Control the Controllable and Let Everything Else Go!

Far too many people say that they suffer from stress, which leads me to ask: what is stress?

Stress is a feeling of emotional or physical tension. It can come from any event or thought that makes you feel frustrated, angry, or nervous. Stress is your body's reaction to a challenge or demand. Stress can be positive, although when most people think of stress, it is in a negative way.     

My belief is that most instances of stress are over things that are out of your control so what difference does stressing about the situation make? The answer, absolutely none what so ever!

This is why I say, control the controllable and let everything else go. It sounds simple, doesn’t it, so how do you actually do it?

Here are a few things that you can do to help:

• Expose yourself to good input: Be aware of what you watch, read, and listen to. 
• Expose yourself to good thinkers: Jim Rohn says that we become the average of the 5 people we associate with the most, so choose these people carefully.
• Choose to think good thoughts: Good thinking is a discipline and it is easy to fall into the blame game instead of putting yourself in a place to shape, stretch, and look forward.
• Act on your good thoughts: You have probably heard people say that knowledge is power but that is only the start. What makes knowledge powerful is the intentional application of what you learn.
• Repeat the process: To form a habit you need to repeat an action consistently until it becomes a natural process.

Another important component of mastering the skill of controlling the controllable is one of my favorite A words: Attitude.

Your attitude is a choice. You can choose to make your day great by adopting a good attitude, or you can make it miserable by adopting a bad attitude, the choice is yours. 

When you choose to control the controllable and let everything else go, you are choosing to adopt a great attitude. For every negative there is at least one positive, and your task is to seek those positives in every situation. You do this by focusing on what you have and what you can do, rather than dragging yourself down by concentrating on what you don’t have and what you don’t want.

Again, this is simple, but it isn’t easy. You only have to turn on the news to see this. They rarely talk about things in a positive way. Even if something is going well the media ends to find a way of making you think that it is bad. 

I always like to leave you with a challenge and this week is no different. Think about what has happened to you over the last few days. Choose one event and write down how you reacted to it. How did it make you feel? What was your emotion, positive or negative? What did you do as a result? Did you complain and feel sorry for yourself? What would you do differently now?

Take this new knowledge and intentionally apply it to your attitude this week. I promise that when you learn to master this, you will find good things come to you. 

Our aim is to help individuals and organizations to raise their bars and be on a journey of continuous improvement. Therefore it is important that you know your own values and align yourself with a company that shares those and has a culture that you can get behind.

Are you ready to Raise Your BARS and be the person you want to become?

Download your ultimate guide to getting promoted in the next 12 months here!

We want you to become the best version of yourself and to do that you have to break away from the limiting beliefs that other people impose on you and step into your greater self. If you are an aspiring leader or a leader who wants to continue growing to be the best you can be we encourage you to visit and subscribe to the Stand Up Leaders YouTube channel.

We invite you to join our Facebook group, Raise Your  Bars  - Personal Growth Solutions, and if you are ready to reprogram your current belief systems,  visit our website by clicking here.