How often are we hit with situations that are more negative than we had hoped? Even if we were thinking of something totally different, sometimes an event comes up as a surprise that carries with it the perfect opportunity to ruin our day, week, or month. So how do we keep this from occurring? We start by realizing two things:

• We can’t control them from happening.
• We can only influence, not control, how they ultimately unfold.

We get through them in a positive fashion by controlling the only two things we can:

• Our mindset
• Our behavior

This post is the fourth in the build your pyramid series and discusses the idea of those four points above. We are servants to our own thoughts and as a result feelings. If we control our perspective and as a result, our response, we can ensure that the script we follow is positive because it is always of our own making.

All too often we try to control situations only to fall short, become more frustrated, and increase our levels of stress thereby causing us to experience more failure. Instead, we should be looking at how we can influence situations by controlling the only thing we can; ourselves. Once we set our mind to that fact, we are able to take a perspective that allows us to respond in a way that fosters positivity and ultimately a better outcome.

For example, think of that time you were cut off in traffic. You responded negatively and even with the honking, possible yelling, and complaining if you have a passenger; nothing was solved or even got better. In fact, it probably put you in a bad mood; affecting the next part of your day. A better way would be to take the perspective (control yourself) that maybe the person didn’t see you or in the event they did, had something else they were dealing with at that moment. Do that and you let the situation slide away without the other person’s negative action having a negative impact on you.

Influence is a powerful, but tricky thing. We often miss the greatest opportunities because we are attempting to gain over others while we should be focused on ourselves. I talk about this more in the video below. I would love to hear some examples of this in play for you in the comments below. If you think someone else would gain value from it, I encourage you to share. Thanks for reading and watching!