Do you often stress about things that are outside your control? How can you learn to accept what you can’t change?
Bronnie Ware, a palliative care nurse, writes about the most common deathbed regrets she’s heard in her career. One way to avoid regrets and to live authentically and courageously is to let go of things that you can’t control.
Here’s Ware’s reasoning and her advice for doing so.
Accept Things Outside of Your Control
Bronnie Ware advises you to accept what you can’t change. Letting go of your need for control allows you to act courageously. If you recognize that you’ll never fully be in control, focus on doing what you can, and trust that things will work out in the end, you’ll find it easier to be happy and make good choices, even if they scare you. For example, you can express yourself honestly, knowing that how others respond is out of your hands.
| Understand the Degrees of Control You Have Ware’s advice echoes ancient Stoic wisdom. As William B. Irvine explains in A Guide to the Good Life, the Stoics recognized that basing happiness on factors outside our control sets us up for disappointment. However, this doesn’t mean you should live passively —instead, it’s about understanding the degrees of control you have. Some things, like your efforts, are fully in your control. Others, like other people’s reactions, are entirely out of your hands. Many things fall in between, like getting a promotion; in these cases, you have partial influence. Irvine suggests caring about and working toward things you partially control, but setting goals based only on what you fully control—for instance, aiming to work efficiently rather than fixating on getting a promotion. This approach reduces your anxiety and, paradoxically, may make your desired outcomes more likely to come true. |
To help you accept that you can’t control everything, Ware recommends you practice meditation and self-compassion. First, practice meditation to become more aware of your thoughts and feelings. When you pay more attention to your thoughts, you can notice when you’re having unhelpful thoughts and replace them with better ones. For example, if you make a mistake at work and start thinking, “I’m a total failure,” meditation can help you recognize this unhelpful thought. You can then replace it with a more balanced view like, “I made a mistake, but that doesn’t define me. I can learn from this and do better next time.”
(Shortform note: Experiment with different types of meditation to find what works best for you. Buddhism offers practices like vipassana (mindfulness) meditation to observe your thoughts without judgment, and metta (lovingkindness) meditation to cultivate compassion. Hinduism and yoga incorporate physical postures, breathing exercises, and concentration techniques to unite mind and body. Western approaches focus on using meditation to manifest goals or improve focus and productivity.)
Second, learn to have self-compassion by being kinder and more accepting of yourself. Self-compassion allows you to accept your situation and limitations, rather than fighting reality and berating yourself for what you can’t change. When you’re understanding of yourself, you can make hard decisions with less fear. You know that even if things don’t work out perfectly, you’ll treat yourself with kindness instead of self-criticism. This frees you to act with more courage and make decisions you won’t regret.
(Shortform note: Understanding the Taoist concepts of wu-wei and wu-hsin might help you cultivate more self-compassion. In The Way of Zen, Alan Watts explains that wu-wei is when you act spontaneously without trying to interfere with the thoughts or decisions that come naturally to you. He suggests you embrace this principle, as this allows you to experience wu-hsin, which translates to “no mind”—a state of un-self-consciousness. In this state of un-self-consciousness, you are content with yourself, knowing that all of your actions and decisions arise from your most natural self.)
