The Swim Jump Fly Advent Calendar

Since there are 12 weeks until the end of the year, I’m going to share 12 bite-sized pieces of help from my new book Swim Jump Fly: A guide to changing your life. Think of these as an online Advent Calendar. Each week you can open a door to discover a new tasty morsel.

So here goes, the first idea that will change your life: spans of control.

None of us have perfect lives and we all want to shift a few things around. Where we often go wrong is what we want to change. It seems obvious, of course, but focusing on areas outside our control will just make us unhappy.

One example of a hopeless change project is to try to change somebody else. You’ll have very little control and will be disappointed by the lack of results. The only thing we can truly work on is our own life. How many times do we say, “if only she did this, if only he did that… then everything would be fine.” Much better to pick something you can influence.

Here’s an exercise from the book which might help, called spans of control, or circles of influence. Think about everything that’s bugging you right now. Turn off your phone, shut the door, dig deep. I’m sure you’ll find things to note down. Now take a piece of paper and re-create this table below. Identify where your items might sit in the table and then write them in, one by one, into the…