I recall reading Influencer: The New Science of Leading Change a few years ago and there’s one thing I always liked about it. It takes the quote:

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.

And then harps on “the wisdom to know the difference” part. The goal of that chapter was that there is always a way to impact change. That we don’t need to accept things we cannot change.

I’m not sure if I follow that. I think in a sense for me, not accepting the things we cannot change doesn’t mean banging your head against the wall trying to do the same thing over and over. It means reframing the goal. Giving things up the original way we intended to impact change to approach things in a different way.

In a sense knowing when to quit something to change completely the approach. I didn’t accept that I couldn’t change politics as much as realized that wasn’t the only way of going about my goal of making the world a better place.

You can impact change, sometimes you just need to totally ditch the current approach and do something completely different.