What happens when there's plenty of rain out and you need to go somewhere. Do you try to stop the rain or do you carry the umbrella with you? What happens when things are not going your way, do you try to change the way things go, or do you try to improve your processes and focus on what's at hand? What happens when people speak rudely, can you control them speaking rudely or can you control on being assertive in the situation and saying exactly what needs to be said? Imagine you are playing cricket and the batsman is hitting the balls left and right, but as a bowler you can only control your line and the length, not the way a batsman hits the ball? So my point here is a lot of times we worry too much about the uncontrollable. Now what's uncontrollable? A batsman hitting a shot on a good delivery is an uncontrollable for us. People thinking and reacting differently is an uncontrollable for us, winning or losing is uncontrollable what's in our control is to play the ball properly, over by over, ball by ball. If we play well enough, we will win, but result is an uncontrollable. You can speak something but people might react negatively to it, so that's an uncontrollable. But what you speak is something that's within your control, so try and focus on what content you speak about and the rest will be taken care of. You can pray but God listening to your prayers is an uncontrollable. So this article is all about focusing on the controllable and not worrying too much about what's not in our control.
The first step to making sure you focus on the controllable is to realise and accept that, you can't control everything. No matter what, you cannot control how others think of you, you cannot control whether you will win the game or not but you can control on watching the ball, reading the line and the length or even hitting good line and length when it comes to bowling. You can control your processes, you can control exercising, you can control learning new things, but sometimes you just need to let go and let life take it over. You cannot control how you look in terms of beauty, but you control wearing a good wrist watch, wearing good clothes, having eye contact while talking, or even listening properly to other people. You cannot control the future, but you can do something today that will have an impact on the future. You cannot control the past, so all you really have is the present and even in the present it's the now that you have. But the whole acceptance point here is you can't control everything.
Generally, what I do when I get into this phase of trying to control something. I write down things that I can control, and list of things I can't control. This way I try and put my focus on what I can control and influence those things rather than worrying about the other things. It's a great exercise to do and I am sure it will help people who really want to focus on the controllable's and decrease the anxiety in their lives. Everybody goes through a period of anxious moments, it's very natural, everyone goes through difficult times, but remember during such times, try to focus on the controllable's not on the uncontrollable aspect of life.
Here's a very good picture I found. This is something to put thought and give your time to. So pause reading for a minute and really think about what things you can control. Everything else, is just the distraction. Now, apart from removing unnecessary stress and worry, this will also help you focus on tasks much easily compared to the other work in your life. It will help you give clarity on what needs to be done right now and you will go into a state of flow more often in your life.
So that's all I want to say out here, so go ahead, make a list of your controllables and just focus on them. Leave away all other things, and I guarantee that you will find a lot more freedom, a lot more happiness and a lot more productivity in your life. Thank you and have a great one !
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