Focus on What You Can Control

Right now, the United States and Israel are waging war on Iran. It's been a little over two weeks since this war began. Really, these countries have been at odds for a long time, more in a cold war kind of way. But it's become a full-blown hot war now, with the U.S. and Israel bombing the living dickens out of Iran, Iran striking back at Israel and other countries in the region, and it's just become absolute chaos, uncertainty and fear. It's become a massive story, a conflict that's reshaping the entire global order.

I know for myself and many others, this war has stirred up feelings of worry, anxiousness, fear and major concern.

And this is just one example. One recent event among many. Because ultimately, this kind of thing is always going on. The truth is that the world is a complete mess at all times. It's just a matter of where the mess is happening, how it's manifesting, which nations are at war and what the finer details look like.

The world, our planet, our nations, our societies, our states, our cities and towns, they're all a complete mess. Chaos and disorder and unruliness, somehow harnessed by human beings building barely-good-enough systems to hold it all together.

So at the end of the day, all you can do as one individual human being on this spinning rock is focus on what you can control. The best use of your time and energy is to identify the things within your immediate reach, the things you can actually impact, and put your focus there. That's it. That's all any of us can do. And the more you do that, the more you take action on those things, the less anxiety you'll feel, and the better off the world will be.