Working With Your Limited Control

What you control in life might be limited but it’s still a lot.

Murray "MJ" Blehart

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A person looking down a road. How do you work with your limited control?
Photo by Eliott Reyna on Unsplash

I don’t know about you, but it looks to me like the world has gone completely nuts. How else can you explain the results of the US election and the majority voting for the guy who plans to make their lives unnecessarily miserable?

While this is difficult to not pay attention to, it does put a spotlight on a harsh truth. You have little to no control over the world around you. You can vote, protest, act to persuade others to your way of thinking, and that’s about it. Beyond that, you have no control.

The thing is, overall, you have no control of anything outside yourself. This includes the weather, traffic, the overall environment, what your friends/family/coworkers are going to do or not do, how you will feel when you wake up, and pretty much everything else in the external world.

What do you control? Yourself. Specifically, your inner world. This presents some interesting challenges because most of what you do and can control is utterly immaterial and intangible.

Limitations, the material and immaterial

This is, for many, a bitter pill to swallow. Even the most passive people I know want to exert control over their own lives…

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