The real wisdom here isn't about accepting defeat or lowering your standards—it's about the exhausting work your mind performs every moment, constantly measuring reality against an imaginary blueprint. That gap between what is and what should be is where anxiety lives: when you expect your teenager to appreciate your cooking, when traffic *should* move faster, when your body *should* cooperate with your plans. Wayne Dyer points to something subtler than resignation: the recognition that your expectations are doing the suffering, not the circumstances themselves. A parent who stops insisting their child's messy room *should* look neat—and instead sees a room where a creative mind works—suddenly has energy for actual parenting rather than policing.