Last week involved a lot of travel – planes, trains and automobiles as the film title goes.
It was unbelievable how many things went wrong. Flights were delayed, trains were cancelled, traffic was endless.
At the start of the week, I found myself getting worked up by a delayed flight. You see that flight had a knock-on effect. It meant getting to my hotel later than I would have liked, having less sleep than I planned and not being as rested for a full day’s work the next day.
As I looked around at the other people waiting for the flight, they seemed to be getting as annoyed as I was. In fact, some of them seemed to be even more annoyed and frustrated than me. Some people started getting loud. Others started arguing.
After a while, I started to realise it didn’t matter how annoyed I or other people got, it wouldn’t make a difference to the situation. So instead of getting really wound up about something that I have zero control over, I thought, I should do something useful instead. I could use the time to get some extra steps in. I could read some of my book. I could call my family. I could listen to a podcast. All these things would bring me far more joy than sitting around with my fellow disgruntled passengers, huffing and puffing.
It was a bit of a revelation. I found myself relaxing into the situation instead of getting stressed. Of course, I cared but I had no say in the matter, so what was the point in getting mad?
When I finally arrived at my destination, the train from the airport was cancelled. Another delay. But because I had saved my energy not getting stressed about the flight, I felt I was in a better place to handle the cancelled train.
Of course, it wasn’t what I wanted to happen. Of course, my natural reaction was to eff and jeff like everyone else. Of course, I would have preferred to be tucked up in my hotel bed instead of standing on a platform at 1am.
But again, I couldn’t do anything about. It didn’t matter how much I ranted and raved; I still couldn’t get the train to come any quicker. So, I decided to make the best of it.
The rest of the week involved more of the same. Delays, cancellations and traffic jams. Each time I reminded myself I have no control over this situation, so save your energy. Chill. Try to make the best of a bad situation.
It isn’t that I didn’t care because I really did. But I found it took some of the pressure off.
You see it all the time. Most people go their entire lives moaning about things that aren’t in their control, wishing things were different, blaming other people, using up their finite amount of energy each day on the things they can’t control.
We need to learn to focus our attention on what is in our control. How we look at the situation, how we determine what it means, how we then choose to respond to it.
You can’t control when your boss says something you don’t like. You can’t control when that annoying family member pushes your buttons. You can’t control the weather, the traffic, the delayed flights, but what you can always control is yourself. Figuring that out gives you much more power than you realise.
It isn’t necessarily a cure for all of your problems but separating what is and isn’t in your control might help in some cases. It can bring you peace, calm, clarity and opportunity to zoom out and focus on another perspective, to see the opportunity instead of the obstacle.
I dare you to give it a go.