Controllables

Watching the inauguration events and seeing how people are reacting to reminds me a book that I read by Brian Cain.  Cain talked about the three things in life that you can control, and he called it "Controlling your APE."  The only three things we can control in any situation are our Attitude, our Performance and our Effort.

Attitude.  I am a big believer in the power of a positive attitude and positive energy.  Your life's fuel is the attitude and energy that you are giving off.  I truly believe that this energy is contagious and what kind of energy you give off is what the people around you will be fueled with.  In my breakthrough year, I have vowed to surround myself with positive fuel in the form of the people that I surround myself with, the books I read, and the situations that present themselves to me.  Every situation has positive in it, but you have to be ready to find it.  Each day the choice is ours, we have the freedom and decision to wake up in a good mood or a bad mood.  I am going to tell you that life is way to short to waste an ounce on negativity.  Start by having a three to one rule,  for every negative situation, present your self with three positive ones.  You control it.

Performance.  Each of us can control our performance.  We may not be able to control the outcomes, but we can control how we perform.  Some may ask, how do we control our performance?  We control our performance by the process we use to get to that point.  How are we preparing for every situation?  We can control the process and we can control our preparation.  And once in the situation, our attitude and effort will play into that process and preparation and determine our performance.  When all these worlds collide and you have the right attitude, you have prepared as best you can, and the effort you put into it will set you up for the best performance possible and that is what we can control.

Effort.  We have all seen the rewards of hard work in different aspects of our life.  Effort is something that we can control.  Derek Jeter once said, "There may be people that are more talented than you, but there is no reason for anyone to work harder than you."  Other E's that play into this are energy and emotions.  Effort is controllable, so don't ever let anyone work/play harder than you.

We need to focus on controlling the controllable.  We cannot always control what goes on around us, but we can 100% control how we react to it.  Stay positive, prepare for your best performance, and always give max effort and we align ourselves for the best possible outcomes.  Don't let others control the three things that you can.  How are you going to feed your APE?