Kevin Surace argues that obsessing over distant crises you can't control, like wars or global events, drains your motivation and effectiveness. Stay informed, but don't let worry about things beyond your influence paralyze you. Focus instead on what you can actually change in your own life.
Today you open the paper, you go, oh, there's a war and people are getting bombed. Unless you're going to go there and solve it, or you're going to run for president, or I don't know, right? You actually have no impact on that. You have to stop worrying about those things which you can't impact. You can note it. You're educated on it. You want to be educated on world politics. That's great. But you can't worry about it. And it's the worrying about it that puts people in bed in a depressed state. I have met more people who say, oh, well, because of this, I can't even get out of bed. I said that, that's going on, you know, 12 5,000 miles away and you can't have any impact on— I just can't get out of bed. Okay, so it's having an impact on you where you're no longer going to be successful today. And if that's what you choose to do, you know, that is your life choice. It's not the choice I choose to make.
