When I think of the word "serenity," I almost always think of Frank Costanza. Those who know me well will be rolling their eyes, as Seinfeld analogies are pretty much a daily occurrence for me.
I immediately picture Frank in the backseat of George’s car, head tilted back, emphatically shouting, “Serenity now!” with his arms outstretched high in the air.
It’s a phrase my friends and I often say half-jokingly in moments of frustration, almost as a strategy or methodology to create peace in a stressful situation, but behind it lies a deeper truth that many of us can spend a lifetime trying to understand.
When I look back on my life honestly, I can see that there have often been strong tendencies to manage certain situations and outcomes so that things go the way I believe they should.
Ya, a clever way to say I’ve had some control issues. Pretty sure I’m not alone on this one.
And for a long time, it truly felt feasible.
There were many moments I can point to that prove my efforts paid off, where persistence led to results, and things eventually bent just enough to match my expectations.
I can also see now, in hindsight, that those choices came with a hidden cost.
They were quietly reinforcing an unconscious belief that if I could control some things, I could eventually control everything.
I think we all reach this crossroad at some stage in life.
A moment when we begin to notice that no matter how hard we try, certain things won’t go our way. People don’t behave the way we want them to, outcomes don’t align with our plans, and life refuses to follow our script.
What once felt like determination and achievement now feels like struggle and frustration, and the harder we press, the more resistance we encounter.
There’s a well-known prayer written almost a century ago by Reinhold Niebuhr that reads:
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
the courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.
Often, as we encounter things we don’t like, be it a difficult person, an unexpected outcome, or a frustrating situation, our instinct is to immediately fix it, change it, or make it different.
But what if that instinct is not only part of the problem, it’s what perpetuates it?
What if our stress in situations like these doesn’t come from what’s actually happening, but from our refusal to accept first that it is happening?
What I find most interesting about the Serenity Prayer is not just what it says, but the order in which it says it.
It begins with acceptance.
Not action. Not change. Not effort.
Acceptance.
But that’s not how most of us typically operate.
We will fight, resist and argue until we get nowhere, and then, we will finally surrender.
That process can take minutes, hours, or even days. Sometimes, it can take years.
What if we surrendered first?
Austrian-born neurologist, psychiatrist, and philosopher Viktor Frankl once wrote, "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.”
In these moments of perceived opposition, I think we often fail to recognize that as we continue to feel irritated by someone who refuses to change, we are also refusing to change.
The truth is that while we can influence some aspects of our lives, if our peace ultimately depends on everything going our way, then that’s not peace at all; it’s control.
And if we have a desire in life not to feel controlled, then our solution cannot be to control.
Acceptance is often misunderstood. It doesn’t mean agreement or approval, and it certainly doesn’t mean giving up. It simply means seeing reality as it is, before deciding what, if anything, can be done about it.
And that shift alone can change everything.
I can now see that what I thought were “successes” in controlling different situations or outcomes weren’t really successes at all; in fact, they were a regression.
What I thought was a goal to achieve a life of peace devoid of chaos was actually a desire for serenity, a state of being calm, peaceful, and untroubled inside, regardless of what is transpiring outside.
It’s an inside job, and acceptance is the key, not in giving up on what will be, but a temporary surrender to what is in that moment.
Once that state is achieved, we are now free to choose what might be.
