You can't control the cards you're dealt

Craig 00:00 

Welcome to Live Well & Flourish. I'm your host, Craig Van Slyke.

You can’t control the cards you’re dealt, you can only control how you play them. This little saying is a maxim that guides my life, especially when dealing with challenging circumstances. I have no idea where this saying originated, and I suppose I don’t really care. What I do care about is the wisdom in the words. The saying is pretty easy to interpret -- events are often beyond your control, but you can always control how you react to events. Over the course of this podcast I’ve talked a lot about the importance of control and of knowing what is and is not under your control, but I think the topic is worth revisiting. If you’re interested in going beyond what I talk about today, check out episodes 33, 48, 50, and 69, all of which are available at livewellandflourish.com.

In this episode, I’ll cover three ways to follow the guidance in the maxim. Controlling the past, embracing uncertainty, and knowing when to fold the hand.

Craig 01:16 

The first topic, controlling the past, might have given you pause. Maybe you thought, “Wait a second! You can’t control the past. That’s impossible and you’d be foolish to try.” If so, you would be absolutely right. You cannot control the past. I purposely said “controlling the past” to be a bit provocative. A more accurate way to express my idea would be controlling the impact of the past on the present. That’s really what I’m trying to get at. We’re all shaped by our past and although you can’t control the past, you can take some control over how the past shapes your present. There’s a technique in psychology therapy called narrative therapy. The basic idea is that you can shift how your past affects you by changing the way you think about the stories of your lives. Narrative therapy is too complex to cover here, and I'm not sure I totally understand all of it, but I still think its basic idea can give you a way to rethink about your past so that it has a more beneficial impact on your present. 

Craig 02:29 

Let's take an example. Consider someone, let’s call her Sally, who grew up in a poor family and attending sub-par schools. For part of her life, Sally just took the easy path and partied and engaged in some questionable behaviors. But one day she realized that she was on a path to nowhere. So, she started going to college part time while working, and eventually earned a graduate degree and became a talented, successful scientist. Sally can look at her past in different ways. She could see herself as a victim and bemoan the hard road she had. How much easier her life would have been if she was born to privilege and went to great schools and parents who could have sent her to a top-tier university. That's one way she can look at it. Or, she can see herself as a hero who persevered through significant difficulty and overcame many challenges to build a good life for herself and her family. Objectively, the events of her past don’t change, but she changed the way she tells and thinks about her story. Changing to the hero’s journey will help bolster her resilience and her ability to endure current and future difficulties. So, yeah, Sally isn’t controlling the past, but she is taking control of the effect her past has on her.

Craig 03:55 

A word of caution here, though. Changing your self-narrative isn’t easy and I don’t want to minimize the extreme difficulties you may have faced. So, if you’re struggling with your past, please, PLEASE seek the help of a good mental health professional.

My second idea, embracing uncertainty, is a little more straightforward. Basically, uncertainty can be seen as a threat or a challenge. I talked about this in episode 69 when I discussed how to cope with stress through control. So, I’ll keep it brief here. When you’re faced with uncertainty, you can view it as a terrible thing or you can view it as an opportunity and a challenge that can help you flourish. Let me give you a bit of a trivial example. When Tracy and I visited Ireland a few years ago, we made very few plans other than booking a car and some hotel rooms. Basically, we just wandered. Sometimes it worked out and sometimes it didn’t. It was all very uncertain. But even when our wandering didn’t result in something great, we always maintained a sense of excitement about what might lay around the next corner. The result was an amazing trip with lots of happy memories. I’ll also add that when you face uncertainty, you can develop plans to mitigate potential bad outcomes, such as stocking up on food and water when a storm is approaching. As I’ve said before, you can’t control the storm, but you can control your preparations.

Craig 05:33 

I’m gonna tell you a story to illustrate my last point, knowing when to fold. I briefly played football at the University of Central Florida. It was the first year for the team and I was able to land a spot on the practice squad. But I wasn’t very good. I was never going to be a star or even a starter. But for a while I enjoyed being part of something exciting. Then I started failing a class. Soon, I realized that the time and energy I was putting into football was a losing situation. There was no way it was going to turn into something more important than my academics. So, I quit. It was NOT easy. I was raised not to quit, and I can’t remember having quit anything before then. But football simply wasn’t going to lead to anything for my long-term success and there was nothing I could do to change that. It just wasn’t in the cards. So, I threw in those cards, folded and quit the team. I did it in a respectful way that left no hard feelings, but I still quit. And it was absolutely the right thing to do. In fact, I think you should think long and hard about quitting something important. Consider two things, whether it’s possible to change the situation and if so, whether the investment in changing the situation is worthwhile. Sometimes there’s nothing you can do to salvage a toxic relationship, a bad job, or many other aspects of life. When that’s the case, consider folding so you can put your energy into other efforts.

Craig 07:20  

Well, that’s it for today. You can’t control the cards, but you can control how you play them. Keep this in mind and you’ll live a more flourishing life.

Until next time, stay wise my friends.