Focus on what we can control

When I tell people that I started Resilient Marketing Minds to help creative people do their best work without stress, anxiety and frustration, I get a lot of emphatic head nods. Creative professionals in particular seem eager these days to open up and air their frustrations.

It’s challenging out there now - there is a lot of uncertainty, budgets are getting squeezed, priorities are endless, everything is last minute, and despite the variety of apps available to us, clear communication is a struggle. All of this seems to leave people on edge.

So, what is to be done?

Well, with all of the above, how much of it is really in any of our control?

“You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this and you will find strength.” - Marcus Aurelius.

I started studying resilience out of necessity. At the time, I was not in a good mental state and we were getting ready to welcome our first son into the world. I didn’t want to be raising a child in a state of constant anxiety, catastrophizing, seeing almost every glass as half empty. So I began to research a range of solutions. Where I ended up was the start of a long and rewarding journey.

This idea of accepting that not much is in our control was the first one that hit me hard. I discovered it in a book called ‘The Obstacle is the Way’ by Ryan Holiday. This is the book I almost always recommend for anyone interested in Stoicism. Yes, it’s a book about philosophy, but told with a variety of real-world stories and modern perspectives. You hardly feel that you’re reading a book full of 2000-year old wisdom.

Anyway, I digress.

What I really want to emphasize is this concept of focusing on what we control. Here’s a quick sample list of what is outside of our control.

• The weather

• Traffic

• Other people’s opinions

• The boss’s mood

• A colleague’s mood

• The pace of evolving AI

• The past

• How other people feel about you

• What happened in the news

On the flip side, the list of what is in our control is quite small. Basically, we can control our actions, reactions, and thoughts. But the good news is that these are the most powerful of all. Because by focusing on what is in our control, such as our mindset, we can build and maintain inner peace, regardless of external circumstances.

Accepting this is not about giving in. It’s actually about letting go. And by letting go, we can free ourselves from the enormous pressure that we put on ourselves these days.

Putting this into practice in the modern professional world.

Here are just a few tools to help us practice this concept in our day to day lives.

1. Break situations down into what we can and can’t control. We can take any situation that we’re facing and write it all down on a piece of paper. On one side we put everything that is out of our hands, and the other side, we list what is ours. EG - the customer’s hate our new campaign that launched yesterday. We can’t control their feelings and reactions, but we can remove the campaign from other media and assess what happened.

2. Negative visualization. This is not about looking for the worst. Instead, it is actually mentally preparing ourselves for what might go wrong. There could be traffic on the way to the important meeting. If we think that traffic might get in our way, we can do our best to leave earlier and build in some buffer time.

3. Pause before reacting. This is one of my faves. It involves taking an important breath which gives our brain the chance to signal to our body that we are in control. Once our body understands that, we tend to relax and shift from reactive mode to resilient mode. Someone submitted that brief incorrectly for the seventh time?! Breath. Then you have a chance to reframe it - perhaps this is actually a new record! We might even laugh at the absurdity of it all.

One final thought about all of this. When we are in an amazing mood and something irritating happens, we tend to let it fall away like water off a duck’s back. Perhaps we’re in a traffic jam, but we aren’t bothered by it. We just crank the volume and rock out to the radio. But then a couple of days later, we are in another traffic jam and this time we’re in a completely different mood. Now we want to explode!

Same situation, but now we are different. That affects how we respond.

We control our thoughts. No one else does.

Until next time friends, stay resilient.

Carre @ Resilient Marketing Minds