I'd say start with learning to accept others. You can start with both if you like, but if you want to choose one to focus on first without confusing yourself or getting distracted, start by accepting others, or even one other person. People are pretty much just about as hard on themselves as they are on others–or on the other hand, as easy on themselves as they are on others. When you can learn to give everyone else a lot of slack, along with the space to be fallible human beings and make lots of mistakes, you'll find that suddenly you're giving yourself a lot more slack too. And during the time you're not walking around feeling guilty and angry and resistant and resentful about not being perfect, you just might do some good.

If you're hard on everyone else, even just mentally, what room do you leave yourself? What room have you left yourself, to fall and stumble and flail around–which we're all going to do, whether we like it or not, forever. Failure, mistakes, weaknesses, they're inevitable. None of us is ever going to get everything, or anything, right. We're human beings! We're made that way! Please notice that.

Failing and messing up are among the things all humans regularly do. So why not, while we're all messing up, be good to others, be easy on others, forgive them, let up on them a bit, give them a break and some slack and try not to worry about their wrongness or rightness or goodness or badness. When you take such an approach, surprise–you'll find that you, yourself, are a lot nicer to be with on those long dark lonely nights and dark early mornings when you're lying alone and lonely in your bed and all your own big and little mistakes that you ever made want to get up in your face.

When you've learned to give others more slack, you'll find to your delight that you'll let your own mistakes and weaknesses go too, just as you let everyone else's mistakes go. You'll also be prepared to make even more mistakes, because that too is the human thing to do, at least when you're attempting anything challenging, when you're thinking big and reaching for your dreams.

And your own self-acceptance will feel good, so good that you might wake up in the morning willing to try again, unlike the way you felt on all the other morning-after-the-other-nights when you spent all night kicking yourself around. Remember those mornings, when you woke up angry and kicking at anyone who crossed your path, and just generally resisting and not accepting, and making everything worse?

Isn't it immoral to accept something that's wrong?

So what is morality? Isn't morality about living a happy life, getting along with people and helping each other and being kind and having fun and celebrating life? Isn't morality about treating everyone else the way you would like to be treated? About treating everyone the way you wish everyone would treat each other?

What isn't morality is: being judgmental, critical, huffy, angry, picky, demanding, unkind, unfriendly, snobby, haughty, holier-than-thou, etc. Who would want others to treat them that way when they made a mistake? Or failed? Or were weak? How would we like  people to treat us when we've failed? We want them to pick us up, dust us off, love us for the special unique people we are and send us on our way again. In other words, we want people to accept us, warts and all, as we go along trying to find our way in this world. Morality is about treating others as we wish they would treat us.

People who are accepting of themselves and others and the world as it is, just as it is, just as we are, are the kindest, most giving, most loving and happiest people in the world. And the most moral.

But if everyone accepted “what is,” nothing would ever change, right?

If everyone accepted “what is,” then everything would change. People who accept others “as is” have no reason to be unkind to them or reject them or be unfriendly to them. Imagine a world where everyone accepted everyone else, as is. If everyone accepted “what is,” everyone would go about doing whatever interested them most, instead of beating each other up, or blowing each other up, pushing people around, insisting that they live up to some particular version of right and good….

If everyone were accepting, more people would live and let live. If more people just accepted themselves “as is,” more people would feel good and get a lot more good work done. If the whole world accepted the rest of the whole world “as is,” then everyone could go about their business living life and not worrying about what everybody else was doing. Of course, that's a big if, but I use it to make a point, that acceptance does lead to a lot of good changes.

So what if I decided to try acceptance, where do I start?

Start by letting go of the past and future, just for now. Let go of how you were and who you want to be, just for now. And also, just for now, be OK with your own life, who you are right now and everyone in your life too, as is. That's it. Just for now. That's acceptance. For this moment. For today. You've got it. There's nothing more to it than that, nothing more complicated. And what about when you wake up tomorrow? What do you do about acceptance then? Try it again. It gets easier. And your life will get better.

Next: Acceptance seems to work, but it's so hard. Any suggestions? Help?