Life was good to me. I got myself back to a more productive and peaceful night routine last week.

For the past couple of weeks, I was so obsessed with a TV show that I was spending lots of my nighttime watching TV, and that time was meant for practicing my ukulele and reading more books. As I saw all those cross marks for my ukulele practice for weeks, finally last week, I determined to say goodbye to the show and get back to playing my ukulele.

It went smoother than I thought. I didn’t push myself to learn new songs, just spoiled myself with all those songs I could already play. I didn’t demand much of myself. 30 minutes after dinner would be great for me.

For the first couple of days, I was still lying there watching more TV before heading to bed at 10. But gradually, after playing the ukulele, I didn’t feel attracted to the shows as much, so I picked up books again in bed.

It was the highlight of my previous week. I was surprised to see myself get back to that more peaceful and enjoyable routine without much struggle. The feeling that I could actually control myself and my life was so fulfilling.

Things I Couldn’t Control

But I guess there are some things in our lives that we can’t really control.

One afternoon, I was just about to work on a business plan. My Chrome crashed, and it prompted me to update it to the new version, so I did. But after the update, I couldn’t open it any longer. It said that my Mac’s operating system was too old, so I had to update my Mac again. I was so annoyed with these technical issues, and they reminded me of all those dozens of times when an update messed up my website.

At that moment, the feeling of frustration about things I can’t control was strangely overwhelming. I could do nothing but wait helplessly for the system to update slowly. With a project plan due the next morning, I was panicked, but I could do nothing other than sit there, waiting and worrying about whether I could manage to finish the plan in time.

What if I couldn’t? A hundred related or unrelated anxious thoughts were drowning me, drowning my already frustrated mind.

The Thirty Minutes I Could Control

I told myself to stop. I moved away from my laptop with a book in hand and went to the balcony to let some time pass. Then I instantly laughed at my own anxiety. It was actually not a horrible situation. The thing was, I thought I was running out of time, and sitting there watching the loading bar like the most helpless turtle in the world only made me feel worse.

By moving away with a book, I instantly took control of my life back. Yeah, I still needed to wait for the update, but my time was not wasted. I got myself something else to do.

Among those accidents in life, which we can’t possibly control, how about jumping out of the box and trying to focus on those things we can control, like how to spend those 30 minutes of waiting in a more chill and productive way?

Learning to Let Go

Losing control can be scary, and we may all have tons of bad memories related to the topic, and most of our past experience may lead to the same conclusion.

It was so helpless. I could do nothing to take back control.

But that afternoon, when I was sitting there reading my book instead of trying to control the system, I realized something new: all those horrible experiences from the past had not actually killed me.

Things tend to go from good to worse, and from worse to good. That’s just the actual pattern of life. There are so many elements affecting our lives. We can’t possibly control all of them, and what we can actually control may be only a very tiny part.

Life’s ups and downs are just like the rhythm of the tide. When the good time comes, be nice to others. When the bad time comes, be nice to yourself. That’s a simple philosophy, but it could really help to calm your nerves. And trust me, once you take back control of your mood, nothing is unresolvable.

Before the World Wakes Up

I ended up not rushing to that plan anyway, since I knew I could still finish it early in the morning. I get up at 5:30 a.m. every morning, so there will be a lot of time for me to finish almost everything before the world wakes up.

Sometimes, by not trying to control everything, we see our true value and strength. We don’t need to be in control of most of the stuff in our lives, actually.

Until next time~