The Words That Give You Back Control
Listen to how people talk about the days they fell off.
"It was a stressful day at work, so I got home and ate the whole bag of chips."
"I was really tired, so I didn't work out."
"I was busy, so I skipped my meal prep."
Hear the shape of it? Something happened to them. The stress, the fatigue, the schedule. And then the outcome just sort of arrived, like weather. Nobody chose it. It blew in.
I do this too. We all do. It is the most natural thing in the world to narrate our own lives as a series of events we were on the receiving end of. But there is one tiny edit you can make to that narration that changes everything downstream. It is the single best mindset shift I know of, and it costs you two words.
Add "I decided"
Run the same sentences again.
"It was a stressful day at work, so I DECIDED to watch Netflix and eat chips."
"I was tired, so I DECIDED not to work out."
"I was busy, so I DECIDED to skip my meal prep."
Feel how different that lands? The first version is something that happened to you. The second is something you did. Same facts, same chips, same skipped workout. But now it is squarely yours. You owned it.
That feels uncomfortable, and the discomfort is the whole point. As long as the outcome belongs to traffic, to your boss, to your exhaustion, you have no leverage on it. You cannot change a thing you did not do. The moment you say "I decided," you take the choice back. And a choice you made is a choice you can make differently next time.
Why this actually works
This is not a positivity hack. There is real psychology under it called locus of control, an idea that has been kicking around since the 1950s out of personality research. The short version: it is the degree to which you believe your wins and losses come from inside you or from outside you.
People with an INTERNAL locus of control believe their outcomes are mostly a product of their own choices. People with an EXTERNAL locus believe outcomes are mostly the product of luck, other people, and circumstance. You know the externals. They are the friend who is perpetually late, and it is always traffic, always the gas tank, always something that happened to them.
Here is the part that matters: the internals tend to do better. They take more responsibility, they work harder when they believe effort pays off, they advocate for themselves, and they stay self-motivated because they actually believe the controls are in their hands. When you think you are steering, you steer.
And you can train which one you are. That is the wild part. Locus of control is not a fixed trait you were born with. Every time you say "I decided," you are running a rep that programs your brain to treat your life as yours. Do it enough and the belief stops being a phrase and becomes the default setting. You start steering before you even think about it.
Internal does NOT mean everything is your fault
Let me kill the obvious objection before it kills you. Internal locus of control does NOT mean you control everything. Of course you don't. Externalities are real. Your guest gets sick. The weather turns. The kid spikes a fever the night before the meet. You cannot will those away, and pretending you can is just a different flavor of delusion.
What you control is your response. You do not control that work was brutal today. You absolutely control what you do when you walk in the door. You cannot control that you got angry; the emotion fires before you get a vote. You can control whether you throw the toy. (I am quoting myself parenting here, but it scales to adults perfectly.)
All of it can be true at once. There are external factors you cannot touch, and there are internal factors that are entirely yours, and the second category is where your whole life actually gets lived. Randomness is going to happen. That is consistent; you just don't know the day. So you build for it. You set up your environment, you create slack in your schedule, you have a plan for the bad day before the bad day shows up. You control your controllables.
The order of operations
Ownership comes first, then adjustment. You cannot skip step one. If you don't own the choice, there is nothing to adjust, and you are stuck waiting on the world to fix something only you can reach.
So this week, try it. When you catch yourself narrating a choice, good or bad, slot the two words in. "I had a rough day, so I DECIDED to go for a walk and shake it off." "I had a great day, so I DECIDED to write it down." Then look at the pattern. Which choices are you making over and over that aren't moving you where you want to go? Name them honestly. That naming is the work. Because once a habit is a choice you can see, it becomes a choice you can change.
This is a general mindset principle, not a substitute for real support; if you are wrestling with something heavy, a good coach or therapist is worth their weight. But for the daily small stuff, the stuff that quietly decides whether you hit your goals this year, two words will do a lot of heavy lifting.
The credit for putting this phrase in front of me goes to coach Mike Milner, who said it almost in passing on his own show, and it has been rattling around in my head ever since. It feels good to be in the driver's seat. Your wins are yours. Your misses are yours. And the next decision is always, always yours.
Want the full version with the parenting stories and the messy snowboarding tangent? Listen to the full episode here.
If you are ready to stop letting your training happen to you and start deciding it on purpose, that is exactly the work I do with athletes. Come apply to work with me; I have never turned anyone away over money, and I would love to help you take the wheel.
Vokse eller dø. — Coach Jordan