When the universe wants you to get a really good grip on something, it presents learning opportunities in many forms.

Sometimes it’s not easy to connect the dots of the lessons, but when you do, you start to see them coming.

Right now, it seems, the universe wants me to appreciate the value of acceptance.

If you’ve already read my Elephant Journal article, “The Art of Letting Go of Anger, Worry & Resistance (& How to Cultivate Acceptance Instead),” then you know that my practice ground for that particular story was found, literally, in the ground—my landscaping!

Presently, lessons are revealing themselves to me under the guise of publishing a book. I am in the beginning stages of working with a self-publishing company that offers services from editing to formatting to distribution. The birthing of a book takes considerable preparation and patience, and the universe has wasted no time in throwing more study my way.

This is my second book and my second publishing company. And even though I’ve been through “this” before and I have an author rep assigned to me this time, it’s still challenging. For one thing, I’m not my rep’s only client, and for another thing, she and I live on opposite coasts, so our communications don’t always get shared with each other within the same workday. In fact, a couple of days may lapse between emails, which pushes my book’s due date further out.

Needless to say, much back and forth is involved while advancing through the steps of a book’s creation, and it can be frustrating when you’d like for those steps to move along more quickly. If my book were only comprised of text, my experience would be different, but I’ve written a children’s book, which has full illustrations as well as images that adorn the text pages!

I believe that acceptance and patience go hand in hand. It’s difficult to have patience if you don’t accept whatever your circumstances are, and if you’re not patient, acceptance pretty much goes out the window! The learning curve with my first book was huge and wore down any acceptance and patience that I could muster. With this book, however, I have come to realize their necessity and value.

Patience allows me to practice accepting the way that situations flow. The process of publishing moves slowly, especially in these beginning stages with their many detours and unplanned stops. Fighting it does nothing to get me to my destination any sooner, so I’ve decided to let the nature of book publishing take its course.

And, as an added bonus, I’ve turned my frown (of waiting) upside down by directing my attention to other writing projects—like submitting to Elephant Journal. I was only able to come up with this idea when I let go of trying to control a situation that I couldn’t control. The only thing that I can control is what I do with my time while waiting for my book to be born.

Even as I write this, I know that more variations on this theme are bubbling to the surface for me. The universe likes to make sure that it provides plenty of scenarios for one’s continued education. And when I get to the point of thinking I’ve got this, the universe will come at it from a completely different angle and make me consider acceptance in a whole different light.

So, where are you being challenged with acceptance in your life? What story line seems to be playing over and over? The more you don’t respond, the more the universe will pile it on until you do.

My advice?

1. Recognize that every circumstance has its own flow.

2. Discover where you are not flowing with a certain situation.

3. Find just one thing that you can do to work with versus against the flow.

4. Find one more thing and then another.

5. Get ready for the second wave.

Resistance is futile. Good luck!