➡ The text discusses how trying to control things beyond our control can lead to stress and frustration. The author suggests writing down all the things that bother us, big or small, to help manage these feelings. They also emphasize the importance of distinguishing between what we can and can’t control, and not living in denial of this reality. The author shares personal examples and offers a solution in the form of writing, which can help in expressing emotions and thoughts, ultimately leading to a healthier mental state.
➡ The text discusses the importance of taking action instead of just complaining about problems. The author shares personal experiences of feeling frustrated about issues like a broken sign in her town and noise from leaf blowers, but realizes that complaining doesn’t solve anything. Instead, she suggests finding solutions, such as writing to the city about the sign or attending a homeowners association meeting about the noise. The author emphasizes that while we can’t control everything, we can control our actions and responses to situations.
➡ It’s important to set boundaries and control your own behavior, not others’. If someone’s actions disturb your sleep, set a rule like a bedtime cutoff. If someone gossips, politely excuse yourself instead of asking them to stop. Remember, you can’t control everything, like the weather or other people’s opinions, but you can control your reactions to them.

Friends, people are going crazy, haven’t you noticed it? And there are many reasons why people are going crazy in this day and age. And we can look at the headlines, we can look up in the skies, we can look at what the media is pushing, we can look at so many things that are really driving us crazy. But all of that, I would say, has the underlying cause that I’m about to share with you right now. And again, I’m just going to get right to the punchline. And that is when you are trying to control things that you can’t control.

That, my friends, is the recipe for driving yourself crazy. And I certainly don’t want you to drive yourself crazy. I came up with a list of things that can drive people crazy, things that drive me crazy. And it’s very important to distinguish between things that you control, that you can control, things that you can’t control. And then what some people do, and this is where I think it really drives them crazy, is they are choosing to live in denial of that reality. Denial of the reality that there are certain things that they can’t control. You cannot control other people’s behavior.

You cannot control their opinions. It’s not possible. Take it from a YouTuber. There are plenty of people that have all sorts of different perspectives. Some people love what I have to share. Others, it’s not the channel for them. And that is absolutely fine. But imagine if I was trying to turn myself inside out to please all of the people all the time. That would be living in denial of reality. And I would say, in our current situation and the things that people have been going through for the last several years, we’ve seen people literally driving themselves crazy by not facing the reality of what is.

Now let’s talk about some of the everyday irritations so that we can reduce some of our emotional response to the headlines and all of the other horrors that we see going on around us or that we hear going on around us. And this is one of the most beneficial solutions that I can offer you. And I’m a huge believer in getting out a pencil or a pen and getting out your notebook and actually writing this down because you can get these ideas and thoughts and emotions and feelings out of your body and onto the page.

And it’s very, very beneficial. This is one of the tips that I share in my online course called life after loss. Let me know if you’re in that program. We are helping dozens and dozens of people, my husband, Pastor David and I, in a private live webinar format where you can share your sorrows or just be a participant silently. And we talk about how to get through these emotions, dealing with grief, not moving on with your life but literally integrating and figuring out how to create this new and different life after loss. And one of the tools that is so powerful is writing.

No one has to read it. You don’t even need to keep it. But in this case, here’s what I would recommend. So you’re going to get your notebook and a pen, and I really recommend doing it in a notebook, rather than on the computer, because your creative mind is connected to these activities when you’re writing and it takes out some of the technology and that, you know, disconnect. So that’s what I would recommend, if you would like to do it that way. But basically you’re going to make a list. And you’ll make a list of all of the issues that are bothering you and I mean all of the issues, the large irritations, like wars in the Middle East, and I wouldn’t call that an irritation, I would call that, you know, a horror, and then all the way down to the smaller things and I’ll give you an example and this way you can empty out your mind of all of the frustrations, the anger, the irritations, the distractions that are going on.

And we actually can begin to tackle it. So, on the left side of your paper, you’re going to write down all of these issues, put down the little irritations as well as the major ones. And then, after you get those down, and you might think of other ones as you’re doing the activity and that’s absolutely fine. On the right side of the list. Well, before we get to the right side, let me tell you what’s on my side of the list. Alright, so here’s an example from little to large. Gardeners with leaf blowers who are making noise blowing dust around and not actually cleaning up the sidewalks.

Alright, this is one of my huge personal pet peeves. I don’t like the noise. I don’t like the blowing around of the dust. It seems to happen right at the moments when I’m trying to get some work done. And, you know, the sound is so bad for your hearing, it literally can lead to hearing loss. So, that is something that drives me crazy it really irritates me so I’m going to put that on the list. It doesn’t even really clean up the landscaping anyway I’m if they had a broom and a dustpan. That’s what I do when I’m doing my own gardening is I clean the things up, and then I dispose of it that way.

Alright, let’s go a little kind of little too large. The school board wants to approve questionable textbooks and curriculum for the district, and you are opposed to this, even if you don’t have a child or a grandchild in that school district because you know that the school district has some ulterior motive, maybe a hidden agenda as I like to say a foot, and this is something that you’ve heard about you read about it, and it is really making your blood boil. Here’s another one, maybe you’re in a situation. I don’t have any co workers but maybe, but I have a spouse, and I have a cell phone, and I get these interruptions but imagine you’re trying to get something done and your co worker or a loved one is constantly interrupting you while you’re trying to get something done.

I mean that is like, Oh, that’s an irritation that could go on your list. Here’s another one. Again, kind of little too large. You are unabashedly opposed to the war in the Middle East, and you wish that there was an end to the atrocities and kind of add to that that it’s difficult to have a rational conversation with people because it’s such a divisive topic, and people’s minds seem to be made up before you can even present any information, to the contrary so that might go on your list as well. How about the rising food prices.

It is absolutely stunning I was at the grocery store the other day, and I am not kidding you for a few bags it was $250. I don’t even know what we got hopefully we stocked up on something because when I look back in the pantry I’m like what did we spend that money on. So the food prices are rising and here I am grumbling about it. I’m going to talk to you about solutions in just a moment, but keep adding to your list let me know on it in a comment what’s on your list. All right, your son, your daughter, your spouse your sibling, someone that that you know you interact with a good friend, they’re always running late, and as a consequence there, you are late as well.

I’m going to talk about that. Maybe your spouse stays up late, and you’d like to go to bed earlier and then when your spouse comes to bed. You, you know, wake up and you can’t fall back to sleep so any kind of irritations like this would go on your list. How about someone you know, maybe an acquaintance. Maybe you’re on a committee and there’s a person that you’re talking about things and they’re always gossiping, and they’re very negative and they’re, I would say the gossiping is even worse, in my opinion, worse worse than worse than just being negative because it has a person as the target who isn’t even there I’ll have to cover gossiping in another broadcast broadcast on my health on my living swell channel, because that is such an important topic to dive into and it’s something that really is a huge irritation to me and I put up a lot of healthy boundaries around that.

Okay, let’s say you’re bothered by the weather. Real or manufactured. Maybe you’re bothered by other drivers, and you’re always yelling things and honking your horn and you know shaking your fist and who knows what else you’re doing when you’re irritated by these drivers, maybe it’s taxes. And I know there are plenty of people that have figured out a way to not pay their income tax you know what, God bless them, I don’t want to go to prison I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in court fighting this is what happens to a lot of people or they lose their homes, not something for me.

I wish that my taxes went to something that I believed in and certainly I could grumble about it, but I follow the books, meaning I know exactly what I can do related to having legal deductions and expenses and so forth but yeah it drives me bonkers. All right, how about being irritated by other people’s opinions. And then I want to tell you a story in fact I’ll just tell it to you right now so this one part of town that I was driving through, there was a sign that was damaged and it was right on the road.

And it was, it was an amco sign I’m just going to tell you, you know, double a mco, I guess the advertisements are stuck in my mind from all those years ago, and I’m driving by it again and again, saying to myself, complaining. And not only saying to myself but to my husband if he was in the car. When are they ever going to fix this sign. It just makes the whole area look run down and when you have one sign that’s run down the next thing something else gets run down and then there is the rapid decline.

I’ve spoken before about how things are in decline and you know just fixing a few things could actually make things look better, and I kept saying to myself, I’ve got to write to the city I’ve got to write to the city I’ve got to write to the city. You know I never wrote to the city. I meant to do so but I was so busy on other things and what would happen is I drive by that amco sign, and I would do a big sigh I would drop my shoulders, and I would complain. Now, one of my mottos is create, don’t complain or don’t complain create don’t complain, create a solution come up with a solution.

And I have endeavored to really maybe 80 or 90% of the time, have some sort of solution which in this case would have been to call the city. But I’ll tell you what happened. We were driving down the road, and I know when we’re coming up to it’s almost like I’m ready to get irritated, and I look, and could you believe it, they fix the sign that double a mco sign was fixed and it was like one of my happiest days, because it was something that was like a drain on me it was driving me crazy I was letting it drive me crazy because I wasn’t taking action.

All right, I’m sure you have many more things on your list. And I just love this journal and this is where I would write down all of my items and then on the right hand side of the page. This is where the fun begins this is where you decide, is this something that I have control over. And is if I don’t have control over it. Is this something where I can make an impact. What is it that I personally can do in this scenario in this irritation in this situation. And what is it that I can let go of, what can I give over to God, or what can I pray about, or what can I focus on someone else doing something about it, and it’s not my responsibility.

So that’s where we’re going to go through my list again here. So let’s say number one the gardeners with leaf blowers. All right, I’m not in charge of the landscaping in our community. So I don’t have the right to tell the leaf blowers to stop using that machine and of course in California they’re going to get rid of any of the gas powered blowers so probably some of that’s going to go by the wayside. So I don’t have control over the gardeners. However, what I personally could do is I could go to an HOA meeting, or I could write a letter to the HOA board.

And if it is not from a, you know, community that’s doing this and it’s just your neighbor. Well, perhaps you could have a conversation with your neighbor. So there are a couple of suggestions where it’s not your responsibility and it’s not really in under your control unless it’s your gardener doing this. So you need to be creative and think outside the box in terms of what is it that I could actually do and friends I’m telling you, taking the action, even if it doesn’t yield the results. At least you can say at least and at least two little words that pack a powerful punch, and you can say, at least I took action to try to change this.

You have no control over the results you have no control over whether the HOA agrees with you over whether your neighbor agrees with you over whether the gardener agrees with you, but you do have control over your actions. What else could you do, you could find out the schedule of when the gardener is doing that, and you could leave you can make sure that you’re not at home that’s when you could go get gas in your car go grocery shopping or go for a walk. You could put on headphones you could go to a different place in the house.

So why in the, you know how I like to say it non spinning world. Are you fighting against reality, when you have not taken these steps. So, there’s one example, the school board wants to approve the questionable textbooks in the curriculum, I think you know what you could do let me know in a comment. Oh yes, you could write a letter you could go to the board, or you could say, This is not under my responsibility, I will pray for those to come to discernment maybe you could talk to parents and educate them and have them go to the school board maybe you could send an email.

So there are things that you can do and you have to decide whether or not that is worth your time, effort, energy and resources, it may not be. Maybe you are more concerned with the quality of the water the quality of the air. Maybe you are more concerned with other things in your life, but don’t let this drive you crazy, mark it off your list. It’s not under your control or decide that you want to be engaged. All right, your coworker constantly interrupts you when you’re trying to get something done. You have no control over your co workers behavior, period, your co workers going to do it or not do it.

What you can do is you can close your door you could put up a sign and say, on a deadline, do not disturb until 4pm, you can have a conversation. It may not stop your coworker from coming over, but you only can control yourself. All right, you’re against the war in the Middle East, you wish there was an end to the atrocities. I think some of these other techniques could apply as well. You could write letters to the senators. I mean, frankly, it’s not your country, it’s not your people, perhaps they are if you’re if you come from that area or you have relatives there so I would say prayer, and you’re not, I don’t think you have a lot of control or even influence in doing anything about that.

Maybe I’m wrong. Let me know in a comment below. I think praying about that letting others know. But unless you are the commander in charge. You don’t actually have any specific control or responsibility immediately in that area, sad to say, I wish I did food prices keep rising food prices keep rising you’re spending outside your budget. Well, this isn’t one as well, where you could shop at a different store, you could write out a meal plan, you could think about other options maybe there are food pantries, where you could get your food. That would help supplement what else, whatever you can pay for.

Maybe you can grow your own maybe you can go into a co op maybe you can not eat out so you need to think about what it is, you can do. You cannot control the rising food prices that my friends is going to drive you crazy if all you do is complain about it. So taking action in a way that you can take action is very empowering. All right, I want to talk about the loved one running late and so called making you late, no one can make you late but yourself, you’re going to set a compassionate boundary, you’re going to let them know that I am leaving at 1045.

And if you’re ready, great, we’ll go together and if you’re not, I’ll be leaving anyway. And you leave it at that, and they either will be ready or they’ll have to find their own way. You saying that they are making you late is not accurate unless you can’t drive, and they’re the ones with the keys. And in that case, you would need to find a different arrangement, you would need to get a personal driver, an Uber, a friend, there is another way, and you can figure it out. You’re responsible for yourself, you’re not responsible for unless it’s a child, you know, under adult age.

And if it, if that’s the case and you need to create a buffer time zone there, so that you can get them ready earlier but by and large, you’re responsible for yourself and not for the other adults. Your spouse stays up late, and then you wake up when he or she comes to bed, then maybe you have a cutoff time and you say if you’re not in bed by 1115, you need to sleep on the sofa. Maybe you have a guest room, and they can sleep on the guest in the guest room, and you need to set boundaries and you cannot control their behavior, they’re going to go to bed when they want to go to bed you can only control your behavior, and your behavior would be the bedroom doors close and you ain’t getting in.

I’m not saying you have to do it that way but just as an example of what you can control and what you can’t control. All right. The acquaintance is always gossiping. That’s where you say, Oh, you know, I don’t really like to engage in those kinds of conversations, and you get up and you leave, you don’t tell the person to stop doing it. You can’t control what they’re going to do, but you simply say oh gosh you know Sally’s not here and I don’t really like to talk about her when she’s not and then you get up and you leave.

And that’s it. I’ve got a whole other broadcast I can talk about overcoming those gossips. And then of course, the weather, other drivers taxes, other people’s opinions. I don’t think you have any control over that whatsoever, other than if it’s raining you put on a raincoat Oh, and a public service announcement. You don’t need to put on a raincoat to keep other people dry. I’ll just let you mull that one over. Thank you friends so much for being on board I really appreciate it. Thanks so much be sure that you’re on the free sub stack, all of the info is there for you in the description box below.

I appreciate our moderators and everyone that is a part of our community here, and I look forward to seeing you in an upcoming broadcast. [tr:trw].

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