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“God 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,” is an eloquent statement of the Enlightened Path.
Here is the way to know the difference: The only things you can change are your thoughts and actions; everything else is outside of your control. Consider how the Serenity Prayer applies to ruminative self-focus. “The things I cannot change” include outcomes, the past, what people think of me. I must have the serenity to accept these realities.
Given your awareness of situations or personal characteristics that diminish the quality of your life, it is natural to apply your problem-solving skills to improve things. The goal is clear enough: Maximize pleasure and desirable outcomes and minimize pain and miserable outcomes. Unfortunately, problem-solving methods applied to the self tend to trigger self-evaluation and hence ruminative self-focus, which in turn increases the likelihood of suffering and bad outcomes.
Ironically, problem solving in the service of escaping suffering, or achieving gratification, drives the recursive mechanism. The irony shows up in many neurotic and addictive disorders. For example, individuals with social phobia are often successful at minimizing social contact, which prevents the exposure to social situations, which is the cure for social phobia. Substance abusers are notorious for coming up with ingenious methods to access their chemical of choice despite the heroic efforts of families or treatment programs to protect them—the relapse, of course, exacerbates their suffering.
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