Serenity

In the 1930s  Reinhold Niebuhr wrote what has become known as the Serenity Prayer:

"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,  Courage to change the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference."

All three elements of this prayer are important.  Clearly if we see something that should be changed and know how we can change it, then change it we should!  But it is also very important to take proper note of the other two elements.  Recognizing the things we cannot change and accepting them the way they are.

Most of us interpret the world around us far too personally.  We think that everything revolves around us, just as people before Galileo believed the sun revolved around the earth.  So when things are not the way we think they should be, we view this as a personal attack.  Perhaps not consciously, but definitely unconsciously.

This links back to my previous article.  There I discussed how we take the words of others too personally, which then effectively turns those words into magic spells against us.  What others say to us is conditioned by something in them, not in us.

But this also applies to the world around us in general.  Many people see this as a hostile world.  It is not.  It just seems that way to you.  Sometimes bad things happen.  Not because we deserve them.  Not because of something we did or said.  They just happen.  Yes, sometimes they ARE a result of, or at least influenced by, something we did or said.  But often they are not.

It is good to try to identify when something bad (or something good) has resulted from our own actions or words.  If we can see there is a link then we can change our behaviour to make it less likely something bad like this will happen again, or more likely something good like this will happen again.  That is "courage to change the things I can".  But have the "wisdom to know the difference" and recognize that most things are not personally linked in this way.  They just happen.

I happen to believe we all have a lot of power to change the world around us in a very positive way.  If we use that power properly we can achieve great things and have wonderful, happy lives.  But I also know that the things people say to me, the things they do to me, the situations that arise every day which are not the way I want them to be, are mostly nothing to do with me.  They are to do with those other people, and to do with simply the way things are.  They are not personal and I do not take them personally.

If you can really adopt the Serenity Prayer as your own life philosophy I truly believe you can have a much happier and a much more fulfilled life.  Try it!