Serenity Prayer: Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference - Reinhold Niebuhr
Beautiful isn't it? A prayer which I want to adopt everyday in my life. Here's the opposite.
Stress Prayer: Grant me the stubbornness to struggle against things I cannot change; the inertia to avoid work on my own behaviors and attitudes which I can change; and the foolishness to ignore the differences between external events beyond my control and my own controllable reactions. But most of all, grant me a contempt for my own human imperfection and the limits of human control. - Neil Fiore from The Now Habit
Lol right on.... A prayer which I had been incorporating in my life for a long time. From my experience till now, it had brought me nothing but resentments to others and from others, assumptions of what was supposed to be done, expectations of the impossibilities, low self-esteem as I felt powerless to change everything and most of all, lots of unnecessary stress.
Many enlightened teachers have often taught, the root of unhappiness is due to how we want everything to go accordingly to what we expect and wanted. Little did we realized that many of them are actually beyond our control. For example, we can't control how the weather will be (I am guilty of being angry at the weather at times). We can't control how people will react to us and how they think of us. Unless you know how to do mind control.... As such, it is actually quite foolish to think that we can actually control the Everything in our life.
In reality, the only thing we can control is our reaction to events. Our thoughts of other people. Our own actions towards issues. In the nutshell, the only thing that we can actually change is ourselves. There is a proverb which says 'If you want to change the world, you have to start changing yourself first.' You will see that things aren't actually as bad as it seems once you realize that you actually have the power to change your reactions to it. Yesterday night when I was sleeping, the Niki's mum called home. As usual, I was irritated by ringing phone and started cursing and hogging the pillow over my head in my futile attempt to block the noise. It was at that time I remembered that I couldn't change the phone from ringing but I could choose to be less affected by it. It was an amazing experience when I realized that I have the power to choose my reaction. All my frustration and anger vanished immediately and I felt at peace. Instead, I felt grateful for the phone to ring for such short time. It could have been longer. ^_^
Are you accepting yourself as human? Being humans means that we will not be perfect in everything. Expecting perfection in yourself only means that you are unable to embrace you as human. A wonderful being. Live as the serenity prayer says and accept others imperfections. They are only humans like us. Change what we can and embrace what we can't. Accept ourselves as humans with imperfections. It is a great way to live a fulfilling and stress free life. Like my Secondary School Teacher Mr Chng who loves to say,'If it can be changed, why worry. If it cannot be changed, why worry?'
Till next time, do enjoy life. ^_^
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