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It is important to every aspect of your life to realize what is in your control, what is in your influence, and what is completely outside of anything you can affect. Why is it important? Because trying to do more than you can is a waste of energy and a source of trouble for you and those around you.

First, you must realize you are in total control of the core you. How you think, the decisions you make, the emotions you follow are all 100% in your control. If you are in a bad mood, you have the power to change it. If you want something, you have the power to satisfy the desire or ignore it. You can give up that control, by deciding to allow another person or circumstance’s influence to control what you feel and think. But in reality you still have the control to think contrary to that influence or to rid yourself of that influence.

After the total control of your inner-self there is the near total control of your existence. There are those who will argue that other’s can manipulate or control you. This is true, but only to the amount you let yourself be controlled or manipulated. We chose to work, we choose to accept the controls placed on us by our jobs. We chose our relationships, and we choose to give up some control to our partner. We choose to have children (or not) and we chose to accept the controls placed on us as parents. Yes, it is true that things outside our control can completely own us. A tornado is an uncontrollable force of nature. If you are caught in one, it controls you. You can only seek to avoid the control of the tornado. The same is true of all the forces which can overtake our self control. We can limit the exposure to these outside forces, but if we are caught in one all control is lost. Now forces like tornadoes are not the same as bad relationships, or being in bad places. If you chose to stay in a bad or dangerous relationship/situation/environment, you are deciding to live with a greater risk of loss of control.

The next level out form ourselves is the environment you exist in, and the relationships you have with others. To an extent, you can exert control over things outside yourself, especially if the subject allows you to do so. You can change your world by creating, destroying and rearranging the physical nature of that environment. The environment does not have the ability to consciously resist you. Your relationships are harder to control. In reality you can only influence your relationships. Since each individual has total inner self control, you can only influence others. They must decide to give into or resist that influence. This is where most relationships run into trouble. If one partner doesn’t like something about the other, there will be a struggle of influence and control. If the partner desiring change cannot accept that all they have is influence, that partner will feel tremendous frustration at not being able to control the other. The effort to control causes resistance, as the non-changing partner fights to maintain control of their inner self. If a compromise or acceptance does not happen, this struggle can become a war. In a relationship war there is no winner.

The farther out from yourself you go, the less control and influence you have. Spouses have tremendous influence on each other, as do parents to children. Brothers and sisters have less control. Friends can have even less control than siblings. Distant friends and relations have little control or influence, and strangers have the least influence of all.

Realizing what is in your control, in your influence, and out of reach allows you to direct your efforts and energies in the most effective way. Avoiding emotional pain in trying to do what you cannot will lead you to better happiness. Realizing what you can control and what you cannot also empowers you to make decisions that make your circumstances as close to what you desire as possible.

Remember, you control you. You decide what you think, what you feel, and how you want to live. Control what you can, be respectful of what is outside your control, and own your life as best you can.