“Don’t Complain About Things You Can’t Change”
This one comes from my dad, actually, and one of his major lessons he taught as a football coach. Let me take you to a sizzling summer day on the turf during “Hell Week”. For those who don’t know, “Hell Week” once described the period of summer just before school started where high school football players have two-a-day practices. This particular afternoon practice was exceptionally hot. He lifts his black G-Shock from off of the turf as we begin to form our stretch lines and proclaims “I got 127” to which we, as a group of teenage boys, began to bitch and moan. He continues, “legally, I can’t make you stay. You will face to repercussions if you choose to leave because you are concerned for your health; however, those that will stay will be better off.” It was then explained to us the importance of perseverance, hard work, commitment to your team… all the typical football cliches. In retort, one of the team captains spoke up and said something along the lines of this is REALLY hot though.
“I can’t change that.”
Those words may not have stuck with everyone the way they rang in my head, but I felt them. Right after saying them, he continued to explained that we can’t allow ourselves to complain about circumstances that are completely out of our control. It’s wasted energy. Sometimes you have to simply accept the circumstances you find yourself in and choose how you’d like to either succumb or adapt. That day in the heat, there was absolutely nothing we could have done to change the temperature it was outside. We couldn’t move the practice indoors. We couldn’t reschedule. We couldn’t just cancel it and lose the preparation time for the game. What were we to do? Simply say “well it’s too hot today, we’ll try again tomorrow?” Absolutely not.
Was that day at practice exhausting? One of the hardest days many of us experienced on that field. The coaches understood the situation and obviously adjusted the intensity of practice to accommodate the situation, but they in no way made it easy. The outcome? A very solid day of practice and a learning experience for all of us players. We made it through the day and got better.
This sentiment is something we could all do well to keep in mind throughout our daily lives. When things just seem to not be going your way, think to yourself about what in your situation you truly have power over. If it is something that is actually within your grasp to influence or change, then it is worth your time and energy. Conversely, if it is something that is completely out of your ability to control or change then it is not worth the time and energy spent worrying or complaining over. This is an important thing to remember, as often times the situations that are out of our hands are the easiest to complain about. We may fall victim to using these complaints as a crutch to excuse yourself from dealing with the situation that you could, in fact, have control over. It takes a lot of drive to motivate self-change, and a critical first step in being able to improve yourself is learning how to properly delegate your energy. By understanding which situations in our lives can be influenced by our own decisions we may gain clarity in which steps to take to further ourselves down the path to our goals.
