What if there were three secrets that could change your life for the better? Starting today.
What if these simple secrets were so powerful they were guaranteed to work? To help you find more serenity, courage, and wisdom in your life? Would you want to hear what they are?
And what if some of the beliefs you base your life on were wrong?
What if some of the life principles you have come to believe in were not true but were merely widely-held myths? And what if you discovered those beliefs were leading you in the wrong direction every time you used them to make a decision?
What if a simple adjustment in just three of those myths would give you more peace and purpose? And help you stop making choices—over and over and over—that lead you to stress, fear, and pride?
What if your life could change for the better by challenging these myths and learning these secrets?
For where you are in life right now: “What if …?”
“Don’t gain the world and lose your soul; wisdom is better than silver or gold.” (Bob Marley)
A Real-Life Story from This Morning
This morning, my friend Jeff texted to ask if we could talk. He knows I get up early, so this happens occasionally, and I always enjoy our conversations. But then he told me that a mutual friend of ours has cancer.
Our friend’s wife had messaged Jeff with the news. But the situation was complicated, and we were wondering what we were supposed to do. There are many aspects of this story, but it emphasized for us some key points about life that are very, very real:
- We all desperately want to control what goes on in our lives, but most of it is outside our control.
- Our all-powerful God has chosen to involve us in his plans on earth and, at times, he asks us to do things we may not feel equipped to do. Too often, we choose to disobey God out of fear or our insecure desire for comfort and convenience.
- We all have questions and doubts about things we are supposed to do. That’s okay, and we don’t have to know all the answers. Because we don’t have to rely on our own wisdom or strength alone to do the things we are asked to do.
Inside, we all have reasons why we do the things we do, although we may not be aware of how that process works in our subconscious. Many of us have not identified the values we will base our choices on, but we have all adopted beliefs that dictate much of how we live.
But sometimes those beliefs are wrong. Some may be lies we have grown to subliminally accept without questioning them, even though they are merely popular myths rather than the truth.
Many of these myths are not only common, they’re also dangerous! Our unknowing reliance on them can lead us toward stress, fear, and pride in our life without us noticing how it happens. The good news is that we can adjust those beliefs and—predictably yet incredibly—change our lives for the better.
“You cannot control what happens to you, but you can control your attitude toward what happens to you, and in that, you will be mastering change rather than allowing it to master you.” (Brian Tracy)
Using the 3 Secrets and the 3 Myths
There are three secrets we can learn and three myths we can challenge that will help us find more peace and satisfaction. By doing so, we can change our direction in life to move toward serenity, courage, and wisdom rather than being relentlessly pulled toward stress, fear, and pride. There is a simple but powerful tool we can use to find the right balance: the Serenity Prayer.
We can use the Serenity Prayer to reach into the God-planted truths in our soul to help us determine which way to go when making tough decisions. This gives us the balance to know when to calmly step back and accept a situation and when to step forward with courage to make a difference. The Serenity Prayer can be broken down into three steps:
- Accept what we can’t change with serenity.
- Change the things we can with courage.
- Find wisdom to know the difference.
These steps show us how we can leverage the secret wisdom of the Serenity Prayer and challenge the myths we too often cling to instead. These actions help keep us in balance and on track in life, and they provide a system that allows us to use God’s help to discern what we control and what we don’t.
“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.” (Reinhold Niebuhr)
Step 1. Accept what we can’t change with serenity.
The Myth: We must control everything in our lives.
The Secret: We can choose serenity and let things go.
Popular culture tells us we should always be in control, and our ego confirms that desire. But it is a myth to believe we must control everything in our lives. In fact, that is not only unhealthy and ineffective, it’s also impossible. Here are three important things we do not control, even when we think we do:
- Circumstances – We need to let go of our worry about past events and set down our shame for mistakes we may have made. It is also a toxic habit to obsess about comparing our situations to those of other people. Life is much nicer when we calmly and gratefully accept our circumstances.
- People – Day to day, many of us relentlessly try to control the people around us. This is not only impossible, it is also harmful to both them and us. Our role is to gently accept people as they are rather than try to fix, enable, change, or control them.
- Outcomes – The majority of things we worry about for the future never happen. Our role is to do our best and let outcomes turn out as they will. There are many factors that affect how things will turn out, and we don’t control most of them.
One of the biggest things we can do to change our life for the better is to set aside our compulsion to control everything around us. Every day, one of the first questions we should ask ourselves when we encounter a situation is: “Can I simply let this go because it’s not something I can control?”
Imagine the heavy burdens of worry we can set down by letting go of our obsession for control.
One of the hardest decisions I ever made was allowing my older son to go away to college. That may not sound tough, but it is when your son has had several challenging years involving drug and alcohol use. I had a long list of reasons why it wasn’t a smart thing to do, but I prayed about it and felt I should let go of my desires to protect or control him. We allowed him to go, and he crashed and burned after the first semester. But that led to a series of events that steered my son into residential recovery, which greatly changed his life for the better. Stepping back from my compulsion to control the situation worked out.
“I take (my burdens), and I leave them with Him, and come away and forget them. And if the worry comes back, I take it to Him again; I do this over and over, until at last I just forget that I have any worries, and am at perfect rest.” (Hannah Whitall Smith)
Step 2. Change the things we can with courage.
The Myth: It’s okay to do whatever we feel like doing.
The Secret: We can acquire courage to do the right thing.
Most people think of a “crisis” as a time of difficulty or trouble, which is a valid definition. But another meaning is when a hard or important decision must be made. Sometimes, we face a crisis that is both difficult and that requires a choice to be made, and that is when we need to acquire courage.
Testing our courage and resolve are the many distractions that lure us toward complacency instead. We love comfort and security, we don’t like conflict, we fear change, and we only want to do things when they are easy and convenient. And when we are prompted to do things that are not in our comfort zone, we may become fearful and indecisive about what might happen.
We all face many moments of crisis when we are called to do something important. The question is whether we will summon or find the courage to respond. We tend to ask questions like, “Is this something I feel like doing?” But in a time of crisis, that’s the wrong question. Instead, we need to determine: “Does this involve something I can change, and am I supposed to take action?”
We may not know what will happen or if our actions will make a difference. But that is outside our control and not something we need to worry about. Our choice is, “Will we do what we are supposed to do?” We are not in control of the circumstances, fixing another person, or dictating the outcome, so we can let those things go and focus on what we are supposed to do. Even if it’s hard.
When our older son was in high school, my wife and I had a tough situation to deal with. He was in the earlier days of his struggles with substances, and we saw that his trajectory was heading in a dangerous direction. We felt we should take him out of school to go into a recovery program for six weeks. It was a tough choice that had many unknowns and risks that were frightening to us, but we went through with it. It was what we felt God was telling us was the right choice, so that gave us the courage to take that step.
“Incredible change happens in your life when you decide to take control of what you do have power over instead of craving control over what you don’t.” (Steve Maraboli)
Step 3. Find wisdom to know the difference.
The Myth: We have to be strong and know all the answers.
The Secret: We can find wisdom when we surrender in faith.
A crisis is a time when a decision must be made, and the hard part is often knowing what to decide. How do we find the balance between choosing the serenity to let something go and the courage to change what we can?
We lean on the Serenity Prayer, and we ask God for the wisdom to know the difference.
Having balance in life comes from having a good foundation when we are centered over our means of support. There is only one foundation solid enough to build our life around, and that is God’s love and wisdom. Our job is to lean into faith and trust that God will help us through each situation. He often offers advice through answers to our prayers, Scripture, and wise input from others. But we may still find it hard to know what to do, and many decisions must be made without us having a clear certainty.
That’s what faith is all about. We forget God doesn’t need us to achieve his plans, although he uses his people to do things all the time. We also forget that the most important thing going on may not be which choice we make, but how we make it! God uses situations to help us develop into who we are meant to be, and our role is to do all we can to make choices that align with his will.
Which brings us to the critical concept of “surrender.” Surrender is when we give up all control and any expectation and totally commit ourselves to God’s will, even if it is different from what we want to do. Surrender is where we find balance, and it is often when God chooses for miracles to happen. As we move forward, we keep our balance by continuing to seek his will, surrendering over and over and over, and making adjustments along the way.
When I found faith at the age of forty, I came to enjoy a series of wonderful benefits. I saw how life changes when we set our heart on following God’s will. In different situations, that may be letting go with serenity or making a tough choice with courage. Either way, the choice becomes easier when we put our trust in God, and our obsessive worry over controlling outcomes becomes less.
The Serenity Prayer is a powerful tool to help us take next right steps each day.
We see there are myths we need to challenge such as believing we must control everything in our lives, it’s okay to do whatever we feel like doing, and we have to be strong and know all the answers.
And we learn secrets to a healthier, happier life that include being able to choose serenity and let things go, acquire courage to do the right thing, and find wisdom when we surrender in faith.
What if your life could change for the better by challenging these myths and learning these secrets?
What if …?
“Billy had a framed prayer on his office wall which expressed his method for keeping going, even though he was unenthusiastic about living. A lot of patients who saw the prayer on Billy’s wall told him that it helped them to keep going, too. It went like this: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to tell the difference.” Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future.” (Kurt Vonnegut)
Question: Which of the three steps of the Serenity Prayer do you need the most right now?
Action: Pick a tough decision you need to make and use the Serenity Prayer as a tool to help.
