Be a thermostat, not a thermometer—we set the tone, we don’t react to the environment.  I like this one as a follow up to the idea of chasing freedom and letting go of stress.  As animals, we naturally react to the circumstances around us—we are designed to constantly evaluate for danger and to respond through fight or flight.  Our bodies respond to stress the same way we would a predator.  The other side of this is that we are also trained to adapt to our surroundings so when we are constantly exposed to stress on a regular basis, our body begins to adapt and get used to being in stress.  Like we spoke about on Saturday, we can choose how we respond to the environment.  We can choose our viewpoint and we can choose to shift how we perceive the situation.  That is how we become a thermostat.  The more we decide how we feel in a given situation and the more we decide how we WANT to feel, the easier it is to set the field.  We don’t have to react to everything, we can decide where and how to expend our energy. 

When it comes to success in life, success in our goals, and success with managing/achieving our dreams, we need to have a level of control.  As I mentioned the other day, we have a lot we can control internally, so determining how we feel and how we will react is key.  We have that power.  When we allow ourselves to constantly react to the situation around us, we are always behind the 8 ball so to speak. More accurately, we become the target ball, waiting for something to hit us and tell us which way to go.  Learning to set the tone in a given space, learning to operate with intention puts us further ahead than being swayed by what’s happening.  This is different than flow, because there is a balance between being in flow and being taken by flow and reacting.  I want to clarify again that this isn’t about control, this is about controlling ourselves.  When we keep the focus on the goal, we operate differently.  We decide differently.  That means we get different results.

I want to be clear that we all need to have the ability to be a thermostat at some points in our lives.  We need to be able to read the room with the context and purpose of whether or not it aligns with our goals.  But once we get the read on the environment, we can decide if we are going to work to shift that atmosphere or if we are going to walk away.  There are a lot of unknown factors in this life, but if we can gain emotional control and decide what actions are in alignment with our goals and purpose, it becomes easier to see the truth of what is happening, determine what works for us, and to choose to walk away from things that no longer serve including stress and people who inhibit growth.  There is power in setting the thermostat in our lives and there is freedom in choosing what we focus on and what we engage with.  Don’t let others distract from what our focus needs to be.  Set the tone, don’t react.