We spend too much time and waste too much energy in futile attempts to change

what we cannot change. It is a major cause of frustration and other forms of anger.
The rational evidence for determining what we can change and what we cannot is
overwhelming, but our behavior often tries to defy this reason and logic.

Why waste time in futile attempts to change what you cannot, when there are so
many things you can change? Here is a partial list of what you can change.

What you do:

 Your present behavior,

 Your future behavior,
 How you respond to the behavior of others,
 How you spend your time,
 Who you spend time with, the friends you keep, your participation and
behavior in relationships,
 How you apply your talents and strengths.
 The strengths you choose to acquire, develop, and apply.
 Initiative, drive, commitment, tenacity, focus,
 Who waits for whom,
 The promises you keep, and the people you betray,
 Your level of nutrition and fitness,
 Habits, both good and bad
 The choices you make,
 Preparations and plans you make,
 Impulse control,
 Integrity, authenticity, congruence, reciprocity
 The path you take,
 Your behaviors that annoy others,
 Where you live, where you work, where you play, your career,
 The responsibility you take for yourself, and who you choose to blame,
 When you appease, when you acquiesce, when obey, when you submit, when
you rebel, when you protest, and when you blow the whistle.
 Where you shop, how you spend, and how you save,
 When and how you use your power.
 Reappraise, apologize, forgive, let go, and take responsibility for yourself.
 Deciding to do your best, or less than your best.

What you communicate to others:

  What you say, how you say it, who you say it to, and when you say it,
 The authenticity of your expression,

 Who you greet, and how you greet them,

 Facial expressions, body language, gestures, posture,
 Grooming, dress, and personal hygiene,
 The attitude you project,
 What you write, say, and share,
 Who you include and who you exclude,
 Your public image,
 The topics you avoid, and those you engage, when you are patient, when you
show impatience.
 Authentic information or deceptive, manipulative, incomplete, or
disingenuous disinformation.
 The promises you make, when you say “Yes”, and when you say “No”.
 Who you like, who you trust, who you dislike, who you distrust,
 The symmetry of the power relationships, including: deference, respect,
fawning, condescension, leadership, or disrespect.
 Who you show respect to and who you are disrespectful of,
 What you are willing to tolerate, and what you take a stand on,
 Who you interrupt and who you allow to interrupt you.
 The trust you extend and the trust you earn.

What you know:

 Facts you have gathered,

 Understanding,
 The evidence you consider,
 The theory of knowledge you use to choose your beliefs.
 Expertise, skills, and how you apply your talents,
 Literacy, logic, quantitative skills, domain knowledge,
 What you study, read, listen to, and learn,
 What you question and what you accept,
 Your self-image, including your understanding of your authentic self.

How you think:

 Your values and goals.

 What you believe,
 stereotypes,
 religious beliefs,
 loyalty
  The assumptions you make, the questions you ask,
 Who you trust,
 The points of view you adopt,
 What you value, how you evaluate information, the priorities you set, what
you want.
 The focus of your attention, what you regard as important and what you
regard as unimportant, your priorities.
 Your mood, attitude, and point of view,
 Your explanatory style; optimistic or pessimistic,
 The alternatives you generate and consider,
 How you balance inquiry and advocacy,
 Your level of innovation,
 Your compassion, empathy, and understanding of others.
 Your level of skepticism, and openness to new ideas
 Interest, investigation, imagination, and curiosity,
 How you choose friends and who you regard as friends,
 Who you choose as enemies, and who you fear,
 Your willingness or refusal to hate others,
 Who you love and who you decide to hate.
 How you learn,
 Your level of emotional competency.
 The integrated and introjected regulations you maintain and respond to.

What you hope, dream, and aspire to:

 Your goals,
 Your hopes and aspirations,
 Your role models.

Things You Cannot Change

You cannot change: the past, your history, the laws of physics, the weather, human
nature (yours or others), personality traits(yours or others), another
person's beliefs or thoughts (unless they choose to change), someone who doesn't
want to change, who you are related to, human needs, sexual preference,
yourtalent, and things you do not acknowledge.

"God, grant me the Serenity

to accept the things I
cannot change; the Courage
to change the things I can;
and the Wisdom to know the
difference."

This prayer is repeated by

millions of people every day,
in many different
settings. In fact, we've
looked at it before here in
Two Scoops, but it's one of
those things that bears a
second (third, fourth...??)
look. Seems like there's
always a new wrinkle to
discover.

"God, grant me...."

This is a phrase I will not
interpret directly for
anyone, for obvious
reasons. I can, however, say
that this format makes it a
request addressed to
whatever understanding you
might have of the term
"God." Another way of
looking at it follows the
pattern of the
metaphysicians, making it an
affirmation or declaration
of what IS (present tense),
rather than a petition for
something to be given (yet
future). "God manifests
now through me as Serenity
to accept. . . etc."

Still another way to begin

would be if you, like me,
prefer a rationalist or
humanist approach might be
something like: "Clear
thinking, reason and common
sense bring me to Serenity
to accept. . .
etc." Whatever way you
wish to begin, for the next
three days I'll be looking at
the three remaining
phrases. We start with: ---
Serenity to accept the
things I cannot change.

Serenity
Serenity. . . peace. . . tranquility. It's a state of inner
balance and mental calmness. The opposite might be that
state of mind-racing (thoughts fly through your head
jumbling into confusion) and the emotional upset and turmoil
of conflict. Serenity is the surface of a pool before you
take your first dive . . . flat, perhaps gently rippling, but
holding a good reflection.

Acceptance is where many find confusion. "Hell no, I will

NOT accept that.. it is wrong. . . I won't tolerate that . . .
how can I accept something like that?" And you know all the
other phrases of non-acceptance. Acceptance, in this
context, just means acknowledging the undesirable person,
place, thing, or condition exists. It does not mean you have
to LIKE something. It doesn't mean you have to open the
doors of your life and let it move in. It doesn't mean you
must own it for all time. It also doesn't mean you must put
up with it forever.

Yes, your boss might be a jerk. As long as you fight it inside

yourself, as long as you keep rehearsing your boss's
foolishness in your head, as long as you plot sweet revenge
when you think the boss isn't looking. . . as long as you refuse
to just accept that he is a jerk, you will not have
serenity. Until you get to the point of accepting the fact of
its existence, that undesirable thing will destroy you. And,
surprisingly, when you can actually accept that this
undesirable thing (or person, place, or condition) exists, you
are suddenly empowered to go to the next step--doing
something about it.

There are things you cannot change -- people, places, and

(often) conditions and situations. People will always continue
to do whatever they do and you have no power or right to
stop it, most of the time. You can't change your boss, you
can't change the bad timing of the traffic lights on your way
to work, you can't change the way certain co-workers manage
to squeeze an extra five minutes longer on their lunch hour
than they should. Computers will have glitches. Rain will
continue to ruin people's plans. You cannot change it. All
that you can do is accept the fact that that's the way it
is. For now, anyway. It may not always be this way, but for
this moment, that is exactly the way it is.

But it isn't ABOUT you, it's not FOR or even AGAINST

you. It just "is." That's the way it is. Realizing and
accepting that there really are things in your life that you
cannot change really does bring a great relief and
serenity. And when you have reached a point of serenity
about those things that trouble you, you will be ready for the
next step. . . finding the Courage to change the things you
can.

Courage
There are people, places, and things that are not to our
liking, but as long as we spend our time not-liking something,
that is time poorly spent -- time that we could have instead
focused on things that we CAN change (and, trust me, there
are LOTS of things we can change). The full scope of things
we can change is embrace by a circle described by the length
of our arms. Everything within that circle is yours to
change:
Your Mental State -- attitudes, beliefs, judgments and all
the ways you perceive and THINK about your life and the
people and events in it;
Your Emotional State -- fears, resentments,
disappointments, loves, and all the other ways you FEEL
about your life;
Your Physical state -- words, actions, behaviors and
everything else you actually DO in your life.
You have the power to change everything that you think,
feel, or do in response to the people, places and things
around you. The tricky part, however, is finding the courage
to actually change those things. It is so much easier to sit
and stew over how other people have done you wrong, or hurt
you in some way. It is easier to say, "I have a right to be
resentful after what was done to me and I won't feel better
until I get an apology." Sure you do. You have every right in
the world to sit there on the pity pot and feel sorry for
yourself. But so what? What good comes from that?

It does take courage to give up the resentments, and let go

the expectations. You might never get an apology. You might
never get the satisfaction from an admission of guilt. And
you might never wake up to the fact that the other person
does not know or care that you are wasting your life thinking
about some past event. Whoever you think did you wrong is
probably enjoying his or her life somewhere else. Why don't
you do the same thing? You can change what you think about
and how you feel by thinking about something else -- think
about how you can better your own life instead of thinking
how to dish out revenge or force an apology.

You can change how you feel by focusing on your own

strengths and virtues, and thinking about those who love and
support you in your life today, instead of remembering all the
hurts from the past. You can change what you do by taking
care of your own self -- your health and nutrition and
exercise, your work skills, your hobbies and social
interests. Someone once said that all you get from sitting on
the pity pot is a big red ring around your bottom . . . which
makes an easy target for the next person to kick the
bullseye! Finding the courage to change in you what needs
changing will erase that target and will propel you forward in
your own life.

How do you find that courage? By considering what will

happen when you change -- how will your outlook brighten
when you change what you think about? How will your
emotions be lifted when you concentrate on your support
network instead of those other folks? How will your physical
world function better when you do the things you can do for
yourself, like taking a class, cleaning your home, washing the
car, joining new social circles, etc? When you see the good
that will come from a change, the courage to follow through
comes more readily.

Wisdom
When you are faced with a perplexing problem that
threatens to disrupt your peace of mind -- whether it is a
computer that refuses to work, an acquaintance who seems
to have insulted you, a boss acting like a jerk (or a jerk
acting like a boss!), a loved one hurts you . . . whatever it is,
there are a few simple questions to help you figure out if
this is something you can change or not:

1. Does this problem have a real impact on the quality of my

own life? We are surrounded by rude, loud, obnoxious people
in this world. Sometimes it's the woman on the bus who
forgets our face the minute she gets off at her stop. Other
times it's the co-worker who is making your work
environment impossible to work in. You can't change the
woman on the bus, and because it is a passing moment, don't
invest another moment thinking about it. You also cannot
change a co-worker's attitudes (because nobody can actually
SEE an attitude inside another), but you can speak to your
supervisor about the work environment and general work-
place behaviors. The question here, then, is just how great
an impact the problem has.

2. Did you create the problem? If you behaved your way

into a situation, it is up to you to behave your way out of
it. If it is a situation created by someone else, you might not
be able to change the situation, but you can take steps to
distance yourself from continuing in it. This question isn't
about blaming anyone, but more about recognizing true
responsibility.

3. What can be done? When you get past who or what

created the problem, you need to figure out if there is
something that can be done to fix it. You weren't put on this
earth to fix it for everyone else, or to clean up the results
of other people's behavior. But there are times you will need
to do just that in order for your own life to keep going. But
before you loudly proclaim "Somebody ought to do
something," make sure that there is actually something that
 can be done. When a hurricane hits, you can't do much of
anything until the water subsides, so you might as well sit in
the boat and sing campfire songs, or go make sure others are
in a boat to wait it out safely.

4. Is there something YOU can do? If there is, do it. Don't

talk about doing it, just do it. If there isn't something you
can do, the choice is yours -- either accept the fact that
that's how it is and leave it alone, or sit and complain about
things you can't fix. All of this sounds simplistic, perhaps
even naive. But almost everything that seems at first to be
an impossible problem can be resolved at a manageable level
if you just stop and think about it -- how big is it
really? Where did it come from? What can be done? How
can I participate in the solution?

At each of these steps there is an opportunity to gracefully

accept things as they are, or move toward possible
resolution. As you answer these questions, you come closer
to wisdom -- you either accept things or change them. Not
much middle ground in this equation. You might find, as you
break down the problem, that it is actually several smaller
problems. And you will find that some of those problems can
be fixed, and others cannot. For each of them, you can apply
these same simple steps.

So often we think we want the benefit of predictability. We fear lack of control. In

fact, much of the suffering we feel we endure is because we cannot control a
situation or a person.

"He didn't love me like I needed to be loved."

"The business deal didn't happen that I needed to happen."

"My kids are acting crazy."

"My mother is sick."

We fear the unknown and we exert so much of our energy trying to control the
uncontrollable.
The irony of life is that we thrive on the element of surprise. Our human nature
loves to learn, adapt, grow, plan, fail, and then win. We love challenges. We grow
through adversity. We become creative when we need a solution to a problem. Yet,
we spend so much of our time wanting to create complete control over the
outcomes of our life. We call them "bad days at the office" when we face
adversity. We become depressed when a project fails and we need to come up with
a new solution. So much of our internal suffering comes from us feeling as though
our lives are out of control.

Related: Get Control Over Fear

Successful entrepreneurs have learned to play the game of life instead of wasting
energy trying to control the uncontrollable. Successful people wake up each
morning and accept the fact that they have NO idea what could happen that day.
They use their focus to embrace and solve new problems, situations and
relationships. Successful people have accepted that change is not only inevitable
but is necessary for them to feel alive. Successful people understand that obstacles
only make them stronger and challenges only make them more creative.

Success is not about having everything under control. Success is about accepting
what you cannot control and not wasting your energy trying to control it. As the
Serenity Prayer states: 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. Focusing on "the wisdom to know the difference' will bring about your
success.