I often joke that handling production for a magazine requires a bit of neurosis coupled with control issues. Deadlines are constantly being thrown your way and they don’t stop for anything or anyone. I don’t know about you, but when control is lost, my brain goes into major overdrive. With a baby on the way (only a month to go!), this topic, not surprisingly, has been weighing on me more than usual.
The key to personal and professional success, I think, is to be in control of your attitude before it controls you. It’s amazing how such an important lesson can be so easy to forget—or dismiss, rather. Looking for a little extra motivation to help you hold on when the going gets tough? Trust in the sage advice from the experts below (really, you’re only relinquishing about 3 percent of your control by doing so).
“The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny.”
– Albert Ellis, American psychologist
“You cannot control what happens to you, but you can control your attitude toward what happens to you, and in that, you will be mastering change rather than allowing it to master you.”
– Brian Tracy, motivational speaker
“The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward.”
– Amelia Earhart, American aviation pioneer and author
“It makes no sense to worry about things you have no control over because there’s nothing you can do about them, and why worry about things you do control? The activity of worrying keeps you immobilized.”
– Wayne Dyer, American self-help author and motivational speaker
“Only you can control your future.”
– Dr. Seuss, expert on all things about life
