My friend Phil asks the wrong questions. The other day he wanted to go to the cellular store on a holiday. He called the store in the afternoon to make sure they were open and found out they would be closing early for the day – too late for him to get there and have time to pick out a new phone. Phil then spent the next several minutes asking me questions such as, “Why do they close early? Why do they bother to open at all? If they're going to close early, they might as well have stayed home. It's just 3 hours – what are they going to do with 3 hours? Why don't they just stay open for their normal workday?” And on and on.
Instead, he should be asking how he can fit a visit to the store into his schedule tomorrow, and how he can avoid having this happen in the future.
And that got me to thinking: How often are we focusing on the things we cannot control, rather than those things we can control?
It's like the weather: Everyone talks about it, but no one does anything about it. Why? Obviously because we can't do anything about it. We can't control the weather, but we can certainly control where we live. Hate the snow of the north? Move south. Don't like the summer heat? Move to the coast.
It's the same way in your online business – if you simply focus on those things you can control and stop wasting time on the things you cannot control, you will be happier and more productive.
You cannot control time, but you can control what you do with your time.
You cannot control the customer service given to your customers by affiliate product owners, but you can control which products you promote (and thereby increase the odds of your customers getting great service.)
You cannot control the economy, but you can control how you earn and invest your money.
You cannot control what your competitors do, but you can control your own business and thus your own destiny.
You cannot always control what happens in life, but you can control how you react to what happens.
Getting what you want out of life is all about controlling what you can and using it to your own advantage.
You control your life. You control whether you're doing the things you're doing out of obligation or out of desire. You control your destiny.
Forget the things you cannot control and focus on those things that are within your power to control. You'll find you have less stress and more success.