Control the controllables

You miss the train and now you’re going to be late to your meeting. How do you react?

For most of us, tempers rise and negative self-talk takes over.

This is just great. I wasn’t even late. And of course, today is the one day the train is early. It’s never on time. But of course, today it is. The day I have this important meeting. My boss is going to flip. It’s going to be one of those days.

We carry on like a sleep deprived six year old coming down from a sugar high (something I recently witnessed at a cafe). 

I mean, missing a train can be annoying, but is it really something we should let ruin our day? Does it really warrant throwing our toys out of the cot and screaming for mum?

The sunk cost fallacy

Once the train has been missed, it’s a sunk cost. Something that has already happened, that we cannot change. It’s happened. It’s gone. It’s sunk. So we should let it go and ignore it.

To worry about something that has already happened is to worry about something that is outside of our control. It’s as irrational as worrying about whether it’ll rain in 14 weeks time on your birthday or your golf weekend. We cannot control the weather, just like we cannot control the train being early.

Think about how ridiculous this is. To worry about something we have absolutely no control over. To let something outside our control completely ruin our day. It’s so preposterous (great word) that I put it in bold and carried on writing like it ain’t no thing. 

Yet we worry about things we cannot control all the time. The train is only one example. Have you ever worried about:

• Whether someone likes you?
• Whether you’ll get noticed?
• That comment someone made about your work?
• Whether the price of houses will continue to rise?
• More importantly, whether the price of smashed avocado will continue to rise?
• Who’s going to win The Bachelor?

Yeah, thought so.

Focusing on what we can control

Rather than worrying about things we cannot control, what if we instead focus on things we can control? For some of us, we can control more than we might think. For others (*cough* control freaks *cough*) it’s likely less than we think.

There are the obvious things like what time we go to bed at night and leave the house in the morning. Or what we eat dinner and who we decide to eat it with. However, one thing that often gets overlooked is the control we have over our reactions.

Consider this posture from one of my favourite books in recent times The Obstacle Is The Way:

“The only guarantee, ever, is that things will go wrong. The only thing we can use to mitigate this is anticipation. Because the only variable we control completely is ourselves.”

So what if we accept that things will inevitably go wrong? What if we accept that we should spend our energy on how we react to situations? And what if we saw the opportunity in something going wrong, rather than immediately seeing the negative?

Read the now legendary Thomas Edison story. At the age of 67, he woke to discover his plant being burned down, destroying half his life’s work. The reaction? He calmly turned to his son and said “Go get your mother and all her friends. They will never see a fire like this again.” 

What a boss.

He certainly didn’t throw a tantrum like my housemate did when he realised he’d missed the finale of Ninja Warrior.

In the missed train scenario, what if instead of spiralling into negative self-talk we paused, took a deep breath and told ourselves: Not to worry, I’ll call my boss, tell her I’ll be 10 minutes late and now I can use the extra time to clear out my inbox.  

With all due respect 2metre, you’re not Thomas Edison, and neither am I

That’s a fair point. I suppose what I’m getting at is we spend a lot of time in our own heads. We worry. We think. We hypothesise. Yet most of the time the things we’re worrying, thinking or hypothesising about are completely outside our control.

So next time we find our temper flaring, anxiety building or frustration brewing, just stop. Take a deep breath and ask:

• Is this a sunk cost?
• Can I control the outcome?

If the answer is either yes to the sunk cost or no to control then let it go. Youtube “yoga music” and relax*. Give yourself a break. Cut yourself some slack. And when you’ve done that, consider what opportunities this creates?

We cannot expect to control every aspect of our life and always get things our way (#sorrynotsorry). Instead, we should focus on controlling the controllables. And yes, I realise that’s not a word. 

*Seriously, I have a friend who swears by this.