If you’re like most people, you waste a lot of time and energy trying to control things that aren’t ours to control: people’s opinions, behaviors, reactions. The irony? The more you try to manage what’s outside of you, the less effective you become at leading yourself.
At the center were the things in your control:
- The way you respond to people and situations
- The people you choose to spend time with
- The way you communicate and speak to others
- Your attitude and your boundaries
- The way you treat others
Everything outside that circle? Stuff you often fixate on but can’t change: other people’s behaviors, the past/the future, outcomes, external events, and even what others say about you.
We don’t control how others treat us—we control how we treat them. We don’t decide what happens to us—we decide how we respond.
Adam Grant
This mirrors an awesome speech by Pema Chödrön about This Lousy World. Within it she describes how most of us are often frustrated with the world around us and wish we could change the entire world to make it better. She describes the analogy like wanting to cover the world with leather so our bare feet will no longer experience pain. Of course, she explains, why not just make sandals out of leather to cover your own feet?
So the analogy is, if you work with your mind, instead of trying to change everything on the outside, that’s how your temper will cool down.
Pema Chödrön
This is a core message about growth and development. It’s not about forcing someone else to change but about changing yourself (ie. “Be the change you wish to see in the world”).
This also embodies Joseph Campbell’s Hero Journey as a metaphorical embodiment of our inner psychological growth and development. In effect, by undergoing this inner journey, we are able to not only transform the way we perceive ourselves but the way we perceive the world around us, as the two are entwined as our worldview. Thus by transforming ourselves internally, we are actually transforming and changing our world externally.