Time and again, when I face a challenge in my own life, I return to The Serenity Prayer of Reinhod Neibuhr:
“God, give us the grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be chanted, courage to change the things which should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish one form the other.”
One business executive who went through an exercise I use in my leadership coaching programs found that 54 per cent of his worries related to things that would likely never happen; 26 per cent were about past actions that could not be changed; eight per cent related to the opinions of people whose opinions really did not matter to him; four per cent concerned personal health issues that he had since resolved; and only six per cent concerned real issues worthy of his attention.
By identifying and then letting go of the worries he could do nothing about or that were a complete waste of his energy, this man eliminated 94 per cent of the problems that had plagued him.
Excerpt from Who Will Cry When You Die by Robin Sharma, www.robinsharma.com