Two Piles

You spend most of your strength on things that will never respond to it. Every day. And then you wonder why you are tired and nothing moves.

It’s simple. Everything sorts into two piles.

One pile: what you control. Your effort. Your preparation. Your response. Your attitude. What you do next. That is the whole list. It is shorter than you want it to be.

The other pile: this is everything else. What already happened. What people think of you. What they decide. The outcome after you have done your part. The weather, the timing, the ten thousand things that were never yours to move.

Where is your mind? You agonize over what others think — not yours. You lie awake rerunning what already happened — not yours, and not changeable. You burn whole nights trying to force an outcome out of your hands — not yours. Every ounce of that is stolen. Ripped straight out of the one pile that would have answered you, and thrown into the one that never will.

That is your problem. Not laziness. You are working furiously on things that cannot hear you. Meanwhile the things that would move sit untouched, waiting for the effort you wasted on the wind.

Stop wasting time and energy. When something lands in front of you, ask one question before anything else: is this mine? If it is not, then don’t pick it up. Holding it costs you everything and changes nothing. And if it is yours, it gets all of you, because it is the only thing on earth that ever answers back.

Sort your two piles.

Put everything into the one that moves.

Let the other one go, and never pick it up again.