Do you love sunny days? Especially the sunrise? Does it make your mood jubilant? Well then, does that affect what you do for the rest of the day?
If your answer was even a small ‘yes’ to any of the questions; it also means something else. Bad weather also influences you.
Consequently, it affects your activities for the day. Now in an ideal world, where your ideal self exists, the external elements don’t affect you. While you might be in pursuit of attaining that (meditation alert), for most of us, these things do affect our lives. For some of us largely, while a little less for the others.
Let’s take a hypothetical scenario, which is by the way, quite likely to take place in your life sooner or later. You have a report that needs to be written in the upcoming days. You get ready early in the morning, grab a coffee and sit down at your desk to write. And then you open the curtains, to find the clouded sky with sunlight nowhere in sight.
This disappointment quietly seeps into your head. You haven’t done much except dishing out a disapproving look at the dark clouds. While you do begin writing but then, you just don’t feel like writing anymore. You write as much as you can until you can’t.
The next day dawns. And boy it really dawns! You grab the cup of coffee at the same time as the day before and then you open the curtains to find the sunlight gracefully touching your face. The perfect kind of morning you’d want to begin something important. You get a lot done that day and are probably more satisfied and less tired.
Been there? Very well. What does it mean?
While there could be many other reasons why you did well on the second day than the first, there’s one that can’t be denied. The weather had a great influence on your report writing. But what’s more important to note here is that you had no control over the weather.
Now let’s imagine on the other end of the city you live in, lives your equivalent, Dobby. Dobby also had to write the same report as you. Dobby possesses all the talents, skills that you do and he also gets up at the same time to begin this report.
There’s only one thing Dobby does differently than you. He doesn’t touch the curtains and turns on the table lamp instead. Instead, he decides to open the curtains only after a certain amount of report is finished. He reaches only 2/3rds of the report he originally intended to read, before sliding the curtains.
Day two. He does the same. On both days, gloomy or sunny, he gets the same amount of report work done.
Now the question might pop in your head; “Well, it wouldn’t matter if I write a little less on the gloomy dark day if I can compensate for it on a sunny day. How does it matter?”
And fair enough. If you have just an equal amount of gloomy or sunny days, this should work. But then, in reality, do you really have an equal amount of dark and sunny days? Highly unlikely.
More importantly, is weather controllable for you? Absolutely not. It means if the number of gloomy days goes up, they hurt your performance. But in the case of Dobby, the weather is out of the equation. The table lamp is controllable for him. He’ll just do as good or just as bad on either of the days.
You’d have recognized the underlying theme by now. This is not just in case of weather. There are other uncontrollable you can leave out of the equation or refine some of them, which are in some ways controllable.
To help you get started, let’s look at some common causes that influence your mind. Doesn’t it feel so good scrolling through adorable dog videos early in the morning, while you are still lying in the bed?
But then you also see the Instagram feed of the couples living their perfect lives which reminds you of what you don’t possess? Let’s not even get into the conversation of the perfectness of their lives showcased by the people on social media. What is important here is that both events do influence your mood, which affects the rest of your day.
Getting those texts early in the morning is not controllable, but choosing to read them before beginning the day is. The escalation news, the virus, the upcoming financial crisis on the world stage; imagine loading your mind with that even before getting out of bed.
Controlling how some events or information affects your mood is a very difficult art to master. But till you reach that mastery, some things can be made easier by removing them from the equation that affects your mood.
Maybe you can check social media only after a certain amount of time or after a particular job is done. Perhaps you don’t really need to know all of the news available that day? There are just some common influences.
There are some things, people, activities that only you know that are affecting you right now. Maybe you have realized already.
And if you haven’t can you make a list of things that influenced you yesterday or last week? How things went bad after ‘that happened…’
Once you have the list, check whether some of these be controlled. Or even better, completely removed from your equation of life?
That’s the name of the game. Remove the uncontrollable, or at least stop focussing or trying to change them.
Begin the new week instead of focussing on controlling the controllable.
