Pathology: The Study of Paths 
How to Solve Your Puzzle
Choose Your Path 
The Direct Path 
The TranceFormational Path 
The Path to Awakening 
The Final Destination The Serenity Prayer
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
The natural reaction to an encounter with pain or failure is to try to figure out the problem and solve it. Be careful. This tendency to automatically shift into problem-solving mode is exactly what the Serenity Prayer is trying to warn you about - see Ruminative Self Focus [RSF].
In fact, attempts to solve a problem can make things worse. This is especially true when you don't have control over the relevant variables. The Serenity Prayer is a fine summary of Stoic philosophy, and is probably the best single piece of advice on how to escape a recurrent pattern of self-sabotage: 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.
Stoic Wisdom:
- You can change your behaviors and attitudes. So, have the courage to change these things.
- Most everything else — including the past, what other people think and do, and the outcomes of your efforts — is outside of your control. So, accept the things that happen that are beyond your control.
This Stoic Wisdom will help you know whether to accept the things that happen or to commit your energies to change them. This wisdom will help you along the passage from the mentality of childhood [characterized by excessive and counter-productive emotional reactions to the things that happen] to more advanced cognitive strategies.
The Practice of Acceptance
Bad and good things will happen to you. Most are outside of your control. Even your initial reaction to the things that happen are likely to be beyond your control. So, realistically, what options do you have other than to develop the skill to accept the things that happen — without squandering your dear resources trying to fix what you cannot fix or judge the things you have no right to judge. The "Acceptance" exercises will help you learn to accept the things you cannot change without judgment or compulsion to fix them.
Our Collaboration
The objective of this collaboration is to enhance your control over the course of events, not to encourage passivity. Saving the effort and emotionality of trying to change the things you cannot change conserves the energy you need to change the things you can. Moreover, appreciating the limits of your control will help you avoid the self-sabotaging frustrations that result from trying to fix thing that you do not have the power to fix.
You will always have problems. The collaboration between you [the phenomenologist who has access to your subjective experience from the first-person perspective] and me [the psychologist who has access to the observations of the subjective experience of many souls from the observer's perpsective] is successful to the extent that if helps you swap your current set of problems for a more interesting set. Please take advantage of the tools and methods presented here to enable you to follow your path of greatest advantage rather than continue to yield in the direction of least resistance. Please feel free to contact me directly.
— Twitter