Simple Truths Pt 2: it's in your control

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Welcome to Uncomplicating Business for Teachers, Helpers, and Givers. I am the host, Sara Torpey. And I am here to talk to you today about some of the things that I think of in business as simple truths. So one of these simple truths, it is one that I end up talking with clients about the most, it is one that I focus on myself the most. And it's something we're working on all month long this October in my Facebook group, which is why it's like me, I feel like the last couple of podcast group episodes have just been me beating this particular drum. But it is, there's a reason there's a method to the madness, here it is my beating this horse for a reason is that success is within our control. I know here's the thing, I actually wrote a Facebook post last week about this or two weeks ago, that, you know, one of the things you hear out on the internet is like you create your own success and like chirpy people and happy pictures and you're like, blah, okay, cool, I create my own success. I'm gonna go like, magically operate unicorns in my kitchen, and everything's gonna be great. And you're like, ah, it feels so is so false. Right? It feels so forced when people say that, or at least it always has to meet. And so for me, it wasn't, it's never been that I don't think success is in my control, because logically I get it. Like, I get that. My success is like theoretically, in my control. But it has taken me a really long time as a business owner, to understand what that actually meant. So I hate this particular simple truth, I it's not my favorite. But you know, even even today, doing this podcast stuff. So the post I wrote a little while ago, I want to argue with it. The thing is, the truth is, that what we can do and be and choose is in our control, our actions are in our control. How we want to think about ourselves, is in our control. How we choose to spend our time and energy for the most part, is within our control. Is it perfectly within our control? No. Are there thoughts that pop up that are like scary little bombs that go off? Or like, oh, gosh, what was that? Yes. Are there times where we choose actions? Or are we very unintentional? Absolutely are there times where we have to make choices about how we spend our time and energy, and it's not really what we want to be choosing? Absolutely. But that doesn't mean that our success becomes out of our control. And I think the key in here is that we get to be intentional about this belief that success is within our control. And we get to, you know, carry that downstream with us. So that it then informs the other things we do. And so, you know, when I was writing the a sort of podcast summary for this episode, what I wrote was that, you know, knowing this, knowing that success is within our control, like 90% are control, right? It's like driving a car, you know, what I can do when I drive my car is driving as safely as possible. I can control my speed, I can control the conditions I drive in, I can control the roads I choose, and 95% of the time that will keep us safe. But there is a 5% of the time that somebody else does something out of our control and causes an accident, right? I can make sure I'm not the cause. But I can't stop somebody from running a red light. When I was like 20 I had a car accident, I think I was 21 where I was stopped turning left. And the guy behind me just never saw me. He just never slowed down and nothing else. He just slammed into the back of my car. Like I was doing all the things I could be doing. And there was that 5% chance out of my control. And that was an accident. It just happens. But what we can do as business owners, as humans, is know that 90 95% of success is within our control, and then make the downstream shifts from it. That allow us to, to to make choices inside and out that allow success to become more easy. Because really if we walk around 24/7 Thinking that success is some magical thing that has to happen to us. It's misery Really, honestly, it's not fun. So, you know, it is how we focus our time and energy I made this list. As I was, I wrote this podcast episode sitting in the car waiting for a baseball rain delay a couple of weeks ago. And, and what I wrote was a little chart about, you know, where we can focus versus where it doesn't help us. So when we focus on things not in our control, right, what other people are thinking, how they're acting, what they're doing, how they're gonna respond, who is engaging with our posts on Facebook, who is responding to X, Y, and Z, who's listening to this podcast, who's, you know how our significant others going to perceive our business I there's so many things, what happens is we feel powerless. Because we don't control those other people. If we focus on what those other people are doing, we feel like it's not in our control, because it's not in our brains know that. When we feel powerless, we get frustrated, of course, because I can't make people like my posts. I can't make people follow me on tic tac, I can't make people book times to talk about coaching, I can't make them do it, I can lead them to it, I can suggest it, I can do all the things, but I can't force it right. So it is easy to become frustrated. If we focus our energy on places we don't have control and where we're not powerful. When we get frustrated, we then also get reactive instead of proactive, everything that comes in our way we respond to, rather than controlling the situation. It's like when you have ever driven in a car with somebody that's only reacting and not like responding ahead of time not like taking action. They just like constantly slam on the brakes and constantly, like make speedy turns. They can't it's like it's terrifying. But what happens is when we feel powerless, we get frustrated, we start to firefight we start to react instead of be proactive. The other thing we start to do is we start looking for the the the the T H E capitals, answers to things, we look for the fixes. We look for, like I have this problem, people aren't responding to me. Therefore I have to fix it by doing this thing. And what happens is when that thing is not the fixed, we then have to something else, we then firefight in a new way we then hop we then hop we then hop we change. It's like, oh, I need to change the messaging. Oh, I need to change the brand colors. Oh, I need a new website. Oh, I need to Facebook ads. Oh, you know what, I need a copywriter. I mean, listen, all those things are fine. But they're not fixes, right? They're not going to change that. You know Something somewhere is you're trying to control things that aren't you worse. The other thing that we get when we get feel powerless and frustrated is we feel behind because we look around at the other people we're trying to compare ourselves to, and that's part of this. And we go oh gosh, look at how much further they've gotten. You know, like I have colleagues that I was in mastermind with a couple of years ago, making millions of dollars right now. Like I could look at their businesses and think like, why not me? But I you know, it doesn't do me any good. It just makes me feel bad. And also, they're living lives and doing things I don't want to do, which is the other problem with that, like you compare but like, we don't have comparable data days. Therefore, why am I comparing their how they're spending their time versus me the whole different thing. But this feeling behind columns when we're trying to control things that aren't ours? When we're feeling powerless when we're feeling frustrated? When we're looking for the right answers. It's like, well, would they found the answer? How come I haven't? It is very much for me ultimately, like getting in the car and trying to drive from the passenger seat. Like imagine getting in the car and getting really angry, because your car won't go anywhere. Because you're sitting in the passenger seat. Like as humans, if somebody did this in the grocery store parking lot, you'd be like, Oh my god, they've lost their mind. And yet in business, we do this without realizing it. When we focus on things that are not in our control. When we focus on the things that are in our control, we feel like we have more control. Like basically we sat down in the driver's seat versus the passenger side. We become much more progress oriented. Because we are like, Oh, I did this thing and now next I'm going to do this thing. Like it's much more heads down. Can you look around? Sure. Should you respond when things come in? Yes. But is it like that? Oh my god, I have to respond to this right now because then ain't working. Like it's not like frantic, it's not panicked. It's not any of that. It's like, Alright, I'm gonna get to that I have this thing that I was going to do first, and then I'm gonna do this thing next. It is powerful. Right? It is from a place of powerfulness versus Power lessness. Because what we do is we're like, no, no, I'm driving. It's like when my daughter sits in the backseat. So we I live in a household where I have a really good internal map and sense of direction I always have since I was a kid, and my husband, I love him dearly. He has none. He has 00 map sense, he has zero. He gets lost, he just does in my kids, for whatever reason, think this is reversed. And so they will get in the car with me and they'll go Mommy, do you have your map out? Like, man, I don't need my map I am driving when you start to drive. Let's talk about it. So I don't entertain that because I know I know where I'm going. But it is much more powerful to be the driver. It's like no, no, I got this. Versus Oh, crap. Did I do it? Right? Oh, god, is this the answer? It is actually way more efficient when we focus on what's in our control, because we're not always like searching through the bottom of the bag to find the fix. We're not scrambling around, we're going like, okay, no, I know what now I know what to do this thing is in my control. That's what I'm focused on. We also become much more flexible. Right? If we know if you think about it, again, we're going back to the car, if you know your destination, and you know, basically how to get there. If you need to take a detour. It's okay. Right. But like when my husband has to take a detour, he loses his mind, because he doesn't really know where he is. He doesn't have a sense of the map. He doesn't know what's in his control. He doesn't know the roads. He's like, Oh, God. Now what? Right when we are the drivers when we are focused on what's in our control, we're much more flexible. We're much more open. We're much more curious. It's like, okay, well, I'm going to try the side road and see if it gets me there. Okay, not a big deal. I did that the other day with Aiden in the car. I had, he was like, Where are we going? And I was like, I'm just gonna tell you the shortcut, it turned out to be a really smart move on my part. And I was like, yes, go with me. But we become much more willing to try other things much more flexible when we're like, no, no, I know how to control this. I know what I'm doing here. It's okay. Right? It is this entirely different set of things. So this truth, this whole set of things, this openness, this curiousness, this flexibility, the ability to be the driver, the progress orientation, all comes from this initial truth, that success is within our control, that the things to create success are within our control. Without that, it's a whole, it's a whole different thing, right? And so starting with this simple truth with this assumption, allow allows us to then create that, right? It allows us to sit down and go like, Okay, what's in my control? And how I'm going to how am I going to do those things? So for you today, if you're like, No, I don't know if I entirely believe this. That's okay. I don't entirely believe it all the time, either. But I know it's true, right? It's that that that paradox, right? Where you're like, No, no, I logically know it's true. And sometimes I just can't get with it. But sit down, give yourself some time today. Or the next time you listen, or when you have five minutes or 10 Waiting for a rain delay to baseball game, you know, sitting in the car on a Sunday, sit down and think like, Okay, wait, what are the things in my control? How do I want to do this? How do I want to focus my time and energy on these things? And how will it change how I show up. The other thing I would propose is, if you're not in my Facebook group, you should be this month in October, we're focusing on controllables. And on purpose, and if you haven't listened to the episode that came before this one, it was all about what the internal controllables are the things we control from the inside out in our mindset that really make this kind of impact. In November, we're going to talk about what I think of as external controllables things that we do, they're much more action oriented rather than mindset. But you know, there's actions and all of this. So if you haven't listened to that episode, go listen, if you're not in the Facebook group, come join and listen, if you're like, I don't know how to put this all in my control. Like I'm not sure which things to do and which things not to do. Well, cool. Let's talk about it in coaching, because this is very much what I give clients, you know, like, I got an email from someone today and she listens to this and I adore her and she knows it. But one of the things she said in her email, which actually made my entire day is that she the success she's had in business have the ability to know she's making her own choices. The confidence that comes with making her own choices, has completely changed her business and her life, it's spilled over into her life. She's making choices about when to raise rates, about what work to do about which projects to take on. Because she knows that success is within her control. It's, it's lovely to get that kind of feedback, right? But that's, you know, work we did and coaching, on mindset on pricing on what's in her control and what's not, and how to how to carry those things forward. That's it makes a difference. And you know, it's funny, she sent me this email today, we haven't coached together in I Gosh, five or six months. This is all sort of residual work that's come afterwards. And that's amazing. So like signing up for coaching doesn't mean coaching is forever. You don't have to stay forever to get a really good benefit. You can sign up for one on one coaching today, and do six months and then walk away. And that's okay. People do that. Some people stay some people go. So if you have questions, send a message. If you're not my Facebook group, come join us same name as this podcast. If you are you just want to have a conversation, send a message. I'm sara@torpeycoaching.com, you can find me on LinkedIn. You can find me on Facebook, but we should connect and if you love this podcast, if you're listening and you're subscribing. Thank you. I appreciate you truly. If you have a minute to rate it on Apple podcasts or wherever you're listening, that would be great because that is how other people find it and we want more people to get this good. Thank you all for listening. I'll see you next week.