Why Should I Worry About the Things I Can’t Control?

Here's a beautiful prayer you might know:

God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and wisdom to know the difference.

There’s so much talk about all the jobs being replaced by AI. Professions that lasted for decades are suddenly gone, often replaced by automation for free.

It’s like owning a shop that repairs horse carriages while watching cars drive by outside your window. You’re still holding a hammer in one hand, a few nails between your lips, and a horseshoe in the other. You don’t even notice when the nails fall to the floor, because your mind drifts deep into a question:

What am I going to do now?

One of your kids, who's been learning the family trade for a few years now, picks up the nails from the floor and looks you in the eye.

“Hey Pa, are you okay?”

You’re not. You don’t say a word, but your face betrays you. Anyone can tell something’s wrong.

It’s like a farmer who inherited his land from his father, and his father before that. Generations of hard work and dedication went into perfecting the method to work that soil. This year, you've invested everything into the crop to make enough to pay your employees, but the days are gradually getting hotter. The rain barely comes, and when it does, it’s just for a few minutes. There’s not much water. Something deep down tells you this crop won’t make it. You can’t help but think:

What am I going to do now?

I could tell you more stories like this. You could go back hundreds of years and still find people facing the same question. This is a timeless problem.

So what’s the answer? Worry about the things you can’t control?

Yeah, right.

How about acting on the things you can control?

Use AI tools in your work. Switch from horses to cars. Change to a crop you can manage with drones.

No one can control when an industry will shift. No one can predict the full extent of the impact. No one can stop it.

Change is going to happen—whether you like it or not.

You can be like a tree that lives through all the seasons. Summer, fall, winter, each one hard in its own way. But spring always comes to give way to new life. You can’t stay stuck in the bad times. Good and bad are both part of life. And all of it, eventually, cycles again.

Take a look inside. Find yourself.

Adversity doesn’t build character. It reveals character.

Hang on, like the tree that learned how deep its roots go. Once you learn that from yourself, you’ll live confidently through all the seasons.