...the Things I Cannot Change

What are the things we cannot change? Most everything, except ourselves. And yet, when I am stressed or angry or afraid, when I am feeling out of control on the inside, my first instinct is to seek relief by trying to exert control on what is outside myself. Predictably, those efforts meet with little success, which in turn fuels my own suffering.

Sometimes I think I am accepting something, but I don’t feel serene. It’s more like grumpy resignation. In the prayer, however, the serenity comes first. It is the serenity that leads to acceptance, just as courage leads to change, and wisdom leads to discernment. So the question is, how do I attain serenity?

In the last post, I observed that my serenity is often blocked by fear, fear which I try to escape by futile efforts to control things I can’t control, like circumstances and especially other people. I need to understand my fear before I can release it and attain serenity, serenity to accept the things I cannot change.

When I look at the fear, I see stories. My stories. I see that I tell myself stories about what is happening. These are not happy stories. I see that I am judging my circumstances as bad. I’m playing the “what if” game by spinning out imagined scenarios of disaster, shame, disappointment, helplessness. As someone told me years ago, my brain is a scary place. And for most of my life, it was.

Nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so. –Shakespeare

Once I understood that my suffering was of my own creation, that I was choosing to tell myself these stories, choosing to play the what if game, I realized that I had the power to make a different choice. Telling myself these stories, playing the what if game was a habit, a habit that could be changed like any other habit.

Here are some of ideas to help us change that habit that came up in our discussion group last week. The key is to find what works for you.

Change the story. If you are telling yourself a story full of dire scenarios, recognize that it is just a story. Ask yourself if you know for a fact that it is true. What other story could you tell yourself? Or could you suspend all stories and just be with what is?

Question your judgment. I sometimes remind myself that I don’t know if a particular event is good or bad. What looks like a tragedy to me right now might turn out to be a magnificent blessing.

Look for inspiration. Many people in the group shared poems, quotations, stories, verses from the Bible or from other faith traditions, that inspired trust – trust in God, in ourselves, in the universe.

Make friends with fear. We fuel our fear by being afraid of it, by fighting it, by denying it. We can invite our demons to tea, engage our fear in conversation, be curious about it, get to know it, have compassion for it and for ourselves. Shine a light in the darkness. The unknown is much scarier than the known.

Take a nap! Along the lines of the bear story in the last post, we can put aside our concerns and take a break. This is not the same as denial, which will never work (take my word for it!). But we can refresh ourselves with exercise, belly breathing, meditation, prayer, or whatever else you can do to rejuvenate your spirit.

If we can make peace with our fear, that urge to control will loosen its grip. Serenity is freed to well up like a still pond. Acceptance flows naturally.

Don’t push the river; it flows by itself. –Fritz Perls