You Can’t Control Your Environment, You Can Only Control Your Reaction To It
April 29, 2010 
13 Comments
You can’t control your environment, you can only control your reaction to it. Let’s talk about this today, and let’s break it down into some simple principles.
Say you’re driving behind someone you absolutely can’t stand. You don’t know them, but you absolutely can’t stand them because they are driving way slower than the speed limit.
What do you do? You start honking your horn and yelling at them, “Wake up! I’m sick of being stuck behind you.”
The problem is that guy in front of you has no idea why you’re honking at him. He’s just enjoying his day.
He’s thinking about the great meeting he just had, or about how he can’t wait to get home so he can have sex with his wife. He can’t figure out why there is a maniac behind him honking his horn.
Here’s the bottom line: You can’t control him.
Say you are wanting to approach a woman you see in the supermarket. A lot of you get too much in your head and think to yourself, “Oh man, I have to say the right thing. If I say the right thing, she is going to be so turned on by me that she will want to go out with me. So I have to think of the exact right thing to say so I can get the reaction I want.”
The problem with this kind of thinking is that you can’t control her reaction. All you can do is control how you are in that situation.
If you walk over to her as a confident, powerful man — a man who believes in himself and who he is as a person and who believes he is a gift — then that is all you do in that situation.
That’s all you can control. Once you walk over to her, her reaction will be based on what you did — not based on what you want her to do.
Say you’re going out on a third date with a woman, and all you can think about is how badly you want to have sex with her that night. So you plan out the entire night carefully.
You cook her dinner at your house. After dinner, you put on some David Gray music on the stereo. You open up a bottle of wine. You’ve even put an extra toothbrush in the bathroom, because you are so sure she is going to spend the night with you.
At the end of the night, you’re making out with her. Things seem to be going perfectly, then she looks at you and says “I’ve got to get home. I have an early meeting tomorrow, but let’s pick this up another night.”
Most guys will immediately go into “I want to control her reaction” mode. They will go into salesman mode, and try to sell her on staying over by saying something like “Please stay. I want to be with you.”
The truth is, though, that you don’t know what is really behind her leaving. She might be in the middle of her period, and doesn’t want her first time having sex with you to be while she’s on her period.
She might, just as she said, have an early meeting. She might be thinking that if she stays over, that she’ll be banging you all night long.
What you need to do at that moment is look at her and say, “I totally get it. How about Friday night we pick up where we left off.” That is what a real man does.
A real man will lead. She will respond and say, “Absolutely!” You’ve gotten her right at the moment she is hottest for you and is feeling you the most.
So remember that you can’t control people’s reactions. You can, however, lead them down a path.
I want you to remember the first sentence of this blog the next time you think you’re not getting what you want in a situation. If you stay true to yourself, you’ll not only get what you want, but you’ll get it back tenfold.
I totally agree with this post. Thanks for another great post
Wow….
Great one, David.
In the past I used to think: If I say this or do that, she will respond with my desired answer. But however, sometimes she misinterpreted what I said or did, and got offensive. I immediately thought: Damn, I failed. I got frustrated. But the truth of the matter is I didn’t know what was going inside her head. Maybe she had a bad day, just broke up with her boyfriend,etc. Truth is I didn’t know what was going on inside her head.
Or another example:
Recently I invited three girls to join me at a Salsa party.
The first one told me that all she does is work and she doesn’t go out that much. She even joked she is a boring person.
The second one told me outright no.
The third one told me her mother was leaving the country and she wanted to spend some time with her mom. She said she would call me if she still had the time to go to the party.
I thought at least one of the three would agree and meet me at the party.
I ended up going by myself and I still had a blast at the party.
Thing is, we can’t control other peoples reaction but only our reactions towards them.
When I was like 17-19 I used to be soo mad at everyone and everything and one day I realized… I can’t change people, I have no control over them,so why am I getting so mad for? I chilled right out and have been for the last 15 years or so
I totally agree here. The one thing that you can always bank on, any time, any place, is *yourself*. Once you harness this paradigm, it empowers you to be able to deal with any challenging or potentially negative situation life throws your way.
I agree with this because you are the only person to blame if your day has turned from bad to horrible. Usually when you have a bad day it turns horrible when you react badly towards a bad situation.
I think it comes down to the different ways people see the world. And it’s a hard one, too. Who hasn’t blamed someone for their fate someday?
But fact is that the more we learn to stay in our own reality, the better things work out for us. And the first thing to realize is that we are the creator of anything that happens.
Eastern philosophy teaches us to “go with the flow”, which means to accept everything that’s coming and making the best out of it or even using it as a valuable resource!
Kevin–what was great about what you have done is that you have taken control of your life and not allowing others to dictate it for you! Have you applied this to your dating life as well?
Thanks for this message. I met a friend of a friend recently and had been talking to her back and forth on Facebook. I thought she was an interesting girl and just wanted to get to know her. I wasn’t trying to pursue a relationship with her at all, but a yesterday my friend told me that she thought I liked her and that I needed to stop writing her back because she didn’t like it and had been trying to respond in ways that implied that I wasn’t supposed to write her back.
I was really taken back, confused, and almost offended. I mean, if you don’t want to talk to me, don’t talk to me. Don’t get mad at me for talking to you either. I’m just a friendly guy. Was she really so full of herself that a simple conversation had her convinced I was so into her that she complained about it to my friend?
Ultimately though, she’s just a girl and if she wants to act like we’re in middle school, there’s no reason for me to be friends with her. I can’t control her reaction to me or what I say, but her having a negative reaction is not my fault. She’s just a silly girl. Her pettiness isn’t worth getting worked up over.
Collin,
What the girl did was not right. Why didn’t she just drop the hint subtly or direct to you, instead of letting you know via your friend.
Not cool.
She perceived it as you liking her, whereas you just wanted to get to know her. A friend once told me that there is no thing as reality, only perception.
Pitty though, that some people have to act that way. Oh well, their loss, they are the ones who end up shooting themselves in the foot.
Farley,
Thanks. If she’s going to act that immature/full of herself, I really don’t want to get to know her. I’m not going to beat myself up about it.
People wouldn’t have this problem if they do things with an open mind and with out expectations.
Absolutely, I have done this and it is fantastic, it just give’s me more time to flirt and build up HER anticipation, take advantage of these time’s and it really will come back to you tenfold.
Hey, I think you’re correct to a degree. Our perception is important. But it is also important to note that our environment is a big factor in other respects. If we live in a messy home and things are breaking, then we become stressed. You need to gain control over your environment as well and to blame someone for reacting negatively to something offensive is not the best way to go about solving a problem.
We have a lot more control over where we are than how we react to things, especially when it’s unexpected. To change our entire way of thinking about things takes a long time. Whereas moving to a positive environment is much easier and very effective.
Cam.