Worry Less, and Do More.

What Can You Accomplish Today?

You only have so much time — and energy — to spend each day. It doesn’t make much sense to exhaust resources on things you can’t control. Worrying or complaining about the rain won’t make it stop. Being annoyed by the fact that you’re overweight isn’t going to cause you to become thin.

Unfortunately, many of us spend much of our time and energy in a negative emotional state over issues beyond our control. The first step to changing that is to realize and come to accept that there are only two things you can control:

1. Your thoughts
2. Your actions

For example, you can choose what food you put in your mouth and how much you exercise. You can choose whether you watch TV or clean the house. You control whether you apologize to someone or not. You can choose to think happy thoughts or thoughts that make you unhappy.

When you focus on what you can influence, you’ll find that you can accomplish more.

Use these strategies to keep your attention on what you can do today:

1. At the beginning of each hour, ask yourself how you can best spend the next 60 minutes. How can you use the next hour to your advantage? Asking this question will keep your mind in a productive mode.