This week I focused on letting go of things that are out of my control. I listened to a daily check in from ma boy Jay Shetty, on the Calm app, which unfortunately you have to pay for so I wont be able to share free access to this exact podcast, but I will give you the link in case you want to check out the app. (The app does have a free version which offers a lot of great mindfulness minutes and podcasts.) No need to worry though, I will give you a recap on what wisdom was shared with me during Jay Shetty’s mindfulness check-in called, “Letting Go Of Control.”  

Jay asks the listener to draw a large circle on a piece of paper, and then a much smaller circle in the middle of the big one. Label the outside circle “outside my control” and the little one “inside my control.” Now think about what is inside and outside of your control.

Here is my example of the exercise ^^

Photo by Ashley Hall is licensed under CC BY 4.0

Then Jay goes on to say “part of the reason why we made the outside circle so much bigger is that you need a lot of room to write down the countless things you don’t control. If you really think about it, there are so few things we directly control, the economy, weather, politics, other people’s behavior, your flight, there is no control. In fact in the outer circle, you might as well write pretty much everything. But certain things are within your control like how you use your attention and how you respond to all the things you don’t control. The purpose of this exercise is to not to despair over how little control you have, it’s simply to reframe your sense of control so that you can spend less time and energy over things you can’t change. You don’t control what time your flight takes off at, what you do control is your response to the three hour delay.” Jay suggests working the inner circle and challenging yourself to make experiences less stressful, tap into patience, do some mindful breathing, and see it as a chance to catch up on other things.

After doing this exercise I saw how much of life is outside of my control. But like Jay suggested, you can take that and instead of getting mad about situations that aren’t in your control, you can direct your energy into something more useful.  This is what I did for the week, and I wrote down the moments that I felt annoyed by the things that I can’t control, and the ways I turned that around to make it positive, here are just a few.

  1. I missed a green light on my way to work and I felt annoyed. Then I realized that’s out of my control, so instead I waited and enjoyed the music that was playing.
  2. A group of people were walking really slow in the hallway and blocking any way of me passing by. I realized it’s out of my control and instead I took the time to slow down and be in the moment. 
  3. My roommate took a shower one minute before I was planning to take one and that really annoyed me lol. Then I realized it was out of my control, and instead took the time to clean my room while I waited. 

These are just a few, but this experience will follow me as I go through my days because it allows me to not dwell on things that made me annoyed. Once I realized they are out of my control, it helped me to practice mindfulness and think about the situations in a more positive light and assisted me to let go of negative emotions. It also made me realize that I am always rushing through my day, and that maybe I need to take time to slow down and control my annoyance towards little things  that seem to be prevalent in my life. Lol.

Thanks for tuning into my mindfulness journey this week, huge shoutout to Jay Shetty, thanks for spreading your wisdom, you are so cool.