. But my pride was short-lived when another kid threw a rock at my face. At. My. Face. Can you believe it? The rock hit me between the eyes. So I hit him between the you-know-whats before crying the entire one-hour trip home. Not that I still think about it. ;)

But back to thinking external accomplishments create happiness...

Believing this myth is why we assume people who’ve achieved what we want to achieve, or have what we want to have, must feel great about themselves. And why we get caught in a “if I only had X…or if I was only X, then I’d be set” pattern of thought.

But here’s the big, ol' truth: Your external accomplishments don’t actually create your happiness or your satisfaction.

How do I know? Because if you’re reading this...

You likely went to a good school.
You probably have a demanding but rewarding professional job.
You’ve likely had fulfilling romantic relationships in the past, even if you’re not currently in one.
And now that you’re in midlife, you’ve accomplished many of your goals.

And yet you still wonder: “Is this as good as life gets?”

Here’s why...

Satisfaction doesn’t come from the outside...no matter how tempting that pint of Häagen-Dazs looks. It doesn’t rub off from your accomplishments like the dye from your new Levi’s. Consider how many times you’ve told yourself that if you just reached X goal (e.g., grad school, getting married, a promotion), you’d feel great...only to find when you do, the satisfaction is short-lived. Whatever goal you finally reached, mere weeks later you’re feeling ho-hum again.

It doesn’t matter what you accomplish on the outside—you can’t achieve your way out of self-criticism or self-doubt to feel more satisfaction. (No doubt you've tried, though...ever the achiever.)

So what does create satisfaction? Self-acceptance. Not self-esteem. Not self-worth. Not self-confidence. Not self-love. Self-acceptance (i.e., the root of all those others).

Annoyed by my self-acceptance bandwagon? I'll let the research remind you:

The habit of self-acceptance is what makes us most happy—even compared to being positive, learning new things, and being part of something bigger.
Self-acceptance is the cornerstone of our psychological wellbeing, with supportive links to depression, anxiety, negative body image, and disordered eating.
While self-acceptance is our most powerful habit for subjective wellbeing (read: life satisfaction), it’s the habit we practice the least. Yup, it’s a habit, not a trait, which is GREAT NEWS because habits? Oh, we can create those!

So let’s talk about that better math: self-acceptance + practice = midlife satisfaction.

That's right: self-acceptance isn't just an end goal...it's an active practice. And there's a science to it.

If you haven't downloaded my FREE "EFT Starter Kit,” what are you waiting for?!