It is what we allow it to be...............

 

      Although we cannot dictate all the circumstances around us, there is no excuse for being unprepared or irresponsible.  All too often we disregard our ability to influence the outcome because we see a situation as beyond our control.  We casually dismiss our responsibility with the refrain, "It is what it is."

     We need to lead.  Even when circumstances feel completely beyond our control, we must still act.  Only then will we be positioned to exert our influence, which will drive us closer to determining the outcome.  By leading, we can overcome the feeling of victimization and, instead, understand the range of options within our power.

     By taking control of our preparation, reaction, and response to problems, we become leaders.  When we reframe our mindset and see situations through the lens of leadership, we understand that things don't have to remain as they are.

-Dave Berke, The Need to Lead: A TOPGUN Instructor's Lessons on How Leadership Solves Every Challenge

the temperament.....................

 

Investing is not a game where the guy with the 160 IQ beats the guy with the 130 IQ.  Once you have ordinary intelligence, what you need is the temperament to control the urges that get other people into trouble in investing.

-Warren Buffett

Faithfulness.................

 

     Faithfulness is not blind belief; it consists of steadfastly practicing the principle of shunning those things which are not within your control, leaving them to be worked out according to the natural system of responsibilities.  Cease trying to anticipate or control events.  Instead accept them with grace and intelligence.

-Epictetus, A Manual for Living

a merger of stability..................

 

     As early as 1826, there were proposals to amend the Constitution by members who saw the legislative elections as fraught with corruption and delay.  At the start of the twentieth century, William Jennings Bryan and others pushed for direct elections, and many argued that the Senate was " a sort of aristocratic body too far removed from the people, beyond their reach, and with no special interest in their welfare."  It was an interesting argument, since that was precisely what it was designed to do.  The framers wanted to merge the stability of oligarchic and democratic systems.  This marriage was perfectly captured in a House with short terms of popular-election members and a Senate with longe terms of legislatively selected members.  That changed in 1913 with the Seventeenth Amendment specifying that senators would be chosen, like House members, in direct elections.  While there were clearly good arguments for direct elections to make senators more accountable to the voters, the change removed arguably the most important control of states in Congress.  With the expansive interpretation given interstate commerce, states would face increasing federal authority and decreasing political control.

-Jonathan Turley, Rage and the Republic:  The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution

On the art (and importance)...........

 

............................................of breaking dumb rules.

Choice..................

 

Remember, each individual has a choice.  You are always the one in control.  The cause of irritation—our notion that something is bad—that comes from us, from our labels or our expectations.  Just as easily, we can change those labels; we can change our entitlement and decide to accept and love what's happening around us.  And this wisdom has been repeated and independently discovered in every century and every country since time began.

-Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic

Calmness.....................

 

     Calmness of mind is one of the beautiful jewels of wisdom.  It is the result of long and patient effort in self-control.  Its presence is an indication of ripened experience, and of a more than ordinary knowledge of the laws and operations of thought. . . .

     Yes, humanity surges with uncontrolled passion, is tumultuous with ungoverned grief, is blown about by anxiety and doubt.  Only those whose thoughts are controlled and purified make the winds and the storms of the soul obey them.

     Tempest-tossed souls, wherever you may be, under whatsoever conditions you may live, know this—in the ocean of life the isles of blessedness are smiling, and the sunny shore of our ideal awaits your coming.  Keep your hand firmly upon the helm of thought.  In the bark of your soul reclines the commanding Master; He does not sleep; wake Him.  Self-control is strength.  Right thought is master.  Calmness is power.  Say unto your heart, "Peace, be still!"

-James Allen, Serenity

The world has always been uncertain......

 

.............................................but:

Control what you can. Read widely the best literature for wisdom and comfort. Listen to the best music for mood management. Shop locally, enjoy cooking and eat well. Spend time with those who listen, support and create.

And walk daily, the greatest distance you can.

-Nicholas Bate

On expectations............

 

The first rule of a happy life is low expectations for things outside your control and high expectations for things within it. If you have high expectations for the world and no expectations for yourself, you’re going to be miserable your whole life.

-Sahil Bloom

stories...............

 

How do we learn the difference between willfulness and willingness, the distinction between magic and miracle?  The answer will come as no surprise: in the practice and process of storylistening and storytelling.  "Story," the novelist John Gardner observed, "details the gap between intentions and results."  Story conveys the reality of human freedom, for although "real," our freedom is limited, and although "limited," our freedom is real.  To live with an awareness of story is to recognize, with philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, that "We are never more than the co-authors of our own stories."

     Every story details a mixture of what Niccolò Machiavelli named necessità, virtù, and fortuna: cause, choice, and chance.  The very combination of the three reveals that we are neither completely controlled nor completely in control.  We can will, in other words, but we must also be willing.  This can be a difficult, even painful lesson to accept, for we tend to want "either-or," especially in matters of being "controlled" or "in control."  Accepting the impossibility of this willful demand—becoming willing to accept the limited freedom that is ours—is one gift of story.  Stories reveal a spirituality that views life not as a problem to be solved, but as a mystery to be lived. . . .

. . . We find miracle only when we stop looking for magic.

-Kurtz and Ketcham, The Spirituality of Imperfection: Storytelling and the Search for Meaning

      

Control.......................

 

focus....................

 

via

not ours..................

 

     The problem with "willing what cannot be willed" is that we step into a territory that is not  ours—we stake the claim to be God.  This attempt to wrest control from the uncontrollable has become the keynote characteristic of our "Age of Addiction."  We try to command those aspects of our lives that cannot be commanded, we try to coerce what cannot be coerced, and in doing so, we ironically destroy the very thing we crave.

-Kurtz and Ketcham, The Spirituality of Imperfection: Storytelling and the Search for Meaning

the controllable variable.............

 

The only controllable variable in any situation is you. Oddly, it’s the last one people adjust.

-Shane Parrish, from this edition

hard enough to control your own.................

 

      The fact is, it is impossible to control someone else's thoughts.  Therefore, fearing what other people think, or trying to control their thoughts, is a complete waste of your time.

     You will never feel in control of your life, your feelings, your thoughts, or your actions until you stop being consumed with or trying to control what other people think about you.

-Mel Robbins, The Let Them Theory

Imperfection...............

 

     To deny imperfection is to disown oneself, for to be human is to be imperfect.  Spirituality, which is rooted in and revealed by uncertainties, inadequacies, helplessness, the lack and the failure of control, supplies a context and suggest a way of living in which our imperfections can be endured.  Spiritual sensibilities begin to flower when the soil is fertilized with the understanding that "something is awry."  There is, after all, something "wrong" with us.

-Kurtz and Ketcham, The Spirituality of Imperfection

mastery...........................

     Self-discipline begins with the mastery of one's thoughts.  Without control over thoughts there can be no control over deeds!  Let us say, therefore, that self-discipline inspires one to think first and act afterward.  The usual procedure is just the reverse.  Most people act first and think afterward (if and when they think at all).

-Andrew Carnegie, as he answers questions from Napoleon Hill

Ownership......................

 

Does the world happen to you, or do you happen to the world?

Most people wait for permission to solve problems. The subtle message they send is “I don’t care enough to solve this on my own. Tell me what to do.” The world happens to them.

High agency people are different. They care. And because they care, they solve problems without being told. They happen to the world.

High agency people act like owners. Owners see a problem and fix it. They don’t wait. They don’t need permission. They don’t think this is someone else’s job. They don’t think this is hard. They don’t think “I can’t do this, I’ve never done it before.” They don’t think this is someone else’s job.

Act like an owner before you are one. That’s how you become one.

-Shane Parrish, from the November 2 edition

Who's running things......................

 

If you walk down the street and there are a thousand people in the street, all thousand are talking to themselves in their head at any given point.  They're constantly judging everything they see.  They're playing back moves of things that happened to them yesterday.  They're living in fantasy worlds of what's going to happen tomorrow.  They're just pulled out of base reality.  That can be good when you do long-range planning.  It can be good when you solve problems.  It's good for us as survival-and-replication machines.

I think it's actually bad for your happiness.  To me, the mind should be a servant and a tool, not a master.  My monkey mind should not control and drive me 24/7.

I want to break the habit of uncontrolled thinking, which is hard.

-Naval Ravikant

Ah, human nature.........................

My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs) … the most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.

-John Ronald Reuel Tolkien