The "focus on the things I can control"

challenge.

It is what it sounds like. The only way I'm going to have the energy necessary to get a
flying pace going on my goals from the near halt I'm at presently is to focus
EXCLUSIVELY on the things I can control... none of that "almost exclusively" crap. If
some shit happens I will only focus on changing my behavior in response to it instead of
fretting over the shit. The net effect will be the same anyway, just less helpless behavior.

I made a little mental list of the things I can control should I need some pointers to the
obvious (or somebody else may).

-My actions
-My thoughts
-My belief system
-My response to situations
-My emotions, to some extent... failing that, back to my actions.
-My state of 'consciousness'.. ie present, in my head.
-What my goals are/ my plans
-My behavior (genuine, not as impression managing 'acting'.)

That's about it. That is ALL I am going to focus on for the next... let's say, 2 weeks. It may
be there is a need for some balance, but I'm going to find out by going full on this mindset,
as much as possible instead of 'dipping my toes in the water'.

For further clarification, a list of things that are NOT under your control.

-People's opinions of you, or their belief systems

-The outcome... no matter how good you are at something, the outcome is NOT under your
control... just your actions, no matter what your success rate is.
-The random happenings of life, the uncertain parts of the future (what will happen,
basically.. so outcome again.)
-The past.
-Focusing on something you want to change rather than the actions you want to take to
change it.
-Occasionally, emotions. They're kind of like events. You can only focus on what you'll do
about them sometimes. So.. just watch them and either stop what you're doing if you
realize you really don't want it (usually not a problem with presence... no getting caught up
in an 'unconscious (aka thoughtless) stream of thought and doing something weird), or pay
attention to them, and proceed.
If I find myself focusing overly on any of these in this latter catagory I will
IMMEDIATELY start focusing on the things I can control again. I'll keep a log of how it
goes, but if you wanna try it, I recommend you just do it instead of waiting... honestly not
even sure why I want to update... accountability, I suppose. I'm pretty sure this is going to
give me the fuel I need to get MASSIVE ACTION going, though. I can already see results
just having tried it out for 10 minutes whenever I catch myself doing otherwise.
2 Weeks of discipline & Intent to get my success spiral pumping and have a well
earned break

So I've been in this new city for just over a month now,
Have been pimping consistently every week for that month (check out my FR if you
happen to give a fuck :p), studying super super hard....
Been forming healthy habits such as meditation and working out. Eating healthy.

Its been good but I need to take it up a step.

I want to get some gains in my discipline and intent.

Discipline is doing what you are suppose to do when your suppose to do it to the best of
your ability at that time.
With intent means doing what your doing with purpose, aim, and desire.
I will have to constantly measure and do the following:
 Control myself
 Push through the pain
 Focus on what I want rather than what I don't want.
 Finish what I start
 Fail

"people arent at ease with bad emotions" ~tyler

I want to go and find my "second wind", see what I can do. Push, push, push past resistance
and find reserves I didnt know where there. see what will happen and maybe fail. But push
a little harder, stay in there -> empty out all the energy
Because "in great attempts it is glorious even to fail"~bruce lee

DESERVE THE EARNED BREAK @ the finish

After the storm, I can relax, truly feel the calm, truly understand what its like to have
worked so hard. Understand the feeling after conquering such a great feet. I want to get that
peace, the real peace that I deserved from working so hard.

There is no quick fix and this is going to be hard. But Ill learn to enjoy the process, prove to
myself that I can do this. Finish this and build the confidence to know I can finish other
projects in the future.

- -- ---- ------- -------- on the journey -------- ------- ---- -- -

focus:
RAS; working out my reticular activation system with everything I do, whether its my
study, meditation, game, exercise, rest...
Unleash the genius. hit the stumbling blocks while learning to have to push through and
learn it. Once I have learnt something that I was once confused about (everything) It stick
in my mind, expect road blocks, they are there to help you learn!
Believe in yourself, believe itll make a difference. urgency, focus, engage. believe you can
actually do it, it is possible
- --HOPE-- -
OPTIMISM - -- --- ---- the belief that its possible
URGENCY - -- --- ---- love it, enjoy it, have the sense of urgency!!!
you are not dumb, your intellegent, not the sheep that believes everything sombody says.
analyse everything, learn it all, be excited about learning and really see where you can go.
This is for you...

BUY IN::
buy into YourSelf
 value it
 believe in it (screen out the bullshit)
 amp yourself up
 try it, keep an open mind

THINK____ how does this help you????

everyday becoming a little tighter

everyday adding to the spiral
everything will add to the spiral (game, studyy, reading, writing, planning, socialising,
nutrition, meditation)
everyday strengthening your character
everyday enjoying the hussle of the process

through suffering you will become strong

AGRESSION (be tough on youself, self control)

********** ******* ****** **** *** ** * S H U T T H E F U C K U P A N D

D O I T * ** *** **** ****** ******** ***********
if your going to do it, shut the fuck up and do it, lets get on with it. I cant control the shit I
cant control so use what you have, haavae fun, struggle, push. Ive chosen to do it so.......
DECISION!!! STFU .... and .. get on with it. do the best you can with the time you have
SON!!

:D
prolly use this thread to post my progression.
I wrote this for myself.
But feel free to comment ;)

peace.

Habit 1 : Be Proactive
Your life doesn't just "happen." Whether you know it or not, it is carefully designed by you.
The choices, after all, are yours. You choose happiness. You choose sadness. You choose
decisiveness. You choose ambivalence. You choose success. You choose failure. You
choose courage. You choose fear. Just remember that every moment, every situation,
provides a new choice. And in doing so, it gives you a perfect opportunity to do things
differently to produce more positive results.

Habit 1: Be Proactive is about taking responsibility for your life. You can't keep blaming
everything on your parents or grandparents. Proactive people recognize that they are
"response-able." They don't blame genetics, circumstances, conditions, or conditioning for
their behavior. They know they choose their behavior. Reactive people, on the other hand,
are often affected by their physical environment. They find external sources to blame for
their behavior. If the weather is good, they feel good. If it isn't, it affects their attitude and
performance, and they blame the weather. All of these external forces act as stimuli that we
respond to. Between the stimulus and the response is your greatest power--you have the
freedom to choose your response. One of the most important things you choose is what you
say. Your language is a good indicator of how you see yourself. A proactive person uses
proactive language--I can, I will, I prefer, etc. A reactive person uses reactive language--I
can't, I have to, if only. Reactive people believe they are not responsible for what they say
and do--they have no choice.

Instead of reacting to or worrying about conditions over which they have little or no
control, proactive people focus their time and energy on things they can control. The
problems, challenges, and opportunities we face fall into two areas--Circle of Concern and
Circle of Influence.

Proactive people focus their efforts on their Circle of Influence. They work on the things
they can do something about: health, children, problems at work. Reactive people focus
their efforts in the Circle of Concern--things over which they have little or no control: the
national debt, terrorism, the weather. Gaining an awareness of the areas in which we
expend our energies in is a giant step in becoming proactive.
Focus On What You Control. Let Go Of
What You Don’t.

The average person starts the personal development journey in order to gain more control
over his or her ability to make changes in their lives. But, somewhere along the journey
they forget that there are certain things we really don’t control.

In fact, there are some things that were never meant to be controlled. By focusing on the
things we do control, and letting go of the things we don’t the ride through journey of life
and personal development tends to be a lot less bumpy.

The Things That We Control

o Thoughts
Whether you realize it or not you do have the ability to control your
thoughts.

The first step is developing awareness that you do in fact have the ability to
control what you are thinking. Unfortunately, advertisers, marketers, and
anybody else who has benefited from attempting to exert influence over you,
have done a pretty good job keeping you unaware. So how do you choose
what to think? It’s simple. Decide that YOU will be the one that chooses the
thoughts and images that will fill your brain, not anybody else. Once you
decide, then all you have to do is use empowering questions to control the
focus of your mind.

 Emotions
Emotions are largely a byproduct of what you are thinking. If you learn to control
your thoughts, your emotions will eventually be under control. Learning to control
emotions is important because they are extremely powerful. If there’s anything that
advertisers have learned it’s that associating emotion with one of their products is
exactly what you gets you to the next step, which is to take action.

 Actions
If you haven’t noticed by now, each one of these builds on the other, and if you
don’t control one, then you won’t control the other. In other words if you don’t
control your thoughts and your emotions, your actions will occur on autopilot. Have
you ever come from home shopping with what is referred to as an “impulse
purchase”? This basically occurs because you see something, you have a thought
 about it, you have the sellers intended emotion, and you take the sellers intended
action. Take control and take your intended action.

 Reactions
If there’s any phrase that might make you feel like I’m beating the dead horse of
personal development it’s that “Life is not about what happens to you, but how you
react to what happens to you?”. I know it’s been said over and over again, but it
seems be the root structure of this tree we call personal development. How you react
to everything that happens in your life is a choice. Setbacks, wipe outs, and the
overall obstacles along the road of life are inevitable. But, how you deal with them
will ultimately determine the quality of your life.

 Energy
The life coach I work with once told me “assume that everybody you are talking to
can feel everything you are thinking.” There’s no doubt that you feel a vibe from
almost anybody you talk to. You’ve also been in a situation where somebody really
liked you right off the bat. The combination of thoughts, emotions, actions, and
reactions results in energy, and the energy you give off is something you control. By
having good energy we attract positive experiences and people.

The Things We Don’t Control

o Other people’s actions
Let’s be honest with ourselves for a moment. As much as we’d like to think
we have the ability to control other people’s actions, people will ultimately
act according to their own will. Unless somebody holds a gun to another
person’s head the action they take is their choice. We may have the ability to
influence another person’s action, but we don’t control their action.

 Other people’s reactions

Have you ever walked up to somebody in a bar, restaurant or lounge, with a smile
on your face and said “hello” only to have them blow you off with a scowl? Have
you ever been to a restaurant and had a really obnoxious waiter or waitress? It’s
likely that you have and if you haven’t you will at some point in your life. Most
people are going through their own world of problems, and how they react to you
often has nothing to do with you. Obviously, this doesn’t mean you should have no
social boundaries and act like an idiot. But don’t take people’s reactions personally.
You never know what they’re going through.

 Divine Order
Human nature is to want to force everything. In fact we have continually invented
technologies to speed up certain things in our lives, and in the process we often
forget that there is a divine order in which things occur. The power of presence is
another mantra that seems to be echoed throughout the personal development
community. While the fact that you are exactly where you are supposed to be,
experiencing exactly what you are supposed to be experiencing, doing exactly what
 you are supposed to be doing, may sometimes be disconcerting, it is a fact of life.
An attempt to control divine order is an exercise in futility.

 Nature
Let nature take its course. When you plant a seed, you don’t dig it up to see how
well it’s growing. That would be completely silly and you would end up starting the
process all over again with a new seed. It seems to me that manifesting things into
our lives works in a similar manner. Every time we questions where the thing the we
asked for is, it’s like digging up the seeds.

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.
 Focus on What You Can Control
By Philip E. Humbert, PhD

As I write this, the sun is rising over the hills to the south-east, hidden behind a pillar on the
corner of my home. When I sit at this table during the summer, the sun rises off my left
shoulder, but now it has moved dramatically to the south. It shifts slowly, and from one day
to the next I see no apparent difference, but over time, the earth changes from summer to
winter.

Without noticing it, and with no effort on my part, in six months my relationship with the
entire solar system has changed! The light in my office has changed, and so I shift
positions, re-arrange my computer screen, move the furniture, and even work at a different
time of the day, all because of changes over which I have no control, and take no notice.

Success and failure are often like that. We cannot control many of the things and events in
our lives, including the sun and the tilt of the earth. What I DO control is whether or not I
put curtains on the windows, arrange my furniture to take advantage of the light, and use
the seasons to add variety and perspective to my office. Actually, I depend on the changing
angle of the sun to "make" me move the furniture and dust behind my desk every few
months. I use these predictable changes to enrich my office and make me look at the world
differently.

In life, there are many things over which we have no control. Fortunately however, there
are many things we can influence, and a few wonderful things we can arrange as we see fit.
Highly successful people understand this and spend their time and energy where they can
make a difference.

There is a wonderful quote that is attributed to Marianne Williamson that points out that our
fear is not that we are powerless, but that in fact we are powerful beyond measure. We can
influence more than we think. Given enough time, courage and determination, we can
modify, impact, transform and re-invent almost everything in our lives. We are not in
complete control; that is no excuse to deny the power we have!

The new year will last twelve months. You will have 52 weeks in which to choose your
priorities. You will have 365 days to decide where to focus your time, your attention and
your efforts. You will have thousands of opportunities to choose, to try, and to learn. Twelve
months is a huge amount of time! In twelve months you can achieve miracles.

In the coming twelve months the sun will move, the earth will tilt, the seasons will change.
You cannot control these things. But you can control what time you get up in the morning.
You can choose your attitude, your friends, your reading material, your diet, your focus and
your goals. You can, to a remarkable degree, create the life you want. Choose well. Use
your power.
“My Focus? The Overlap Between Things
I Can Control and Things That Matter.”

Happiness interview: Carl Richards.

I initially got to know Carl Richards’s work because he and I share the same literary agent,
which creates a fellow-feeling akin to having gone to the the same high school. I was very
interested in his writing (and drawing), because he often addresses the connection between
happiness and money, which is one of the most complicated and emotionally charged
subjects within happiness.

One thing I particularly admire about Carl is his ability to sum up large issues in simple,
powerful sketches. Seeing a problem that feels very complicated distilled into a napkin-
sized drawing helps me understand the essentials.

His book, The Behavior Gap: Simple Ways to Stop Doing Dumb Things with Money, has
just hit the shelves. It’s about the “behavior gap”—the distance between what we should do
and what we actually do.

I was very interested to hear his thoughts about happiness.

Gretchen: What’s a simple activity that consistently makes you happier?

Carl: Getting outside! I live in the mountains of Utah and have found that every single time
I get myself out on my mountain bike or skis it makes me happy. Of course, it’s often even
better when done with family or friends, but even alone…it works. What’s wild is that
despite knowing this is true, it’s often hard to get myself out. There are always other things
that seem urgent, but most of the time there is nothing more important.

What’s something you know now about happiness that you didn’t know when you
were 18 years old?
I used to think that the way to find happiness was to search for it. I’m starting to believe
that the key to happiness is to get myself to a place where I stop looking for it. It seems that
being happy is really a function of being present. Here. Now. Like you say, on that bus with
your daughter.

Is there anything you find yourself doing repeatedly that gets in the way of your
happiness?
Because I spend a huge amount of my time thinking about it (it’s my job!), I often find
myself feeling regret for past mistakes or worrying about the future. Neither of those two
activities makes me happy. It’s pretty clear why. Worrying about the future or feeling regret
about the past takes me out of the present and then I miss the joy that comes from living
now.

Is there a happiness mantra or motto that you’ve found very helpful?(e.g., I remind
myself to “There is only love.”)
Two things come to mind:

[1] I breathe! It’s amazing to me how much peace you can find in focusing on your breath. I
guess there is a reason so many of the ancient spiritual traditions focus on it. When I find
myself getting anxious or upset, I just take a minute and breathe. If my mind wanders back
to the problem, I gently pull it back to my breath.
[2] I work through a little Q&A with myself:
Is this an issue or “problem” I’m having with something that really matters?
Is it something I can control?

I have found it helps (particularly with financial decisions) to focus on those things that
matter and that you have at least some control over.

5. If you’re feeling blue, how do you give yourself a happiness boost?

I get outside and exercise. Hard. In fact my wife has learned that when I’m being
particularly, shall we say, “unhappy” that the best thing for me is to get out! It only takes an
hour and things seem much better afterwards.

Is there anything that you see people around you doing or saying that adds a lot to
their happiness, or detracts a lot from their happiness?
I often see people worrying about things that don’t matter anymore or things they have very
little control over. Working as a financial planner, I often see a lot of people unhappy with
their finances. Money seems to have the ability to make people happy or miserable
depending on their approach. When I wrote The Behavior Gap, I hoped that I could help
people figure out how to have a better relationship with money, to take the misery out of it,
by helping them get really clear about the things that matter when it comes to money and
the things that don’t. Because the things that really matter will vary from person to person,
it wasn’t my goal to provide answers for people, but instead help people find the right
questions to ask.

Have you always felt about the same level of happiness, or have you been through a
period when you felt exceptionally happy or unhappy—if so, why? If you were
unhappy, how did you become happier?
There have definitely been times when I have been very unhappy, depressed even. Most
times it’s when I allow myself to get overwhelmed or distracted by the things that don’t
matter. One of my favorite sketches in the book is Things to Focus On. It’s the perfect
reminder that there are things we can control and things that matter, and where they
overlap, that’s where we should focus our efforts.

Do you work on being happier? If so, how?

Without question. The last few years have been challenging ones for my family, both
personally and professionally. So we make an effort to focus on things that bring us real
happiness. Not too surprisingly the things that cost the least or nothing at all often resulted
in the happiest moments. One way I try to stay happy is by doing my best to react less on
emotion and to make decisions based on our family’s plan. I’m rarely unhappy when I can
stick to that goal.
Focus on What You Can Control
Posted on April 2, 2013

“Incredible change happens in your life when you decide to take control of what you do
have power over instead of craving control over what you don’t.” – Steve Maraboli

While it can be interesting and thought-provoking to debate and complain about the politics
in this country, on a personal level it doesn’t really affect your finances on a daily basis.
Sure, the taxes that you pay can be changed and that could hurt your bottom line in a small
way. But spending your time complaining about this type of thing isn’t going to help you
see any real progress.

In fact, it’s not only politics that are mostly unrelated to your successes and failures with
your finances. There are a host of other topics that have almost no bearing on the
attainment of your saving and investment goals. Spend a little less time focusing on those
things which you have no control over and more on the decisions that have an actual impact
on your overall financial well-being and you will save yourself tons of time and stress.

I’m going to go through six areas that people spend way too much time complaining about
and thinking they can control along with a corresponding activity that you actually do
control and can spend more time focusing on.

1. No Control – Politics: Approval ratings are at all-time lows for most of our politicians.
Their negotiating tactics leave much to be desired, especially in the last couple of years
dealing with the debt ceiling, sequestration, etc.

And while it can make for interesting conversation to debate the minutiae in politics these
days, it will have no bearing on your finances and even less than you think on your daily
life. Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone said this on the day of the most recent presidential
election:

“For most of us, our day-to-day lives won’t change a lick no matter who wins tonight. If we
just turned off our cable channels and stayed off the net, it would take months, maybe
years, for most of us to guess who won.”

Pay attention to politics to figure out how you will vote and focus on state and local issues.
But for your financial well-being politics matter very little, especially within your
investment and savings decisions.

You Do Control – Setting Goals: I feel like Tony Robbins telling you to set goals but it
helps. Don’t spend as much time coming up with numbers and forecasts for your goals.
Focus on the “why” for each goal.
Why do you need to save for retirement? Why do you need an emergency fund? Why do
you need to make more money? Most of these deal with having freedom from stress and
from making tough decisions. Write down your goals and revisit them on a yearly basis to
make sure the “why” hasn’t changed.

2. No Control – Taxes: It’s obvious that our tax system is too long and complex. 75 years
ago the instructions to fill out your Form 1040 were 2 pages long. Now they run 189 pages.
In the last decade alone there have been almost 4,500 changes to the tax code (that’s more
than one a day). And the U.S. tax code is now 3.8 million words long.

How does this affect your finances on a daily basis? Not much really. It can be cathartic to
vent about our tax policies and the politicians that make them but you really can’t control
how it all shakes out. And you have much more important things to worry about than how
the tax code is going to affect you. If it does change, we adapt and move on.

File your taxes every year and make use of the benefits you receive through tax sheltered
accounts such as the 401(k) and Roth IRA. Those things you can control, but not tax policy.

You Do Control – Learning to Keep Your Emotions in Check: Put your finances on
auto pilot. Don’t allow fear and greed to take over your decision-making process. Take the
time to make an investment plan that you will stick to through thick and thin. Have
processes in place that force you take make systematic moves not based on how you are
feeling on a particular day or based on the movements of the markets.

3. No Control – The Economy: It’s nice to hear that the economy is doing well when you
turn on the news at night. But the data points that they give are mostly meaningless to you.
Economic data get revised, and then revised again and again (some actually for a number of
years). There are seasonal adjustments and changes to the way they calculate the data.

An old economic joke (there obviously aren’t many of these) goes that economists have
called 9 of the last 5 recessions. Sure the broader economy affects the business cycle but
it’s nearly impossible to use that information to make investments on a consistent basis.
And we’ve seen that stocks and the economy don’t necessarily follow the same path.

You Do Control – Your Career: Spend more time looking for ways to improve your
career. This could include networking with other professionals in your line of work, going
to conferences and seminars, or just sitting down with your boss to make sure you are doing
everything you can to help the organization and improve as an employee.

Even taking out a colleague to coffee every once and a while can improve morale and help
your understanding of what they are dealing with on the job.

4. No Control – The Stock Market: It’s funny when you hear a news outlet give you a
headline as to why the stock market was up or down on a particular day. How do they really
know why it went up or down? A recent study found that 75% of the time there is no
rational explanation for big moves in the stock market, either up or down.
The stock market is a collection of individuals, portfolio managers, mutual funds,
institutional investors and more. Do all of their goals line up exactly on the same day? Of
course not. There are infinite reasons why one party is buying and another party is selling
on any particular day. Here’s an honest headline that the authors at the Freakonomics blog
would like to see some day:

“Stocks Surge, Reasons Unknown; May Be Nothing More Than the Random Fluctuation of
a Complex System”

Don’t look too deeply into the stock market’s moves, especially in the short run. It will
likely make little sense and you have no control over the emotions of the crowd anyways.

You Do Control – Asset Allocation: This is most important investment decision you can
make. It helps shape the risk profile & time horizon of your investments. You can really
learn who you are as an investor through your asset allocation (hopes, fears, biases,
tolerance for loss, psychology).

5. No Control – Your Investment Returns: Stocks have earned about 8-9% a year over
the very long-term. But that doesn’t mean that it’s a straight line up every year. You don’t
just punch in on January 1st and collect your 8-9% a year later. Since 1928, the Dow Jones
has increased more than 10% in a single day eight times, declined more than 10% in a
single day four times, and gone either up or down more than 5% in a single day 136 times.
The typical returns are all over the place.

Take a look at the past 13 years of annual S&P 500 results: 16.00%, 2.11%, 15.06%,
26.46%, -37.00%, 5.49%, 15.79%, 4.91%, 10.88%, 28.68%, -22.1%, -11.89%, -9.10%. So,
while it would be great to earn consistent returns year in and year out, the whole risk-
reward relationship doesn’t work that way.

Plus, who knows if that 8-9% a year will remain in the future. In fact, a good argument can
be made that returns will be lower going forward. No one really knows. The lesson? Don’t
expect to control your investment returns or they will control you.

You Do Control – How Much You Save: This will have a much larger impact on the size
of your net worth. And you get to control the amount you save each and every year. Start
early and let compound interest help you along the way.

6. No Control – Short-Term Movements in Individual Stocks: If you think the overall

stock market fluctuates just imagine what all of the individual stocks that make up the
market can do on a daily basis. When you invest in an individual stock here are just some
of the factors that can move the stock on a particular day: earnings announcements,
revisions, future outlooks, analyst opinions, the company’s industry, competitor’s results,
input prices, rumors, fear & greed, supply & demand, and I could go on.

Just know that there are so many working parts that the movement of the price of one stock
will probably be very nonsensical on most days. Even if you are correct in your analysis
other investors may not agree with you over the short-term. The control is out of your
hands here and it lies at the feet of the collective market and its participants.

You Do Control – Costs: It’s simple really. The more you trade the higher your transaction
costs will be. The average expense ratio for an actively managed large cap mutual fund is
about 1.30% a year. An S&P 500 index fund has an expense ratio as low as 0.10% per year.
That’s a big difference to make up in performance each year through stock picking.

A 1.20% difference doesn’t sound like a lot but over 30 years $10,000 grows to over
$60,000 at 6.20% a year vs. only $43,000 at 5.00% a year. Keep it simple and keep your
costs low by investing in index funds and limiting your transactions.

Of course it’s no fun to focus on the things you can control. They are mostly long-term in
nature and relatively boring when compared to blaming politics or the economy for all of
our own problems. But get these decisions right and you can spend all the time you want
debating the latest tax or spending policy that probably won’t get passed anyways.