We make the most of each day.”Ĭodependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

We relinquish regrets over the past and fears about the future.

We allow life to happen instead of forcing and trying to control it. We learn the magical lesson that making the most of what we have turns it into more.ĭetachment involves 'present moment living' - living in the here and now. And we try to live happily - focusing heroically on what is good in our lives today, and feeling grateful for that. If we cannot solve a problem and we have done what we could, we learn to live with, or in spite of, that problem. We do what we can to solve a problem, and then we stop fretting and stewing. Then we stop trying to change things we can't. We strive to ascertain what it is we can change and what we cannot change. We live our own lives to the best of our ability. We give them the freedom to be responsible and to grow. If people have created some disasters for themselves, we allow them to face their own proverbial music. We adopt a policy of keeping our hands off other people's responsibilities and tend to our own instead. Detachment is based on the premises that each person is responsible for himself, that we can't solve problems that aren't ours to solve, and that worrying doesn't help. Nor is it a removal of our love and concern. “Detachment is not a cold, hostile withdrawal a resigned, despairing acceptance of anything life and people throw our way a robotical walk through life oblivious to, and totally unaffected by people and problems a Pollyanna-like ignorant bliss a shirking of our true responsibilities to ourselves and others a severing of our relationships.

The quiet patient