Serenity Prayer
With the Presidential election coming up on Tuesday, and world friction continuing to rise, I wanted to highlight the Serenity Prayer to help with any overwhelming feelings of “The world is falling apart…There’s nothing I can do... It can’t be helped…Our nation is hopeless.” The Prayer is attributed to theologian Reinhold Niebuhr and was popularized after “Alcoholics Anonymous ran across it and adopted it as a keystone of the 12-step program” according to Yale alumni magazine.
The Prayer is based on four main virtues: Serenity, Acceptance, Courage, and Wisdom. Let me suggest to read it forwards, but practice it backwards. Prayers are only half done when we say them. They are only complete when we act upon them. Therefore, to put the prayer into practice, start with the last line.
WISDOM - Write down everything that is bothering, worrying, or concerning you, and then differentiate which ones you can change and those which you cannot.
COURAGE - Take the ones you can change, and decide what and how to make those changes.
SERENITY & ACCEPTANCE - Take the remaining ones you cannot change, and acknowledge to yourself that those are not in your control. (Suggestion: You can burn these to let go and leave them to powers that be, or maybe take/mail them to someone who may be able to do something about them.) But let them go so you can focus all of your energy on the ones you can change.
I’m continuing to read Atomic Habits by James Clear. “Atomic” as in tiny molecules where his sub-title is “Tiny changes remarkable results.” He introduces a concept a newly hired British cycling coach used that shot them into their golden era. A strategy he called, “the aggregation of marginal gains.” It came from the idea that if you broke down everything into its parts and then improved those parts by just 1%, you will get a significant increase when you put them all back together.
In the same way, although we may not be able to change much by ourselves individually, we are the atomic molecules of our society. What we do with our 1% does matter when we’re all put back together. We can improve, or we can do nothing. But that is a choice each of us gets to make. We have control over our own choice for that 1%. “The WISDOM to know the difference”.
Yes, our nation and world teeters on the brink of chaos and calamity. And it may just fall into it. We may start a civil war, we may start WW III. But, this is the time we have practiced having strong foundations for, for troubled times when we can be crushed or truly develop, grow and shine for others, just as many of our predecessors have done for us.
The world may fall apart, but ask yourself this, “What 1% improvement contribution can I make to continue helping my family and the people around me?