What do you control?
I started practicing stoicism when the pandemic happened a few years ago.
During that time, the whole world shut down and there was a lot of uncertainty. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen and I was worried about my future. I was anxious.
But then I came upon The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and after reading a few of the daily meditations, I learned that I shouldn’t give attention to things I don’t control.
The world events that were going on during the Covid pandemic? I can’t control them.
But I can control my thoughts and feelings about them.
So, why would I allow myself to be weak and fixate on the negatives when I can focus on more productive thoughts?
This lesson on control has extended far past the events of the pandemic.
I use it to deal with annoying people and situations, and more recently, to handle my blog’s traffic vanishing because of the recent Google Core Update.
My blog’s traffic was snowballing down a hill and it was finally growing. I was elated because all of my hard work was starting to pay off.
Then I checked my stats one day and the daily traffic was cut in half. I thought it was an anomaly, that it must have been some kind of seasonal event.
So, I ignored it.
But I came back to my stats the following week and my traffic was still down. And it continued to drop the following weeks as well.
It was as if Thanos had snapped his fingers and half of my audience evaporated.
When I found out it was the result of the core update, I was irritated. Then I was concerned because I didn’t know what the future of my blog was.
Was it done for? Was all of this hard work a waste of time? I didn’t know.
I lived in my discouragement and was on the verge of giving up on it.
Then out of nowhere, I was reminded by a social media post that I should focus on what I can control.
I can’t control the search engine updates. I can’t control my traffic. But I can control how I react to them.
So what can I do?
I can go back and update my old blog posts to satisfy Google. I can write and publish more content. I can focus on building more traffic channels so I don’t have to rely on search engine traffic.
And most importantly, I have to truly understand that these things may not fix my blog because I don’t have any control over the outcome of my work. I only control the production of the work. So, I shouldn’t let the external things affect my feelings and behaviour.
After coming to this realization, my mood changed. I’m more positive. I still have down days, but the good days outweigh them.
Thus, if you’re having a bad day, figure out what you can control and focus on that.