A simple but powerful phrase — control what you can control — can help you manage your time, energy, and attention.
Being a parent can be exhausting. Here's a mindset tool to help you prioritize your time, energy and attention. It helps you focus on what you can directly influence rather than stressing over things outside of your control. Utilize this principle for yourself and also model it to your children.
Have you ever heard the phrase from someone with children that you have to pick your battles? There's a reason why that expression is so common is because it is true. Being a parent can be exhausting. There might be a lot of things on your plate. So let me offer you a mindset tool that'll help you prioritize your time, energy and attention. That tool is to remind yourself to control the controls. And it helps you as a parent and a person overall to focus on what you can directly influence rather than stressing over things outside of your control.
This phrase, which is one of my core tenets of life, is a phrase you can use to remind yourself as a parent. And it's important to model it and coach it to your children. A great way to put this tool into practice is to ask yourself a very simple question. If I put any time, energy or attention to this, will it be influenced? If the answer is no, let it go. If the answer is yes, that's where you can start to orient and prioritize your time, energy and attention. Utilize this principle for yourself and also model it to your children.
You and your children can't directly control other people, the situations you're in, or the outcome. What you can control are aspects like your effort, preparation and your attitude. So for example, if your child's upset about a teacher, the difficulty of a test, or the teacher's grading style, guess what? They can't control that they can't control other people. What they can control, however, is their study plan and how they communicate with their teacher. And I use this principle a lot with athletes to help them understand they can't control directly the outcome of a game that they're in, but they can control their input for that game, such as their mindset, their sleep, hydration, nutrition, their pre game routine, your tea time, energy and attention, or your T is super valuable.
Valuable. So please don't waste it on things you can't control.
