(For those not familiar with Yinzer language, dahn means down.)
There’s only one piece of wisdom I want you to melt into your brain’s software today.
First, lemme explain why:
Life can get hard:
Loved ones pass away. Mistakes take at least twice as long to fix than it took causing them. Friends and family members can betray you. Heartbreak can be waiting around any corner. Confidence can turn into arrogance, which turns into humility. Injuries slow your progress. Goals get missed. Trauma happens.
The list goes on.
Business can get even harder:
Sometimes it feels like business goes up and down with the wind. Ad campaigns plummet your cash flow. A partner steals everything. A piece of copy you thought would crush it flops miserably. You question your self-worth. Your sales pipeline dries up. Your wealth shrinks. Your family falls apart because you spend too much time with your business. Failure waits around every corner.
The list goes on.
Relationships can be even harder.
And the worst part of all?
Many of these things are out of your control. And when they’re out of your control, you can feel helpless. Powerless. Paralyzed.
In these moments, you think there’s nothing you can do. And you’re right. And this hurts. Deep down in your soul. It makes you question everything about yourself, your career choices, your life, your dreams. These questions sting—and leave a hole of anxious worries in their wake.
Why do I bring this up?
Well, it’s an honest fact of life and business.
Some things are out of your control—and the harder you fight to control them, the easier they elude you.
This exact thing, for example, is how Scott Adams—who besides making his living at the time by being a cartoonist, was also a keynote speaker—once lost his voice to the point where he questioned if he’d ever be able to speak again.
It’s what happened to a Drew Lynch, a former actor turned comedian. When he worked as a server while trying to make it as an actor, Drew played softball with his co-workers one day, suffered a brutal vocal cord injury and developed a stutter that forever barred him from Hollywood. In fact, his agent dropped him as soon as he heard Drew speak.
And it’s something that could happen to me or you at any given point.
Something traumatic happens. Something that we can’t control. Something wrecks our progress and makes us question everything, down to the very marrow in our bones.
So the piece of wisdom I can share with you today?
Only focus on what you can control.
The other side of this nightmare is a story of victory and triumph.
It’s how Scott Adams got his voice back.
It’s how Drew Lynch picked up comedy.
And it’s how you’ll win too.
This is especially true in business:
Most entrepreneurs set wild goals in their business. But their goals are goals they can’t control. For example, you can’t control how many clients cancel your services. You can control their experience though, so it’s harder for them to cancel than it is to stick with it.
You can’t control how many people buy from your emails. But you can control the quality of your emails, making it harder for them to hit unsubscribe than to push the link to your offer.
You can’t control what nightmarish situations await you. But you can control how you respond to them—and you can control how you leverage them to create even more success than you would’ve had without them happening in the first place.
But make sure you’re honest with yourself: We tend to believe we have more control over uncontrollable things and less control over more controllable things.
As long as you're brutally honest with yourself—yes, even if it hurts… especially if it hurts—you have the power within you to turn any negative into a positive.
At the risk of sounding too sappy, let me get down to business:
Hit reply if you need help growing your email revenue. Whether you think it’s in your control or not, I can help.
John
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