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I hate those cheesy, halftime-talk lines as well, but there's a balance that needs to be found. Some things are outside of your control, and it's just silly to believe you can change everything by sheer force of will; but most things are at least somewhat within your control, and blaming everything and everyone except yourself is equally bad (and extremely more common).

Blaming yourself, or at least thinking what you could do differently, is the sane default when something goes wrong.

"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."

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Or as Roland's teacher Cort put it:

> "Control the things you can control, maggot. Let everything else take a flying fuck at you and if you must go down, go down with your guns blazing."

- Stephen King, "The Drawing of the Three"

>> "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."

Your post is wise (or at least, it resonates to my best thinking on it which boils down to the serenity prayer as well.)

But I disagree that the two things in your first paragraph are equally bad.

If you think nothing is in your control and just blame others all the time - then you pass up every opportunity to make your life better, and I agree this is extremely common.

If you are on the other extreme and think you can control everything - you do end up tilting at windmills and wasting a lot of time and energy, but you also end up doing things that make a real difference in your life. It's a strategy strictly dominant to passivity.

Thus blaming others is always worse and I agree with your paragraph #2 and #3.

There are pathologies that come with thinking you can control everything. You might find you are materially better off but never really feeling satisfied with what you have. To me this seems far more common in wealthy countries like America than your first point.

> Some things are outside of your control, and it's just silly to believe you can change everything by sheer force of will; but most things are at least somewhat within your control, and blaming everything and everyone except yourself is equally bad (and extremely more common).

Your point is well taken. There's the other side of the balance" - the factors outside of one control define the ceiling limit of your delta change [0]. Of course, you can ask people to focus on the controllable and ignore the things one can not control. However, the fact that the family/country/skin color you are born determines pretty much most of your fate is not easily accepted by everyone. And rightly so, they have every right to be aggrieved about it.

[0] https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/about/news-room/press-releases-...

I agree that there's a middle ground here. I think the point of the "you can do anything if you try" sentiment is to push people to overcome their self-limiting beliefs. I've certainly accomplished a lot of things I didn't think I could because I was dumb enough to try anyway. Most people have no idea what their limits are because they've never hit them.

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