Focus on What You Can Control

Lately, I’m reminding myself of this: focus on what you can control. I can control whether I’m going to sleep longer or get up and put in time on my dreams. I can tell myself I’m tired and not go to the gym or for a run, or I can get in the run or workout no matter how I feel. Yes, I can settle for the status quo or decide to change my life.

Know What You Stand For

If you’re like me and work in an office—for someone else and not yourself—it’s where you spend a good chunk of your time and life. And because of that, the office should be a place we shouldn’t dread to go to. If we’re good at our job, work is a place where we can shine and do great things.

For a while now, I noticed how negative my colleagues have become. And it’s difficult to spend eight hours every day listening to people complain, and nothing is ever their fault. In a lot of ways, too, it feels like high school with the cliques and gossip. It reached a point where, one day, I dreaded going into the office so much that I just couldn’t get myself organized to go. So, I called in sick. But I like my job, so I needed to figure out a way to make it work. I had to get serious and remind myself: focus on what you can control.

Focus on What You Can Control

In a way, I’m lucky. I work in a field that operates 24/7. And ever since I started in my role back in August 2023, I’ve been working the afternoon shift (3:00–11:30 pm). But with the mounting negativity and gossip during the shift, I didn’t know how long I’d last. And when I decided to hire a coach, the answer was clear: focus on what you can control.

It’s been a long time since I read Eckhard Tolle’s The Power of Now, but something from it has always stayed with me: “If you find your here and now intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally.”¹ My work environment here and now was intolerable, and I knew I couldn’t accept or change it. So, I opted to remove myself from the afternoon shift and move to overnights. Because that was in my control.

Maybe you’re feeling stuck, or you’re in an intolerable here and now, but here’s what you can do: focus on what you can control.

1. Tolle, E. (1997) The Power of Now, Namaste Publishing. [↩]