Focus on What You Can Control (part 1)
Sometimes the most important ideas come from the most basic ones. Especially in a time when the world can feel out of control, we need to remind ourselves that we can’t control everything that’s happening around us.
I find myself having conversations with people on a weekly basis since the start of the COVID lockdowns about how things are feeling out of control for them. Sometimes it’s about career growth, sometimes it’s about challenges with a customer, and sometimes it’s about wanting to just go to the park. When a city is in lockdown or a job has been furloughed it’s really easy to get disheartened and feel like things are out of your control…and while some of those things are, that doesn’t mean that your success or ability to advance is entirely out of your control.
These things are each opportunities to change our focus. Nobody’s going to talk about what you can control in the news, so it can be easy to forget in a world where it’s “masks this”, “police that”, and “President Trump tweeted” coming at us from every which direction. The things we can control are not often newsworthy. What can you do to get the world closer to a COVID vaccine? What can you do to help millions of people get their jobs back? Well, probably not much unless you happen to be in a really unique station in life.
As for the things the rest of us can control? Showing up on time, working hard, and trying to solve hard problems. If you’ve got work, control the amount of effort you bring to your work. If you’re without work, control the amount of time you spend binging Netflix (or however else you’re passing the time)…and try to make sure you’re doing something productive every day. Maybe you’re working out, or applying for jobs, maybe you’re doing a favor for a neighbor, or helping an elderly person safely get their groceries.
You don’t have to do any of those things, but you generally do have control over how much you effort you put into them. If you’re choosing to do something, you can control whether or not you do your best at it, or simply show up for the credit.
In my family, we have a (somewhat insensitive) joke we’ve used to justify how easy it is to put on weight when you’re locked inside for days and weeks on end. It’s amazing how much exercise we took for granted in the day to day world, and how it seems to simply stop for most of us when we’re put in lockdown. By not addressing it, it’s really easy to put on weight and see the scale go past where we’re comfortable…but it’s something you really can control. You can choose to (re-)watch another episode of The Office, or you can spend 20 minutes going for a walk, jumping rope, walking around the living room, or up and down the stairs.
In my upcoming book, Earning What You Deserve: The Guide for Building Long-term Success Starting From Graduation Day (Amazon), we focus a lot of attention on helping you to set a plan and establish principles to help you work hard to follow through with it. You need to understand where you want to go to help you put your priorities in order and get you there. Remembering that there’s a lot that’s out of your control can help you put your focus on the right things to help you move forward with your goals and get closer to your vision of success.
You have to know what’s important to you to know where to focus your efforts, and if you’re unwilling to take the time to do that, you’re probably going to choose to simply click “Next Episode” and feel like your success is out of your control. Take the time to make a plan, think about how you define your success, and you can focus on what you can control to move towards that success.
