Control what you can control, control how you react to what you can’t.
“The easiest way to get ahead in life is to learn to crave what average people despise.
It’s painfully simple to do, too.
Adjust your attitude.
Apply effort.
Repeat.
The vast majority of people refuse to do one of those, much less both of them together.”
-Ray Zingler on Twitter
There are a lot of things in life, however when you peel back the layers, they all kind of boil down to two things.
Controllables & Uncontrollables
The vast majority of things that happen to and us around us in our lives are Uncontrollables.
The weather, traffic, other people, and your water heater going bad prematurely are all things we don’t have control over.
However, we do have control over a few things. And those few things are all “self” related.
We can (most of the time) control things like our attitude, our preparation, our work ethic, our body language, and our flexibility.
I firmly believe the most important controllable we have within each of us, is the power to control how we react and respond to the inevitable uncontrollables in our lives.
For example:
It’s raining. That’s annoying. This leads a lot of people to preset their moods for the day because they wish it was sunny. Essentially what they are doing is allowing an uncontrollable factor to dictate their state of mind.
Or
You can accept that fact that it’s raining (you don’t have to like it) and recognize that it’s outside of your control and make a decision to disallow the uncontrollable factor to dictate your mood/approach to the day.
This is obviously a very benign example, but the concept can be used within the full length of the “shit that happens to us” spectrum.
Remember, losers complain about the wind. Winners adjust their sails.
It’s common knowledge that life is unfair. Accept it.
There are going to be people who start higher on the hill. People with better contacts, better resources, better skills, better everything.
Can you change that? No.
Can you react constructively to what you cannot change? Yes.
Then do so.
In order to get ahead it starts by doing two simple things.
1. Adjusting your attitude.
2. Applying effort.
Cut out all the but, but, but bullshit and adjust your attitude and work really hard (consistently).
It will never change “their” situation, but it will change yours.
And guess what most people, regardless of where they’re at “on the hill”, HATE?
Positivity and effort.
There’s your loophole, now go exploit it.
(Trust me, “they” won’t.)
