“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Reinhold Niebuhr
Reinhold’s quote pretty much sums up my encouragement for today. With God’s help, you are more than capable of successfully managing your peace of mind.
When we are able to decipher aspects of our life which we can impact as opposed to those we can’t, we have an immediate game plan for framing our focus. For situations that we can change, our work is to create a plan and work that plan. For situations or circumstances we can’t change our work is to find peace and acceptance
Once the ‘change’ / ‘can’t change’ classification is done, the REAL work begins. It is often easier to work on the things we can change because our hands are busy ‘doing’. However, finding peace and acceptance is typically harder because it often lands in the ‘being’ space.
Since this aspect of living can be the most difficult to navigate, let’s take a look at a few steps we can use to develop a peace and acceptance strategy.
- Be still – find a place and some dedicated time to sit with what must be accepted. It is best if you take time at the start of the day to set your intentions for the day. Also, end the day by taking time to express gratitude for successfully making it through another day.
- Seek the lesson – Spend some time asking God to reveal the lessons you must learn from the situation. Often a quality is revealed that you must develop and practice to successfully weather the storm.
- Practice the quality – Once you have identified the quality or qualities you must master you now have an actionable focal point. You have can move from ‘being’ to ‘doing’. For example, if the quality you need to learn is patience; you can focus your actions on practicing patience. Observe your behavior; without judgement determine any correction needed, and then proceed with practicing patience with the new corrections. You can repeat this process until you discover that the situation has resolved itself or your new found quality is able to peacefully sustain you
- Celebrate your progress – Be sure to celebrate your victory in overcoming a difficult situation. Give thanks for everything you learned and recognize how you’ve grown even when you were being challenged.
I’m excited to know that despite difficult situations, we can overcome and become our best self. I think it was Maya Angelou who said, “I wouldn’t take nothing for my journey now.” I agree and am looking forward to growing from whatever life brings.
For this week’s sound track, I’m sharing two oldies, but goodies; Smokie Norful’s “I Need You Now” and
Donnie McClurkin’s “Speak to My Heart”
Until next week,