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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.
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