Tag Archives: Serenity Prayer

Complaining? Maybe try creating instead.

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Six hand-painted letters spelling "create"

When you complain, you make yourself a victim. Leave the situation, change the situation, or accept it. All else is madness. ~Eckhart Tolle

This annoying piece of wisdom from Eckhart Tolle reminds me of the opening lines of Reinhold Niebuhr’s Serenity Prayer: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.

I’ve seen so many references these last two weeks to 2021 (and 2020) as “dumpster fires” and “shit storms.” Yet these are the years of our lives. We will never get them back. We can never have them be different than they have been. All we can do is live as well as we can, moment by precious moment.

Yes, these years have been painful. We feel grief for what we’ve lost. We feel anger toward those who refuse to do what they can to keep our communities safe. We feel afraid of the next variant, the next school closure, the next eruption of rage in Costco.

What we don’t have to feel is the malaise and ennui of suffering and stuckness. Suffering and stuckness result from thinking things should be different, by God, from how they actually are. {Shakes fist at sky.}

So many changes in our lives come unbidden and unwanted. People get sick. People die. People leave. People refuse to change and we have to leave. We change and we have to leave. And there’s not a damn thing we can do about those unbidden changes but accept them and move on.

Acceptance can take time. Years sometimes. Even decades.

Complaining is an outward manifestation of internal suffering. Unlike pain, suffering isn’t inevitable. It’s optional. It’s a choice. That’s why Eckhart Tolle’s wisdom is so annoying to me. Complaining, although it might feel comfortable and familiar in the moment, does absolutely no good and only delays the healing ushered in by acceptance.

So why do we do it? I don’t know about you, but I complain because sometimes I want to be a victim, at least in the short term. When I’m being a victim, I don’t have to take responsibility for adulting—for running situations through the filter—for asking myself if this thing that’s cropped up requires serenity to accept or courage to change. I can just point fingers at others and not look at myself. I can make other people or the world wrong and myself right. That’s so much easier. Self-righteous complaining feels so comfortable.  

But being a long term victim gets old, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it?

Life as Earthlings is change. Change follows a predictable pattern, and we do best when we allow it to have its way with us. Change, accepted and absorbed, is holy. Resisting change only causes suffering.

If this resonates, you could choose to notice complaining, your own and other people’s, in 2022. You don’t have to stop, or ask others to stop. Just notice with kindness. Maybe be willing to ask yourself what you’re gaining from complaining. Or think you’re gaining. Because I promise you that whatever you think you’re getting from complaining, you’re not actually getting it. All you’re getting is the false peace of a short-term pressure release, not a reality-based long-term solution ushering in healing and growth.

It wasn’t 2021’s fault that we’re feeling angry, afraid, and sad. It wasn’t 2020’s fault. It won’t be 2022’s fault. It’s just reality. The sooner we face this new reality, accept responsibility for our responses, and grieve our losses, the sooner we’ll be able to access our creativity and live our precious lives well.

Complaining makes you a victim. Creating is the opposite of being a victim. Instead of complaining, maybe choose to create instead.

You create your life with the choices you make.

Live well, one choice at a time. Moment by moment, hour by hour, day by day, month by month, and year by year.

Happy 2022!


PS. I have four openings in my Coaching Intensive “Spring Semester” starting in February. Reply to this newsletter if you’re interested in the possibility of diving deeply together for twelve weeks, and I’ll send you next steps.

PPS. I’m breaking all the writing advice and working on two books: the continuation of Martha’s story begun in Lost and Found, and a workbook based on my Coaching Intensive. Stay tuned!

PPPS. This newsletter will be monthly starting with this issue. I’ll write more frequently when I have news to share.

PPPPS. Artist and teacher Connie Solera’s new year-long program, Monopalette, is now open. It’s free and you can join anytime. Every month is devoted to exploring one color. (January’s color is Prussian Blue.) Connie’s Paint Wisdom Studio is delicious nourishment for my artist’s soul, and it might be for yours, too.

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

Serenity and COVID-19

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Here are four things I’m remembering now. I hope they help.

1. Change and transformation are how nature works. Nothing in the natural world is immutable. Even rocks change. We’re part of nature. Earthlings are designed to change and transform! Expecting stasis, and equating falling apart with failure, will only make you crazy.

Every thing arises and passes away. That’s always been true. Nothing is fundamentally different now, except that we’ve had our illusions of control ripped away. The caterpillar in its chrysalis has to completely dissolve before the imago cells begin to coalesce into a butterfly. Why do we think that we, with our conscious worry-prone brains so afraid of dissolution, should find this fun??

2. We’re all connected. Elsewhere I’ve written about the moment on the Camino de Santiago when I viscerally knew what science and faith had been telling me all along. That moment on the rainy Meseta, when I felt the presence of the deep heart connecting me to everything and everyone around me, is one I’m rooting myself in these days. I’m sure you have those moments, too. Re-member them. Just as trees in a forest feed each other through their interconnected roots, our rootedness in love and peace feeds our neighbors and our world.

3. We’re all grieving right now. You might have lost someone to death. You might have lost your job. You might have, as I have, lost your freedom to go where you want to go. We’re all grieving the death of our sense of predictability and safety. (See #1, above.) So be gentle with yourself and others. Treat yourself as though you’re in mourning, because you are.  

4. Presence is our only refuge from what we can’t control or predict.* You can’t control the past or predict the future. The only thing you’re in charge of is how you show up in this present moment. Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor, has this to say:

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

Let’s look back at Frankl’s middle sentence above: When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. I’m reminded of this version of the Serenity Prayer used by Twelve-Step groups: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”

Here’s a “Serenity Practice” to help calm your worried brain:

  • Write down the things you’re currently worried about.
  • One by one, ask yourself if you can and want to do anything about the thing, whatever it is.
  • If so, and you choose to take action, make a to-do list or a checklist. Identify the first step, and calendarize it.
  • If you’re worried about something you’re not in control of, find a way to begin to accept it. You might try RAIN, or prayer, or a ritual of giving your worry to the universe.
  • Finally, make a habit of connecting to your Wise Self during this time of intense unpredictability, in whatever ways work for you. Breathe. Walk outside. Do yoga. Call a non-anxious friend. Make something. Help someone.

I’m here if you’d like to talk through this practice. I’m here if you want to talk about anything else on your mind unrelated to COVID-19. I’m here if you just want someone to talk to, especially if your mind is losing its shit. Contact me if you’d like to schedule a free, no-obligation conversation. I have time for you!

Be gentle with yourselves, my friends. Be gentle with each other. Be present to the miracle of this moment.

We won’t be the same when this is over, but we will be okay.

Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash, edited on Canva

*Approximate wording of a statement made by Dr. Martha Beck during her weekly Facebook Live on March 22nd.