In the opening lines of M. Scott Peck’s novel The Road Less Traveled, Peck leads with “Life is difficult.” He then so wisely guides us to understanding that “Once we truly know that life is difficult – once we truly understand and accept it – then life is no longer difficult.”
The opening of the Serenity Prayer is “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change …”
To have serenity means experiencing a state of being calm, peaceful, and untroubled.
This is a state I constantly strive to experience, and often fail to achieve.
None of us is perfect. We all make mistakes. I know I have, and some with significant consequences.
Understanding is Mostly Easy
To understand and acknowledge that life is difficult is easily within the grasp of most of us.
However, when you’re not making sales targets, when you get another rejection from a potential client or when life deals you a difficult set of cards, it’s not so easy to be calm, peaceful, and untroubled.
The second part of the Serenity Prayer provides some great advice to help here. “(God grant me)… the Courage to change the things I can …”
Accepting that life can be difficult isn’t a call for inaction – it’s a reality check and a ‘moment of choice’ providing pause and opportunity, to suck it up and do something about it.
Those Tough Emotions
But to summon up courage to do something about the tough stuff in our lives, often requires us to do so amidst experiencing other feelings like sadness, remorse, apprehension, fear, disappointment, and fear.
These powerful emotions can hijack us in these moments of choice and distract us from choosing positive and appropriate actions that will move us closer to being our best self and achieving our goals.
This is why having clarity about the kind of person we are striving to be is so important.
Get Clear on Your Values
When you’re clear about how you want to demonstrate your values through not only your words, but more importantly through your decisions, choices, and actions, in these moments of choice, you are more able to take positive and appropriate action that moves you toward being your best self and achieving your goals.
I don’t subscribe to the ‘want something enough and it will manifest into your life’ – good luck with that if you do.
Sure, wanting something is a great place to start, but wanting something without taking positive and appropriate action, is just wishful thinking.
My dad taught me this: “If you want to get stuff done – Do Stuff!”
That’s great advice I hope you can take from this post and put into action.
Make Better Choices
Life can be tough, and when it is, acknowledge and accept that it is. Acknowledge and accept that you might feel sad, lost, scared and a host of other emotions. Accept that it’s ok to feel that way, but don’t wallow in those feelings.
Hold those feelings loosely and choose to take positive and appropriate action anyway – positive and appropriate actions that will move you toward being your best self, and achieving the goals you desire and deserve.
