Saturday, May 28, 2016

Seeking Serenity



After my last post (and that bit of a breakdown there), I've been doing a bit of thinking and I've made some decisions that I've been needing to make for some time. I would love to hear from my readers on this subject. Tell me what helps you clear your mind when it's jumbled up with emotions. How do you reach that place of Wise Mind?

May I have the SERENITY...


Even though I'm an atheist, I have a fondness for The Serenity Prayer. It's simple and what is requested is something we all can use. While I don't seek for a higher power to grant that serenity to me, I still seek it for it is something I need.

To ACCEPT the things I cannot change...


This is includes the people I cannot change as well. Some things are just outside of my control. I can only change myself. I can certainly hope that those whose behaviors are destructive will change but at some point, I have to do something about it when their behavior has an affect on my life.

The COURAGE to change the things I can...


This one is going to be hard. I've come to a decision about things that I will need to change in order to make my life a life worth living. They were be changes that will not be happily accepted by others. However, I cannot continue to sit in the situation I am in. A quote I saw today by Paulo Coelho says this:

“You drown not by falling into a river, but by staying submerged in it.”
Staying in the situation I am in is drowning. I was preparing for things to be more difficult next year as I finish my last semester and prepare to work. This is insane. Things have not changed and things will not change unless I change them.

And the WISDOM to know the difference.


It's taken me a long time to come to this point. It's easy to get confused on what we can/cannot change. It's easy to think that if you change, others will change as well. That doesn't always happen though. Sometimes, the people we start on the path with no longer can stay with us. We move on, they don't. I've struggled with accepting that and with making the changes I've needed to change. Staying is easy though frustrating. But staying is not helping me create that life worth living. I have changed. My values and goals have changed. I know what I want in my life. Unfortunately, those values and goals are not the same and I will no longer continue to live my life for someone else.

It will take time. It will not happen right away. But I have decided that I cannot live my life this way anymore. I have to change my situation. I can no longer stay submerged in the river.

I'd love to hear from you. Have you found yourself "drowning"? What did you do to get yourself out of that submerged state? What things have you had to accept instead of change?

4 comments:

  1. Have you found yourself "drowning"? What did you do to get yourself out of that submerged state? What things have you had to accept instead of change?

    All good questions!
    I have definitely felt as though I was drowning, drowned.
    When that has happened I've had to start again from square one. I've restarted at square one many times. When necessary I've put my head down and kept moving forward, often on my own. And all of the starting over made me very strong and unwilling to let people pull me down.

    I have accepted thousands of things that I could not change. The hardest things I have changed that I thought I could not was ending relationships that tore me down again and again.

    I'm not going to say it was easy. It took me years and years. All worth it. :)



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  2. I'm still struggling with this one! I caught myself thinking the other day that if certain people would just change their mindset... UGH! I keep hoping and hoping that people will change and I need to accept that they won't. Part of it I know is fear and making changes for me is so hard but I have been making changes, I just need to keep at it and I can't rely on things to resolve on their own. I just keep having these fears that I'm doing the wrong thing. Ultimately though I need to be in an environment where I can be free to me ME, not what other people want me to be. I've spent too much of my life doing that. But, that's the trouble, I've spent so much of my life doing that that going against the grain terrifies me.

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  3. <3

    Say it's five years from now.
    Would you rather you faced the fears and made the changes or would you rather another five years of this?

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  4. I don't want to even do another year of this. What I realized was that he is likely going to be even more unsupportive my last semester than he was this past semester. And he's already making comments about when I'm working and they're not positive comments. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

    We met when I was 18. I've already been with him about half my life. Been with him my whole post high school life. We have different values and different goals and that's not going to change and I need to keep remembering that and remembering that I just have ONE life and spending it all with someone who doesn't value me as I am is not the way to spend it.

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