Things beyond control

Studying and wishing your fake ID works, running and hoping McDonald's new burger is tasty, going advice and hoping your friend follows your advice. 

These are opposites with the main idea of things we can control and things we cannot control.

Things that we cannot control outnumber the number of things we can control by an exponential amount and reasonably, we spend considerable more time on those things. It is completely normal and acceptable. Just because everybody does it but that does not mean that it is correct to spend time on the things that you cannot control.

One of the biggest things we cannot control is 'worry'. Worrying about something will not change how it will happen. Worrying if your exam will be difficult won't make it difficult or easy but you will be wasting a lot of time worrying which could be used to study. In the realm of worry, time goes slowly but while you are lost in it, time, in reality, flows fast. It is as if every minute spent worrying is two minutes actually spent. 

Worrying is a problem which only you face. this means that you worrying will not affect others. for example, if you worry that your friend will do better than you in exam, the anxiety only affects you and your friend is not afflicted by the worry, lest he even knows it is happening. Your time is being wasted. While worrying, the mind becomes weak and often brings in the worst possible situations. 

we cannot control what fortune holds out for us but we can work now and now worry to make out future better. Worrying will never take us anywhere.

Another important thing which we cannot control is the 'what if'. While studying or working, our mind often wanders and we pop up hypothetical situations on the most meaningless and baseless things. For example, if you keep thinking different scenarios of asking a celebrity out in your mind, or the probable things you would do on mars, you're wasting your time. This is rarely a possibility and time should be spent on better things.

We are fighting an unwindable battle with things we cannot control. We must learn to recognise the things we can control and cannot control and phase out the uncontrollable things. This will be good for us as we will save time and our brains.