Tag: control

challenges

Make Today Count

2chicksandapen

Life is full of emotions.

One day you feel amazingly accomplished. The next day you can feel deflated as if your world just crumbles beneath you. It’s life they say. How do you deal with the ups and downs of life?

A week doesn’t go by without the craziness of friend or family member in turmoil. Emotionally distraught. At wit’s end because of x, y or z. It can be hard to be the person to shoulder all this weight from many different angles and or people. Exhausting at times.

Tomorrow is a new day. Never let today’s worries weigh down your tomorrow. You have to be able to reset or your burden will continually grow until the weight can’t be carried further. This is normally where emotions are high and people say things they regret. It’s inevitable.

Do yourself a favor. Worry less about changing others and change how you react to negativity. You can control your attitude. Your actions. Your emotions. You can’t control those things in others no matter how much you try. 

I feel good today.

I felt good yesterday.

I felt good the day before.

Why? Because I wasn’t carrying the burden of others. I may have shared in the burden by listening to their challenges, but I didn’t carry the weight. I offered support. I will continue to offer support as much as I need but I won’t do the heavy lifting.

I’ve written about givers and takers in life before. I see it often. A good example is the friend who needs your shoulder often. You give it often. However there is never a return gesture. They never ask how you are doing. They never ask if you need anything. They talk but don’t listen. They take but don’t give. Most often these are the folks that carry the hefty mental and emotion burdens. Guilt. Hatred. Fear. Judgement. All of it.

I choose to start fresh. Not a care in the world each day. It may be for 5 minutes or 5 hours, but I start fresh. I make today count. I may not always do the things on the to do list. I do however find a way to do something on the ta da list. Sometimes planned. Sometimes not.

Start fresh.

Start again.

Don’t live with regrets.

Make today count.

Make today count for you because you only control you.

balance

My Control Panel

2chicksandapen

In a challenge right now with a fitness group, we were tasked with thinking daily about what in our lives we can and cannot control. We had to write it down and repeat it to ourselves each day several times. To some this might seem silly, but especially in this time of flux and frustration, I found it useful. Here are some of the things I wrote down this week.

What I cannot control:

-My other family members’ schedules

-Other people’s priorities

-How other people interpret and respond to my choices

-How other people see me

-Many details about my work day – where I work, how I allocate my time, how many meetings I have to attend

-Traffic

-How fast the postal service delivers packages

-The coronavirus pandemic – its length, severity, and impact on people I care about and the world at large

-How others respond to the pandemic…their movements, opinions, responses, precautions (or lack of)

-Whether or not my daughter will have a lacrosse season

-The weather

-Other people’s level of stress and its’ impact on their actions, attitudes, etc.

The list goes on…and I realize I spend a LOT of time spinning my mental and spiritual wheels on the list above. NOTHING I CAN DO ANYTHING ABOUT. AT. ALL.

Here’s what I can control.

-My actions

-My choices

-Where I put my energy – writing, reading, recreation, learning, exercise, rest

-Where I direct my attention

-My movement

-What I consume – food, media, etc.

-My hydration

-My attitude toward challenges

Really, it’s a small list, but it’s what I need to focus on. You notice that most of what I can’t control involves other people and most of what I can involves me. When I find myself fretting about the world and all its ups and downs, I remember what I can control and then try to DO something related to these lists.

It seems like a goofy task to say these things several times a day, but I learned that my anxiousness lessens when I consciously remind myself what I can do something about. And then DO one of those things. What’s on your lists? Give it a try and see how you fare.