The Wisdom of Serenity
This is the third installment in a five-part series that is designed to support you in bringing more clarity, confidence, and creativity to everything you do. The first installment was on the power of purpose and spoke to the number one regret of the dying. The second was on the power of our past and what I call “Our Piece of the P.I.E.,” or how our habits and our perceptions, interpretations, and expectations influence how we think, feel, and act.
This third step is what I call “The Wisdom of Serenity,” and looks at the Serenity Prayer not as a plea for serenity or what you have to do to create serenity in your life, but as a formula for success. Of course, most people are familiar with the the prayer: “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.” I think this has become popular (Google reported one million, two hundred ten thousand hits) because people immediately resonate with the value of acceptance, courage, and wisdom informing the changes they want to make in their lives. Unfortunately, most people also tend to miss the way the prayer is laid out which to me implies a formula for success.
In other words, the prayer says, “God grant me the serenity (so that I might first) accept the things I cannot change.” Just think, how much of your stress, frustration, anger, and/or anxiety would be gone if you could bring acceptance to all of those areas in your life over which you have little to no control (traffic, deadlines, difficult people, etc.)? If this would be meaningful to you, then we need to understand that, according to the Serenity Prayer, serenity is the precursor to acceptance!
Next, it speaks to the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Many people acknowledge that it will take courage to change our old habits, as well as those old perceptions, interpretations, and expectations that keep us stuck in the cycle of stress into new ways of being that are congruent with our highest purpose, and in ways we would teach or recommend to those we love.
Plus, for those of you who follow my “Life from the Top of the Mind” philosophy, you know that our wisdom comes from the upper 80% of the brain, and is often best accessed by what I call “neocortex questions,” or questions that can only be answered by this clear, confident, creative part of the brain. Two such questions that allow us to access this wisdom (or the wisdom to know the difference between what we can change and what we can’t) are,
“What about this situation will it take serenity for me to accept?”
and
“What about this situation will it take courage for me to change?”
Remember, it all begins with serenity. In other words, according to the prayer, serenity is the precursor to acceptance, courage, wisdom, and change, and as such, really should be something we know how to create and something we access on a regular basis.
So, let me ask you this question: “How many minutes per day would you say you spend creating serenity in your life?” Most people say “0!” That is, most of us spend our day rushing to and through all of the activities we think we “have to do,” only to find ourselves exhausted at some point in the evening. We may try to relax at this point, however, we are once again putting serenity at the end of the process versus tapping into its power as a precursor to acceptance, courage, wisdom, and change.
Therefore, if you want to create a more purposeful experience of life where you are actively accepting what you can’t change, changing what you can, and drawing upon the wise part of who you are to tell the difference, I suggest that you ensure that creating moments of serenity is part of your skill set, and that you practice this skill early (in the day) and often (throughout the day).
I also call this “rebooting,” and look for natural transitions (morning to work or school, lunch time, going into the evening, etc.) to “push the pause button,” as Stephen Covey would say, and purposefully choose to accept those areas of your life you can’t control, and courageously change the aspect of life over which you have the most influence, (i.e., who you are, or the qualities and characteristics that you bring to life). Because, as we practice serenity and acceptance, courage and change, we become wiser and wiser in the process of creating a life we would recommend to someone we love.
~ All the best, Dr. Bill