The world is a funny place, it’s incredibly temperamental yet extremely fun. It’s completely unforgiving and also can be extremely helpful. It’s very colourful and exciting, and it’s very uncertain. So how do you navigate this uncertainty?
Well the world is constantly in a state of flux, things are always changing that are way beyond our control. But there is something that you can control. Yourself!
There are so many great ideas from history’s greatest thinkers that touch upon these things, so it’s no mere coincidence that the keys to navigating the world are basically all the same. The secrets of the universe are all the same, gasp!
In Eastern Philosophy, e.g. Zen and Buddhism etc, they talk about the external world and the internal world and in order to master the universe you must first seek inward to master yourself. In other words it is known as a Locus of Control, internal and external.
As a man, true masculinity is focusing on that internal locus of control and really mastering it, not being phased by the external environment, Hollywood’s latest example of this is Ryan Gosling in Drive (minus the violence of course). Completely non reactive, so go check it out if you haven’t done so already.
The great management and human relations expert Dr. Steven Covey, in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, talks about Circles of Influence. Basically he talks about just focusing on and taking responsibility for those things that we can control, and not to worry about the bullshit that we can’t control, like the world!
“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.”
When you focus only on what you can control and something doesn’t go your way, then it’s something you can’t control. If you’ve controlled yourself, take a small victory for yourself for remaining unshaken!
That’s how you navigate through the wild waters, because the waves of uncertainty will come and go, but when you have the right internals dialed in, then you just roll with the punches. I always say to my girlfriend that it takes a lot to actually piss me off and the reason is when I focus on what it is I can control and something doesn’t go to plan, it doesn’t go to plan. I have to let it be, let the universe do it’s thing.
And so should you 🙂
“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
The Shining Man 