I am going to offer you a tool that can help you regain your sense of control in a stressful situation where you felt a loss of control.
This tool is called Three Sane Choices and it relates to a famous poem by Rudyard Kipling called If.
Let me read you that poem.
If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
And meet success and failure,
Triumph and disaster,
And treat those two imposters just the same,
Then yours is the earth and everything that's in it.
Kipling is talking about the one thing we control in every situation,
Which Viktor Frankl called the last of human freedoms.
It is the power to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances,
To choose one's own way.
So let's take a step in the direction of keeping our heads and our hearts and our attitude in a situation that stressed us.
Right now,
Bring to mind a situation in your life that was particularly stressful or anxiety producing,
In which you felt you had little or no control.
And keep it current.
Take a situation that happened recently,
In the last week or month.
And you can place a recording on pause while you identify that situation.
There is a tool that is very effective in helping you maintain your sanity,
Which is inner peace,
In a difficult circumstance where you think you have little or no control.
This tool asserts that there are only three sane choices to consider in any situation like that.
Choice number one,
You can decide to change the situation,
Working to shift matters in a constructive direction.
Or choice number two,
You can choose to walk away from the situation,
Without any animosity towards anyone.
Or choice number three,
You can accept the situation completely,
Exactly as it is,
Without anyone or anything needing to change in any way.
Now determine which one of these three choices would have felt right to you in that stressful situation you just identified.
Let me read those choices to you again.
You can decide to change the situation.
You can choose to walk away from the situation.
Or you can accept the situation completely,
Exactly as it is.
Again,
You can put the recording on pause while you consider that.
Now imagine applying this choice and see the effect this choice has on quieting the stress you felt and restoring your peace of mind.
