I use the serenity prayer…not always successfully, but it is helpful to consider

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference, living one day at a time; enjoying one moment at a time; taking this world as it is and not as I would have it.

The Serenity Prayer is an invocation by the petitioner for wisdom to understand the difference between circumstances (“things”) that can and cannot be changed, asking courage to take action in the case of the former, and serenity to accept in the case of the latter. The written prayer has been alternatively attributed to the American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971), (his having claimed authorship, and its having been used in a 1943 sermon by him in Heath, Massachusetts, and thereafter), but also to Niebuhr colleague Winnifred Crane Wygal [Wikidata], who presented it March 1933, and again in a 1940 book (in the latter case attributing it to Niebuhr). Despite this history and confusion, William FitzGerald takes Wygal’s case, arguing sexism as the reason for misattribution, while Fred Shapiro’s work, with greater nuance, has alternated his conclusions, but presents both the messages that the “[o]rigin is debated” and Wygal as author in materials relating to the The New Yale Book of Quotations, published in 2021.

Regardless of origins, the prayer has achieved very wide distribution, appearing throughout church groups later in the 1930s, and in Alcoholics Anonymous and related organizational materials since at least 1941. Since at least the early 1960s, commercial enterprises such as Hallmark have used the prayer in its greeting cards and gift items. The prayer has also made its way into popular culture, including in works by Bill Watterson and Neil Young, and programming including True Detective.

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