Nine Powerful Things You Can Control

Don't worry

Olympus: The Fall of the Giants by Francisco Bayeu y Subías, 1764 (public domain - Wikimedia Commons)

“The most hateful torment for men is to have knowledge of everything but power over nothing.” — Herodotus, c. 450 B.C.

In a world beset by uncertainty, where data breaches and weather outbreaks — as certain as death and taxes — portend personal- and societal-altering paths of destruction, it is heartening to find something we can control.

It is no mistake that the month of January was named for Janus, the Roman god of transitions. His gaze is forever fixed simultaneously forward and backward, goading you to make those New Year’s resolutions as you hope to achieve escape velocity to correct that imperfection you’ve noted.

In January, I implored you to Hang Onto Your Hat¹ and lead with hope, for it is hope rather than fear that lights our way to the future. Fear holds us back.

Fear rooted in our lack of control is one of the constant anxieties in a world beset by war, climate change, political upheaval, market uncertainty, and the rise of the machines.

In that January missive, one of the suggestions was to control what you can:

There will always be factors that are outside of our realm of control. We can’t control what others do or think. We can’t control external forces. But we can control our reaction to them.

We are in command of our own minds. And by focusing our efforts on what we can control, we offer up more hope.

Whether you’re grieving over the loss of a parent, struggling with a child leaving for college, stressing over an investor pitch, berating yourself for an unkind moment with a friend, worrying about the future, or any other flavor of the paranoid rainbow, there is hope.

I’ve gathered the wisdom of other Substack writers (and a couple from the fertile ground of Timeless & Timely) to provide you with some ideas to create more certainty — or at the very least to give you power at times when you feel powerless.

Nine Powerful Things You Can Control