To be serene isn’t about managing and manipulating your environment into peace, for most often you yourself are the element of chaos, and your attempts at bringing peace is the very cause of disturbance.
Alternatively, one can find serenity by a simple act of reframing the will, the wish, and the goal:
If I want perfection to be the goal and wish that it’s the case, then by reframing what is as the perfect state of things, then the goal is already achieved and my wish instantly fulfilled. And if I will what already is, then I’m doing as I wish, for my wish, too, is what already is.
The cause of suffering is to wish things to be otherwise than they are, and that’s insanity to wish something that has already appeared in a certain form to have appeared differently. … More Spiritual Fragments: Play & Minding One’s Own Business