Wouldn’t it be nice to have control?

“Wouldn’t it be nice to have control over everything?”

“Of course!” - a 4th-grade student responding to the question. “life would be so easy if I could just control everything.”

The desire to control every aspect of our lives is natural. You woke up this morning imagining how your day would go, and wouldn’t it be nice and easy if life just went your way? The kids wake up on time and on their own. The eggs didn’t burn, and every stop light was green. No construction slowed down the traffic, and everyone followed the drop-off procedure at school. There were no last-minute requests, and you weren’t called to pick up your child early because your child was sick. Wouldn’t life be easy if you have control over everything?

Yes, it would, but life isn’t easy.

Life is filled with unexpected interruptions and inconveniences. It is filled with, well, other people. Other people are independent thinkers, who can’t read your mind, and have minds of their own. They have their own agenda and their own vision of what a perfect world would be. And because you share the space with these other people, your life will not go exactly as you planned.

And because life isn’t easy, and bad things can and will happen, it is impossible to be perfect. There will be mistakes, flaws, and disappointments in your life. In those moments, your inner critic is likely to come out and point out all the places you failed.

If the results of your actions drive you, you will constantly be disappointed, but if you are driven by process, you are more likely to see progress. If you focus on progress, you simply focus on doing 1% better than yesterday. You are focusing on one small change you can make to your day and your interactions to move you forward. You may take two steps forward and one step back, but you still move forward one step. You are making progress. If you choose to be kinder than yesterday, then you are a kinder person. If you choose to spend 1 more quality minute with your family, that’s one minute your family didn’t have yesterday. When you focus on your process, you are more likely to see progress.

Life is hard, and so is parenting. Unexpected things may deter you from your results, but you can still progress toward your goal. What process are you focusing on today? What progress did you make today?