A value I’d add to your list of acceptance, love and patience is respect. I’ve found in my personal dealings that when you show respect people immediately pick up on it and become more willing to listen to you and your ideas.

The stuff that’s forced is at best just clever.

“It takes wisdom and patience to know when to accept circumstances and adapt and when to be stubborn and persist.”

This satisfies my understanding of what you say. I definitely think stubborn persistence is my default state!

Cheers,
Warren

No, you can be as specific as you want with your goals. Time is fine. The how is fine too. But you need to be open when your choosen path isn’t working. Example, I recently volunteered for a fund raiser. I was in charge of getting the online technology in place, website, donation button, etc. But of course I did’t have access to the bank accounts and copy necessary to get it all running. My plan showed it should have just taken a day of so, but it didn’t, it took weeks. Why, I needed help from other people, and I can’t control when they will be free to work with me. So I still focused on my goal and I reached it, it just didn’t happen the way I had planned. That is a very simple example. Now maybe I failed to plan correctly, but I doubt it, most plans I see are constantly altered to face the changing circumstances as time marches on. The same thing has been happening with Christine’s Books, we had a plan and a timeline, and a location, everything was in place and then circumstances changed just before we pulled the trigger and we’ve found a better place, in a better location, for less. Our timeline slipped and the plan was altered, but so what! We didn’t force what wasn’t meant to be. We took a different path that appears so much better now. Sometimes changes and even failures are blessings if you don’t fight them and instead accept them and adapt. It takes wisdom and patience to know when to accept circumstances and adapt and when to be stubborn and persist. This isn’t black and white.

Many thanks for the replies by the way, it’s great to see a blogger reply to their comments – many times I’m intrigued by an idea but don’t get to learn more about it because the poster doesn’t check their comments!

If I understand, I think you are saying that if you want to achieve goals you must demand persistence and hard work from yourself. I agree. But that isn’t what I mean by force. To me force is the attempt get what you want on your terms only. Reality never works like that, it slaps you when you try it. Edison knew he would find a way to create the light bulb, but he didn’t force the “how” and the “when” and whether or not it would be accepted by consumers. You can’t “force” a teacher to give you an A on a paper, but you can “let” her give you an A. All you can do is put forth your best effort. The decision to give you an A is hers.

That’s an interesting perspective, that I’m quite intrigued by. Reminds me of Taoist ideas. Just to help me understand this perspective more, how does it fit in with people who really did force their “will on the universe”, so to speak? Classic example I suppose is Edison and his 1,000 lightbulbs, or Schwarzenegger and his numerous bodybuilding achievements, or even myself when I pushed for the highest grade at university (and got it).

Were we not using force?