Why Appreciating Life’s Unplanned Moments is Crucial (Even If Your Safety Once Hinged on Control)
Hey Reader,
You’re not owed a thing.
A harsh truth, but a reality you must swallow. Does this mean you shouldn’t be kind, respectful, and of service to others? Absolutely not.
It’s the opposite.
It requires you to lean into the unknown.
To gain control, you must first give it up. The harder you try to control things, the more chaotic they become.
Here’s why.
Life Doesn’t Always Work The Way You Want it To
Life is like the teenager who’s too good for your advice and already has everything figured out.
It rarely considers your input, even when you plan everything perfectly.
There’s too many variables to get lined up for things to work out exactly how you’ve planned. And if you’re honest with yourself, would you want it to? Where would the excitement be in that? Imagine a life with no surprises? The magic of Christmas morning would be forever ruined (well, not if you keep getting those socks you don’t want).
The thing is, getting everything you ever wanted can be a negative. If you’re not wise in your actions or thoughts, you get more miserable. It reminds me of the child TV stars who coped with the sudden gap of irrelevance by using hard drugs as adults. A lack of support, maturity, or overzealous parents often take the blame. Yet, it’s a prime example to illustrate that if you’re not ready to handle the weight of what you want, don’t ask for the load.
No matter what life throws your way, you need to drop your sense of entitlement. It’s like wearing a stained pair of goggles. It slows your reactions and makes you vulnerable to attacks from all angles.
When life doesn’t go as planned, see it as an opportunity to pivot, not as failure. Recognize the change and adapt.
You give yourself more trouble than necessary when you don’t
Bitterness is like ice cream.
It’s tempting, but overindulging in it–dwelling on what you think you deserve leaves you miserable and further from a solution.
Bitterness is dangerous, like ice cream, because it’s sweet. But it’s the sweet things you have to look after because indulgence makes your life harder, not easier. Giving too heavily into the feeling you’re not getting what you deserve only gets you to think about how you’ve been wronged instead of finding a solution to your problems.
Discrimination, harassment, and violence? That’s a different animal and certainly deserves attention.
But believing you should get paid $10,000 because you reached out to five people or expecting the fat should just melt off after three workouts? Come on.
A little consistency is important here. Because effort compounds. So take small steps. They’re the foundation for big outcomes.
Without it, you can end up with a warped view of rewards and consequences where you believe half the effort is worth ten times the return.
You give yourself more trouble than necessary when your focus on outcomes overrides attention to your process.
Action sets your dreams in motion, not thinking about what you’re going to do.
You Get in the Way of Your Own Progress
Sometimes, you feel like you’re not enough.
And for some, like myself in the past, “not enough” serves as a catalyst for action.
But it also has negative effects.
It’s like when you’ve focused on one thing for so long that it’s all you can think about–eventually, it stops being helpful.
In one moment, “not enough” can motivate you to smash like The Hulk. But after the effects wear off, you’re left as a shell as yourself (and a little less green).
Over time, this way of thinking can be counterproductive.
Realistic expectations of your abilities are thrown out the window because you locked yourself into a fixed mindset which makes it difficult to realize that challenges are more nuanced than being able to only force your way through.
Sometimes brute force won’t get you where you need to go. Instead, take a step back and think strategically–what small shift could make a big difference?
You can’t conquer external challenges if you’re at war with yourself
Your first victory should always be over your inner critic.
The stoic Seneca implied that the ultimate goal in life is to become a friend to ourselves.
I don’t know about you, but sometimes I wouldn’t call myself over for a drink.
The so-called, “soft-skills” are actually quite hard to develop.
It’s a lot easier to ignore your feelings and beat yourself up than it is to rationalize the problem. For some reason, we equate mistakes with being an awful person. Perhaps it has to do with our fear of getting kicked out of our tribe. But in many cases, we’re the only one worried about the typo that showed up on the team’s presentation.
Discipline isn’t all drudgery.
The struggle of keeping up with your workout routine or persevering through a product launch gives life its meaning. And more importantly, strengthens and gets you to believe in yourself more and more. In a sense, discipline is about becoming more of a friend to yourself and not an enemy.
But degrading yourself?
Even when you make mistakes, you don’t want to dig too deep.
That’s like taking a knife and cutting into a wound on your arm. We do this all the time by reminding ourselves how stupid we are or how we will never get it right.
Mental pain is a lot like physical pain.
Care for the wound instead of making it worse.
So, who is your ally in the fight against yourself?
Positive self-talk.
Research shows that positive self-talk strengthens connections in brain regions linked to motivation and executive functions, leading to better performance outcomes in a variety of contexts (Kim et al.). And the internal dialogue fosters a positive feedback loop that encourages resilience and confidence (Azevedo and Azevedo).
Fight back against your own worst habits with positive self-talk.
The Immediate Consequences Take Precedence Over the Long Term Ones
How many of your New Year’s resolutions have taken a backseat over the years?
New goals, big projects can fill you with enthusiasm. But they’re also easy to lose track of.
Why?
The pressing needs of the day take over. You get consumed with all of what’s in front of you and forget about your big hairy audacious goals. It’s painful to look at the half-finished project you started 4-months ago or to realize you were charged again for your gym membership (you know the one you haven’t stepped inside for weeks).
Things pop up, often out of your control. This can make consistency hard, but not futile.
It’s about doing your best, not chasing perfection.
Take Stock of the Essential
Deciding what to work on is challenging.
There’s so many other things you can do like organize your desk for the twentieth time.
Why is it so hard to just pick something and do it?
Unseen bumps in the road can stall your progress. As a result, flow is disrupted. Knowing where you left off and having to tweak things screws with your expectations. The stories we tell ourselves and the mysterious wiring of our brains makes us deviate from the path.
This wandering isn’t all bad. Useful insights or discovery can be found when you let go of the path you think you’re supposed to go on.
However, even if you switch paths you must focus on the actions that lead you closer to where you want to go.
If you want to write, you need to spend time writing. If you want to play basketball, you need to spend time playing basketball. When you identify a weakness, let’s say a lack of strength or size in sport, it’s easy to mistakenly conflate this with the wrong objective. So, instead of harnessing your sport skill, you spend all of your time trying to get big.
But this costs you precious resources to the thing that differentiates you–your skill.
If you’re stuck, ask yourself one question every day:
“Am I working on the one thing that matters?”
If the answer is no, it’s time to refocus.
You can easily tell if you are or not by taking a look at your schedule. If there’s no record of it, then no progress has been made.
Illness, injury, and sudden tasks can pull you away from your one focus. That’s okay. Superhuman effort is not required, just intention. Just because you said you want to accomplish a goal, doesn’t tie you to working on it for 7 straight hours. You have a life and maybe kids. No matter how audacious your goals are, every step towards it doesn’t need to be a big one.
All you want to do is keep making progress.
How?
- By releasing what you don’t need to do
- Making it easy to accomplish
- Saying no
And it’s not simply work tasks, it’s your relationships too. Without careful attention, date nights can slip through the cracks for example.
You are not in control.
When I feel tension or though I am running on empty, I’ve learned I’ve had to accept this idea.
By embracing this, you recognize what you do have control over–your attitude.
Giving up control isn’t about being a pushover to life. Rather it’s a kick in the pants that reality is what you make it.
The real power lies in recognizing that while you can’t control everything, you always control how you respond.
That’s where your true strength lies.
References:
Azevedo, Jen, and Jen Azevedo. “Why Positive Self-Talk Improves Your Athletic Performance.” Thepaseoclub.com, 27 Dec. 2023, www.thepaseoclub.com/blog/why-positive-self-talk-improve-performance. Accessed 14 Sept. 2024.
Kim, Junhyung, et al. “The Effects of Positive or Negative Self-Talk on the Alteration of Brain Functional Connectivity by Performing Cognitive Tasks.” Nature News, Nature Publishing Group, 21 July 2021, www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-94328-9.
Quick Question Before You Go:
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If you think this will benefit others:
See you next Saturday,
Marcus W.
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