Control
I regularly read a large Australian based car enthusiast forum. It’s something that has carried over from my late teenage/early 20′s years when I was really interested in cars. Nowadays, it’s just somewhere to kill some time when I’m bored at work. While the forum frustrates me at times, it always pulls me back in because it’s the one forum where I can post and have a reply in a matter of minutes, sometimes seconds.
The average user on this forum is around the 16-17 year old mark, however there are plenty outside of those years, and it is an interesting insight into how my generation thinks. I’m fairly judgemental with the other users on this forum – to me, the majority of them are ignorant idiots who never use their brains. They struggle to consider things outside of the norm, and live in a very sheltered world.
Recently a thread was started by a member who’s friend had just died. He was asking people what they wanted from life, and how to know what to want. The others replied talking about the good and bad things that can happen in a life, and how it makes them feel, but what they never seem to talk about is controlling these good and bad things.
I don’t really want to preach the whole “power of positive thinking” thing, but it is worth pointing out that much more is in our control than we may think.
For example, since beginning work as a teacher, my partner hasn’t been the best communicator. Whatever I’d talk to her it would always be an information overload of what her students were working on, how they were acting, and so on, but she would never really talk to me about how she was doing.. Whether or not she was tired, stressed, happy, sad and so on. For a while it was a real issue for me – I like to know everything about her life so I can help her out in any way that I can, but she wouldn’t give me the information.
We are all different communicators – she never meant to keep information from me, and had no need to – just subconsciously didn’t believe that that was information relevant to our conversations. I on the other hand come home from work and tell her how happy, frustrated, etc my day was. During this time it was something that I believed had to be changed by her. After all, she was the one that wasn’t telling me how she felt – how could I change that?
My life coach put me on to some different communication methods that could help me to articulate what it was I was looking for when talking to my fiancee. As it turns out, some people don’t respond well to blunt questions about their emotions. Rather than just sit there and get frustrated, I now pick my questions carefully. Something that was previously out of my control, is now well within my control. I am now able to communicate more effectively with my partner, and get the information that I need from her.
Depression is a big one. I work with a lot of people that are depressed, and truthfully, it’s the environment. The culture in my workplace is to avoid work at all costs, postpone change until later, and let someone else take responsibility for decisions. As a result, it’s a tough place to work. Some handle it fine, and others struggle with it to the point where it is visibly affecting their life outside of work. At first glance, I can’t change the culture. I can’t encourage change – I’m not a manager. Realistically though, you can. Myself and a few others are always proactively looking for new work to be taken on. While the uptake of this new work is rare, when it does come around, we are the first to be picked to work on it – after all, we are the ones that have been asking for it.
Even health issues can be within our control. Diabetes, heart disease, and so on is largely caused by poor diet and lack of exercise. The most important thing to any animal is their health, and it is well within our abilities to control this.
There are a million examples that I could use for this one, but the point is the same. We can control so much in our lives than we are led to believe. Next time you are in a bad situation, learn from it – figure out what could be done better, and take the positives from it. Educate yourself to control your life, not just sit in your seat and see where it takes you!