If how grateful and happy you are depends on the proverbial cards you are dealt, you will always feel the cards could have been better, and you will always suffer with anxious worry about the next hand to be dealt.
If you think your happiness depends on the cards you will be dealt, then you may indeed have much to anxiously fear, and you may indeed worry deeply about what cards shall be dealt to you in the future. Practicing presence is tough if not impossible when one is so anxiously worried about the future. All that fear and worry can be like barking dogs chasing you back to the miserable prison that is the comfort zone.
To enjoy the invincible true happiness of consistent inner peace, you must fully and unconditionally accept that which you cannot control.
If you cannot be grateful for the cards you are dealt, then you can be grateful for how incredibly well you play them. And then you will securely and confidently know that, no matter what cards are dealt, and no matter what the future holds, you will be happy and grateful. Then there is no reasonable worry at all. There is no need to fear, and any unreasonable fear that is left is met with transcendence, which in relation to fear we call bravery.
Transcending fear does not eliminate it fully, but it does tend to greatly reduce its presence, especially since obsessive fears have such a tendency to be self-fulfilling. Regardless, what's left of it once you've transcended fear is nothing much more than a mere fun curiosity, like passing clouds in the sky. For the brave person who notices his own fear but is not a slave to it at all, fear becomes a plaything, toyed with by the likes of horror movies, motorcycle rides, and roller coasters.
If you cannot manage to say, "it could be worse", then at least still say, "it couldn't go better".
In other words, say, "I am doing my best."
There is infinite peace and happiness in being able to honestly say that. And you always can, because you can always choose to be doing your best. As Voltaire wrote, "a person is free the moment he or she wants to be". It's only illusions that hold you back.
The illusion that it could be better is one, perhaps the main one that summarizes them all. If you truly do your best, it cannot be better. It's the best it can be. There is great inner peace and happiness in knowing for sure at every moment that things are going the best they possibly can, and that everything that's meant to be will be. Not one speck in the universe is out of place.
When you fully and unconditionally accept what you cannot control, and are honestly doing your best with what you can control, then there's a sense of perfection that comes with that. Everything is the best it could possibly be.
That which you may lose when you waste time or energy resenting the proverbial cards you are dealt, toying around with the literally miserable and seemingly self-fulling illusion that it could be better, is that which you regain when you let go of all that, fully accept the proverbial cards, do your absolute best, and know with certainty that things couldn't possibly be better. Then you have nothing to worry about, because you know that no matter what the future throws at you, you will still be truly happy, you will still meet it and endure it with the true happiness of invincible consistent inner peace. And you can always say with firm happy confidence, "I am doing my best."
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