7 ms·

I think the serenity prayer, sans unnecessary theological content, is relevant here. Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to

• hateful 6y ago
  I've always loved that (also, sans theological content). It's good advice for anyone. It's strong statement because in one sentence it can give someone something that a lot of people may not have - self awareness in the face of anxiety.
  • cambalache 6y ago
    I love it too, but let's be honest, the devil is in the details, I think most people agonize because they dont really know if their problem can or cannot be solved with more action from them. I for sure accept the things I really know I cannot change, and work in those I clearly know are under my control. The anxiety comes from those things I am lost in the sense I dont know if I should push more or I should give up.
    • AtHeartEngineer 6y ago
      My next tattoo is representing "the devil is in the details". I've had so many discussions with people over the years where someone will say "why doesn't X company/government just do Y". Well, because it's very rarely that easy. Just use black magic, that'll solve all our problems right?
      • neutronicus 6y ago
        http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2009/04/have-you-ever-legalized-marijuana.html http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2009/04/have-you-ever-legali...
        • bonoboTP 6y ago
          The opposite of the "shit's easy" attitude, the "nothing can ever be done" is also bad. In the end, many countries and US states have answered all those questions and fleshed out the legislation to legalize marijuana. Just look around you, and you see tons of stuff that was done, despite the difficulty.
      • bonoboTP 6y ago
        On the other hand people "just do Z" every day. People make decisions and do stuff without infinitely agonizing over it. As a mundane example: "Why don't I just stand up and go to pee? My bladder is exploding." "Well, because you're kind of stupid, you should indeed go to pee." "But if it was that easy, I would have already done it 5 minutes ago!" Things are never settled and fully in balance. There are constantly surfacing opportunities to do something positive, ranging from straightforward to counter-intuitive. It's not good to shut down all thinking with "nope, surely can't be done; if it could be, people would have done it already". Thinking about why a company won't just do X or trying to put yourself in their shoes and come up with ideas is good mental exercise. Not everything is in a perfectly balanced out equilibrium. Otherwise there would be no profit made in this world. Why bother doing research? If something is easy to discover, why haven't people already discovered it? Of course I get the sentiment, you should think deeply before trying to revolutionize the strategy of a company. But ultimately the people who do decide on the strategy also don't precisely know what will be best. Nobody knows how one or another decision will actually pan out, in interaction with the real world with all the other things going on etc. At some point you have to say, I've got enough details now, I'll make a choice. It will never feel completely satisfying. Either way it pans out, there will be a bunch of people who will say "they told you so", even just by pure chance.
      • 67512376512735 6y ago
        Good idea. Things are never as easy as they look from the outside.
  • smoe 6y ago
    I have mixed feelings about the quote, at least as far as I understand it or have heard it interpreted. Specifically when it comes to systematic change, be that in a code base, a companies organisation or a countries political system. The mindsets of people go trough the spectrum of such systems being as easy to change as snipping a finger (and that doing so is a good idea) to it being impossible or dangerous so you should not even try. From my perspective, pretty much anything can be changed in any direction. But it might take enormous effort to do so, way more than one could do alone and I might not even be around anymore when the change "finishes". While I could think of a hundred things that I would like to change or actually resist change, I only have the time and energy to focus on one or two at a time. So for me, having overworked myself in the past, it boils down to consciously think of what I should and can burden myself with, when I should give up something and what the realistic outcomes are to find a good mix between ambition, effectiveness and health.
• danielbarla 6y ago
  I also appreciate this quote, because it sets up a mature way of looking at things, categorising, and dealing with them. However, I'm less of a fan of the opening words; it's not so much that this should be magically granted on to us with a wishing wand, it's something we need to consciously work on, from within. Somehow that slogging, gritty aspect is less represented.
  • neutronicus 6y ago
    IMO your point is implicit in the Christian cultural context. You don't say "God grant..." before sure bets; it's implicit that there's some risk of failure and you're gonna need to meet the Big Man halfway.
  • Erlich_Bachman 6y ago
    That is not what praying is about. A healthy prayer is a form of meditation, like "meditate on how you want your future to look like". It is a reconnection with the higher self. It is already an attempt to access something from within. It is a technique to understand thing about oneself, to build up internal structure and organize inner spiritual work. But if you base your conception of prayer on a sketch from Monty Python or maybe a mentally ill person on the street who uses some christian terms for progressing their own insanity, then in that conception maybe prayer is a way to "magically grant with a wishing wand". But this is not what healthy use of the term is about. I assume the original poster who used this word is not insane and looks at the implicit meaning of the quote, which if looked at in that light, makes a lot of sense.
    • mumblemumble 6y ago
      Whether it's intentional or not, saying something like, "That is not what praying is about," is inviting an ecumenical squabble. Prayer's about a lot of things to a lot of people. Regardless of whether you think a way that other people do it is correct or not, it still exists and is a thing. And offering strangers uninvited, prescriptive advice on how a religious practice should be done is a form of proselytization. I think, in this case, it's more useful to recognize and observe the context. For example, I am inclined to agree that the "God grant me the..." at the start of that particular prayer is typically understood, at least in the community where I grew up, as more of an idiom than an actual request of God. Very much like how neutronicus put it in a sibling comment. Even atheists will use it that way without any sense of dissonance. But there are also plenty of Christians who understand God as being a lot more hands-on about things, and that would support a different understanding of the prayer's connotations, which is every bit as valid.
• Minor49er 6y ago
  If the theological content is unnecessary, then who are you expecting to grant you the things requested in the prayer?
  • jagged-chisel 6y ago
    Oneself.
  • bdamm 6y ago
    That is an exercise left up to the user. It could be the air if that's what they decide is the granter. The point is that it isn't you. For some reason that flip works for a lot of folks.
  • cortesoft 6y ago
    It is more like a mantra to remind yourself.
  • perfmode 6y ago
    It is an appeal to one's Self.
  • neutronicus 6y ago
    Well if we're splitting hairs, here, I think: 1. There's Christian cultural context regarding the phrase "God grant..." that is necessary to understand the prayer 2. To wit, when Christians use this phrase, it is both an exhortation to self-reliance and an honest admission of personal flaws that may sabotage the pursuit of self-reliance. 3. There is of course also the implication that the Christian theological tradition is the best way to achieve self-reliance in spite of character flaws. My glib aside was meant to assert that 2. is in fact mostly orthogonal to 3.
  • bonoboTP 6y ago
    This is a surprisingly difficult question that I would have (5-10 years ago) totally brushed away to the side as irrelevant and meaningless, thinking that there is only rational physical stuff and that is all we are supposed to think about. Now, I still don't believe in anything literally supernatural. I don't think any quantum woo or mysterious psychic connection or literal sky daddies exist. The point is, our mind at its core operates in terms that can be best spoken to in such metaphor. Just like we don't "see" wavelengths or spectra, we see color. If I told you that red is high frequency and blue is lower frequency light, you'd probably believe it, if you hadn't learned the opposite in physics class. We see color and not light frequency, we see objects, we see tools, we see potential paths to walk on, we see handles to grab, we use tools as extensions of the body (with the brain actually mapping out some tools as if they were limbs). In the same way much of what we experience in terms of emotional/spiritual life (if you don't suppress it and are mature enough) is very religious sounding old-fashioned terms like good and evil, temptation, redemption, salvation, revenge, punishment and forgiveness, wisdom and contemplation, sin and penance, suffering and attainment, grace and humbleness. 10 years ago all the above words meant jack shit to me, just some mumbo jumbo that bigoted old people use to condemn the youthful because they are too old and impotent and envious of the youth. The thing is, the more you look into philosophy with a more open mind, you see that it actually has content behind it. To put it in more rational terms, you become aware of and able to discuss things that happen in the more animalistic part of the brain, that makes you excited, anxious, sad, joyful. It's easy to believe that all this is just straightforward "bad events -> sadness", "good events -> joy". If you meditate, if you wind down in the evening and are mature and have some life stories of both success and disappointment, you will see that a lot of that stuff is best processed in spiritual terms and by relating it to archetypal stories. I've been reading Jordan Peterson on this matter, and while I don't agree with his conclusions in many cases, I do find it to be a good bridge between the rational scientific endeavor (you need to know the frequency of blue light to create lcd screens etc.), and the personal/spiritual manifestation of it (the blue handle of a hammer that I'm already preparing to grab in my mind). It's not that the magic sky daddy gives us the stuff we ask for in prayer, like a vending machine. But for one reason or another, pretending to act out a sacrifice story or "asking god" why something happened can be useful. You can substitute other words if you have an aversion to Christian terminology, you can say you're connecting to yourself, your higher self, the consciousness of the universe. The thing is, ideas and insight doesn't come from forcing. Just like you don't pull on a plant forcefully to make it grow, you nourish it from below and with sunlight and air. Nobody can make themselves have a great idea. In our experience, ideas just present themselves. Obviously they are not magically handed to us, but it looks "as if". Of course it's a complex brain process that involves long term memory, hormones, interactions of various brain parts, etc. Knowing the details of this can be beneficial, but just because you understand the brain chemistry of alcohol intoxication doesn't mean you won't get black out drunk if you drink a lot. Similarly somehow it is deeply ingrained in us to see things in terms of agents and purposeful patterns. One way to deal with this is to label this as a thinking error, an erroneous heuristic making too many false positives, a mistaken overdrive of the empathic part of the brain, something to eradicate. That's how I used to think. Once you understand all this, you can be capable of discussing, untangling and managing your emotions and the archetypal/spiritual language can be a way to formulate this. However when things get intense, I like to freshen it all up a bit with reading Zen koans. Zen koans are somewhat like "serious jokes" and confront your overly analytical mind with freezing shocks. They are playful, non-literal, but sometimes literal, or hanging in the air in between.
• pastorhudson 6y ago
  Don’t be afraid of the theological content. It’s a good prayer. God believes in you even if you don’t believe in him.
  • xnyan 6y ago
    OP didn’t say he was afraid, but that it was unnecessary which is objectively true - I don’t personally have a belief in gods, you have a belief in a particular god but we can both get value out of acceptance and serenity.
    • regulation_d 6y ago
      The differences of opinion here on the topic of the necessity of the theological content suggest that it is not, as you say, "objectively true". Just because it is not necessary for you does not permit you to project your opinions on the rest of humanity.
      • xnyan 6y ago
        You are moving the goalposts. You get value out of peace and serenity, yes? So do I. I take you at your word that you believe in a particular god, I would assume you take me at my word that I don’t believe in any gods. If both of those things are true, then gods are not required to take value out of the idea of serenity. The only way that this could not be true as if one of us are lying.
  • stormdennis 6y ago
    Sad that you get downvoted just because your views aren't "a la mode". I'm not religious any more but I see no need to be anti-religious
    • justincredible 6y ago
      I wouldn't downvote, but grandparent's comment is quite patronizing. Edit: I can't downvote
• koheripbal 6y ago
  I find that emotional compartmentalization is a critical skill. A couple years ago, I faced a very tough time in my life. My business was collapsing, my family's finances were in jeopardy, and there was a serious health issue going on. The emotional stress was incapacitating. I couldn't sleep, let alone focus enough to fix my problems. It was the downward spiral nightmare scenario. If I didn't have dependents (wife + 3 kids), I might have withdrawn into depression. Instead I was forced to fix my emotional state... I constructed a personal prayer... I am the man in the dark room. In here, I am my loves, my principles, and my ideas. Who I am cannot be changed by circumstances outside this room, My loves are my legs which carry me to life outside this room. My principles are my shield from the burdens the world assaults me with. My ideas are the sword with which I shape my life. When I return to myself in this room, the world remains outside, and I evolve to be better prepared tomorrow. I found that even just stopping to say "I am the man in the dark room" was often enough remind myself that I wasn't defined by my circumstances. To sleep, I found I could play the audio from old familiar TV shows to drown out the worries to fall (and stay) asleep - it was a surprising turn-around. These two things changed my life. Hope this helps someone else.
  • munificent 6y ago
    This is such a good mantra. I will remember this. Thank you.
  • blitmap 6y ago
    This is a really wonderful way to reframe your perspective.
  • aswanson 6y ago
    Awesome mantra. Been through similar circumstances and came up with a similar (though not as explicitly stated) coping mechanism. You come through such trials so much more emotionally resilient. Salute.
  • cmehdy 6y ago
    It's pretty useful for most day-to-day things, but (1) who you are can absolutely be changed by external circumstances - see TBIs and other long-lasting traumas, and (2) there are medical illnesses where you can be mostly robbed of your ideas - which by this mantra leaves you powerless to change your world. I'm not saying that to take away anything from the well-being brought by this interesting personal prayer, because it holds some insights about resilience. Only adding some context for the people out there whose depressive disorders, schizophrenia, or brain injuries, could leave them on the curb when it comes to these thoughts. Those people might need surgeries, medical treatment, or external support, before being able to strengthen themselves with this sort of thought.
• gav 6y ago
  “If there is no solution to the problem then don't waste time worrying about it. If there is a solution to the problem then don't waste time worrying about it.” -- The Dalai Lama I've spent a lot of my career working to correct projects that have been in a terrible state and had the privilege to mentor and help pull people out of bad situations. One of the big things I try to do is to get people to think about what they care about and how much they care. Good people do a lot of harm to themselves by caring about the wrong things: they want to be the hero in their story, but forget that six months from now nobody will remember the sacrifices they made. One part of this is to accept the amount of work that needs to be done is only impacted in a small way by the work you've done today. If you work 8 hours or 16 hours there's still going to be too much work tomorrow. Working longer hours generally does nothing than hide structural issues. By encouraging teams to cut their workload from 60+ hour weeks to 40, you are forcing these issues into the open. For those that are ever in a bad situation I'm happy to listen (my contact details are in my profile), sometimes you just need somebody with an external perspective.
• kupopuffs 6y ago
  Matter, how tiny my share Time, how brief my allotment Fate, how small my roll to play Self, all that can be mastered