We all have things in our lives that we can and cannot control. Whilst that's a fixed fact of life, understanding what you can and can't control, understanding what you are responsible for, what you aren't responsible for, and most importantly, what you cannot be held responsible for, will make you far more confident, and able to handle a lot more pressure.
With regards to control, there are three areas:
You likely have a lot of control over yourself. You can choose your own favourite colour, you can choose to change your diet, you can choose to be proactive about issues you face. There are however other things that you cannot control. You can't delete illnesses from your body, and certain mental issues will always remain. Regardless, you'll always have the most control over yourself. This is where everything else flows from, and so if you manage to make changes to yourself, you can better control the rest of your life.
Speaking of your life, many people have a reasonable amount of control over their life. You can choose who your friends are, where you spend your time and money, you have some control over what work you do. There are however a lot more factors that you can't control here. Your friends' behaviours for example aren't under your control. You may be able to discuss problems with them, but there's no guarantee you'll get your way. Your job may be a controlling environment, and if you can't easily find another, that can cause a lot of problems.
Regardless, your life is still yours. You can change yourself in ways that help you navigate your life, as we will discuss later, because the crux of everything is that how you choose to respond to things can help or hinder you. And you always have some kind of choice.
That leaves the world. We all have very little control over the world, as we all have to share it. We can vote in elections (and should) but our votes count for a fraction of a percent. We can't always save the features we want, and sometimes the world will feel cold and uncaring, but we can always carve out some space for ourselves.
As a result, we have the most control over ourselves, and the least control over the world. We can absolutely use our control over ourselves to improve our lives and the world.
Using our self control, and yes, I recognise that self control is a learned skill that takes practise to build and maintain, we can change our responses to things we experience in our lives. For example, if you're told that someone hit your car and you punch them, you will have problems with the police. If you respond by calmly trading insurance information, you can get your car fixed without too much worry about cost. This obvious and simple example shows how self control really can stop a bad situation going worse.
Now let's look at a far less obvious example. Your dog dies and you feel terrible. You can choose how to respond to this, so let's look at two different responses:,
Your dog has died and you are very sad. You struggle to focus at work, you don't want to talk to your friends, you just want to be left alone. You probably skip a few days off work because you're just too sad to go in.
Your dog dies. You reach out to a friend and let your boss know you can't make tomorrow. You spend the evening down the pub with your friend and talk about how much you miss your dog.
The first response is reactive. You're miserable and you're not choosing to control your emotions, you're not using the resources available to you to get through the pain. The longer you live that kind of life, the harder it is to do something about the problems you encounter. The second response is proactive. Yes, life sucks, but you have a friend who can help you handle your emotional state. After taking a day off work to process, you'll probably be able to slowly get back into the swing of things. Not all at once, but your own life doesn't have to end. Next time you encounter tragedy, you'll also be better equipped to handle it.
Simply put, choosing to make sure to look after yourself, choosing to let the right people know about your struggles, can help you in the long run. It's not always that easy, maybe your boss isn't very nice and tells you he expects you in tomorrow. Honestly, my perspective would be to tell them this isn't a discussion. Your dog just died, you need a day off, if the boss can't grant that, he can shove his job up his [expletive deleted]. Not the most controlled response, but standing up for yourself is important.
This leads on nicely to:
It's important to know what you are responsible for, what you are probably not responsible for, and what you can not be responsible for.
Things you cannot be responsible for are important to identify. Let's say you're at work and your manager orders the wrong part. When the customer complains, they'll probably be demanding you explain what happened. Whilst you may be able to explain the procedures, explain how the manager orders parts, or many other things, you cannot be held responsible for the mistake itself.
You can still take steps to improve a situation that you cannot be held responsible for. Let the customer know that this is a rare mistake, show concern, take down details of the error, reassure them that the manager will be mortified when you tell them, but do not take personal responsibility for the mistake. Direct any anger at 'The Manager', a mythical entity who made a mistake, which will be resolved.
This kind of deflection can help in all kinds of scenario. If your partner is angry that the bread has gone mouldy, direct the anger at the bread or the shop, and go buy more. You didn't inject the bread with mould, but you can help direct the blame away from yourself, and help fix the issue.
Sometimes, the person responsible isn't clear. It's not always easy to convince people of that, so knowing yourself if you're responsible or not can help you keep a clear head.
If the people involved try to find out who’s responsible and make them fix it, you’ve got a bunch of people wasting time trying to find out who was responsible, and then you’ve got a single, downtrodden individual who feels intense guilt, desperately trying to fix the issue, a perfect recipe for them to make another mistake.
If, instead, the team share the load of the mistake and solve it first, people will be annoyed at the extra work load, but no-one person feels singled out or guilty or attacked. The problem can be handled far more efficiently, and once resolved, if someone figures out who did it, that individual can make amends in a less stressful scenario. The problem is gone, so maybe they can help out by taking on some other work or even just buying everyone a round at the pub.
When you don’t know who caused a problem, the issue is the problem. Once the problem is resolved, the issue is figuring out how to avoid the problem in the future. Unless it’s a malicious act, at no point is the issue discovering who’s at fault.
There will come a time where you are blamed for something you know you did not do, and no-matter what you say, people refuse to listen. The best defence against these situations is being known for your honesty. Only ever say what you believe to be true, admit what you don’t know or are unsure about, and if you say something you know isn’t true, make sure to correct yourself.
That last bit may be a bit confusing, so here’s an example: If you try to convince your friend that spaghetti grows on trees, and they believe you, make sure you tell them the truth before the end of the day. The joke is great, but they need to know that if you lie to them, you’ll also correct yourself before the end of the day.
If you’re known to be a joker, to be dishonest, and you can get a reputation for dishonesty without people telling you, then you can’t defend yourself against false accusations. Even in courts, a good character reference will strengthen your case, so always be honest.