Leadership is all about focusing your time, attention, and energy. Stop with the distractions and get down to focusing on the things that will make the greatest impact to your people, your team, and your business. Reminding ourselves to stop worrying about the things we don’t have control over is difficult. We’ve got to have an eye on our competition, the market trends, and all the 101 opportunities the business world presents each day. It’s great to be aware of these factors, but ultimately, leaderships is about focusing on the things that we can do TODAY to make an impact on our world.
Here are some of the things that we do have control over:
- Thoughts: We can stop the ruminating thought machine. The first step is developing awareness that you do in fact have the ability to control what you are thinking. How do you choose what to think? Decide that YOU will be the one that chooses the thoughts and images that will fill your brain, not anybody else.
- Emotions: If you learn to control your thoughts, your emotions will eventually be under control. Take the time to really feel them, to process them, but know that they are temporary. If you’re upset about the mistake you made on a pitch, it’s good to be upset, and learn what you’d do differently next time. But then let it go.
- Actions: Feel like you don’t have enough time for everything? You decide how you spend your time. Once your thoughts and emotions are clear, you have a little more control over your actions – get off of autopilot and be conscious about how you spend your time.
- Reactions: There’s something to the old adage “Life is not about what happens to you, but how you react to what happens to you”. How you react to everything that happens in your life is a choice..
Things that we just don’t control (and should stop trying to)
- Other people’s actions. We may have the ability to influence another person’s action, but we don’t control their action.
- Other people’s reactions. Don’t take people’s reactions personally. You never know what they’re going through.
- Nature. The weather, what time the sun sets – let nature take its course. Just pack an umbrella and be prepared to drive in the dark. And move on – no sense complaining about it.
“Don’t worry about what you can’t control. Our focus and energy needs to be on the things we CAN control. Attitude, effort, focus- these are the things we can control…”
– Tim Tebow
Focus your efforts on the things you do control, let go of the things you don’t control, and you will find yourself in a much more peaceful, zen-like state of mind. And you’ll be able to lead better at work and at home.