Let it go what you cannot control
For this week “Self-Development teachings”, I listened to Dean Graziosi show talking about his grandma secret to have a happier life, and I loved how it is a simple message, but so difficult to apply in different parts of our life.
The secret is: “Don’t stress about things you cannot change”.
When things go wrong, it is almost impossible not to think about it. We don’t like to failure or have things go out of what we were expecting. We often get caught up in suffering, trying to find whose fault it was, and thinking about all the things that you will need to work around. When we should be spending time and energy to make a change.
He gave a great example he used with his kids. His oldest daughter bought a huge balloon, and she was so happy playing and jumping with it, until his youngest son popped the balloon on an accident. She started to hysteric cry and the little boy started to cry as well. She was very mad at him. The little boy didn’t want to pop her balloon and he was feeling very sad about the situation. Dean then asked his son “can you unpop that balloon?”, he said “no”. Then he concluded saying “why do we stress about something we can’t change?”. Instead of keep pointing out who was wrong or right in a situation that both kids were upset, he asked them what were some of the solutions they could do now they don’t have that balloon anymore. “Is it okay if we go back to the mall and get a brand-new balloon?”
I liked this simple situation, but we can easily apply to our lives when things go wrong, when a relationship breaks, when the job doesn’t go well, we focus on how it went wrong, why it went wrong and all the negative ideas that makes us be stuck in the same situation instead of accepting that we cannot control what has already happened anymore. “It happened! What are we going to do from now on?”
We need to change our mindset to stop feeling stressed about things that are out of our control and start thinking on “What can I do?”, “Did I do everything I could?”, “What can I do differently next time?” It is a solution-based thinking strategy. We need to constantly be aware of our weakness and analyze which situations you let control yourself.