Video Transcript
Josh Matthews-Morgan: So today I’m going to talk about one secret behind the mindset of peak performers. Put simply, they don’t try to control things that they can’t control.
See there’s lots of things, in life and business, that you can’t control. And if you go around trying to fix conditions, trying to fix people and circumstances that are way out of your control, you’ll just make yourself sort of crazy.
This is just a list of a few of the things you can’t control: You can’t control the weather; you can’t control what other people think and feel; you can’t control how they react to you; you can’t control how they behave; you can’t control whether they like you or not; whether your equipment breaks down in the middle of a big presentation or performance; you can’t really control how your competition performs and how the people you’re up against perform at all.
If you’re on a team you can’t really control the behavior of your team members. You might be able to influence them some but you can’t control them.
Now, if you go around trying to fix all these things and split your energy into a thousand different directions worrying about things you can’t control, it’s just going to make you a little bit crazy and it’s going to weaken your performance.
So instead of trying to control those things, worry about what you can control.
And in a word, what you can control, is you.
You can control how you prepare before you go into any performance. You can control your thoughts and your feelings about that. And you can control the actions you take based on your thoughts and your feelings.
If you let go of trying to control all these conditions and circumstances, you’re going to discover a really powerful truth: That when you give up control, it allows you to start focusing on that image of your thriving and it allows you to actually influence conditions. Because your image of your success overpowers anything that might get in your way.
When you get really good at this, you’ll learn how to thrive in situations that seem difficult or almost impossible to thrive in.
So if you like this idea of taking control of only the things that you can control, here’s a simple process that you can use:
Grab a piece of paper and think of a situation that has been bothering you for a long time now. Ok, write that situation at the top of the paper and then make two columns.
Draw a line down the middle, and make two columns. On the left side, write the things that you can’t control about the situation. On the right-hand side of the column, write all the things that you can control. You’ll probably notice that the things that you can’t control, that that list is much longer than the things that you can actually control.
So when you’re done with that, scratch out that side of the paper of the things you can’t control. And just focus on the things that you actually can control about the situation. I want you to ask yourself this question and write down the answer:
What can I do to improve this situation? What can I do to improve this situation?
Find out the answer to that and you’re on the way to regaining control of your life and your performance.