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Thoughtfully Fit: Your Training Plan for Life and Business Success

Book by Darcy Luoma · 50 quotes · Choices, Control, Pause

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Thoughtfully Fit: Your Training Plan for Life and Business Success Quotes

“If you’re in an organization, you have no doubt encountered people problems. Ineffective communication with coworkers, conflict on teams, or a lack of trust—all of which prevent you from focusing on the work at hand. These problems plague every industry, because every industry has people. Even the greatest organizations in the world have people problems. The funny thing is, though every organization has people problems, most don’t want to talk about them. They ignore these problems and hope they’ll go away on their own. Often it’s because they don’t know where to start. The problems feel overwhelming and complex, and organizations don’t feel prepared to deal with them. So, they don’t.”

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“Over the next weeks and months, my daughters had to learn to live without their father, and me without my husband. In addition to the overwhelming, everyday tasks like buying groceries, making meals, and getting the girls to their activities, I suddenly had to navigate the legal system and file for divorce. I had to figure out the nearly impossible feat of owning a small business and solo parenting two active, preteen girls. I learned the hard way that you have to remove the leaves from the gutter if you don’t want your basement to flood. I had to muster the courage to pull the hair out of the shower drain. I had to somehow find the time and energy to decontaminate the entire house when the dreaded scourge that is lice made its unwanted appearance. And I had to do it all with the added anger, sadness, and sheer frustration that these were all things John used to take care of. As tempting as it was to collapse, I had two girls who needed me now more than ever. I needed my business to survive. I had a mountain of legal bills—tens of thousands of dollars and increasing daily. As a business owner, if I didn’t work, I didn’t get paid. Stepping away to take care of my mental and emotional state was a luxury I couldn’t afford. I had to balance what was best for my business in the long term with what the girls and I needed in the short term. I had to get through each day and keep moving forward. This meant I toggled back and forth between dealing with this trauma and running a business. I lived in a constant state of holding it all together, while simultaneously watching it all fall apart.”

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“How do coaches work their magic? When I talk to most people who haven’t had a coach yet, they often misunderstand what coaching is. They think the coach will tell them exactly what to do to solve their problems or reach their goals. Wrong. The core of coaching is to hold you, the client, as the expert. You know what you need and want better than anyone else, so my job is to help you reveal your path to that goal. I’m not going to make choices for you, but I can help you see options you haven’t thought of, or muster the courage to try something you wouldn’t have on your own.”

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“After John’s arrest, I felt like I had no time to Pause and Think. I just needed to Act. Call back the lawyer, get interviewed by the detectives, find a divorce attorney, figure out who was going to pick up the girls, cancel my conference call, monitor the news, clean up the disaster from the police search, remember to feed the girls, remember to feed myself, remember to sleep, try to get my confiscated computers back from the police, remember to breathe . . . But as someone who is no stranger to working too hard, I reminded myself that if I kept Acting without Pausing and Thinking, I’d only end up in more of a mess. I’d learned that the hard way, and those painful lessons served as the backdrop for developing this model. When I was going into that climb, I was lucky that I had a strong Thoughtfully Fit core. And that core got me to the top of the mountain.”

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“Strength is a huge part of being Thoughtfully Fit, and it requires you to be in control of your actions and emotions, instead of letting them control you. Strength does not mean you can’t feel sad, angry, or frustrated, but it requires you to make a conscious choice not to lead with anger or frustration. Having Strength is about honoring what you’re feeling and then thoughtfully choosing what you want to do next.”

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“The great thing about Strength is that it helps you feel like there are options. Without it, you often feel like life is happening to you, that other people and their actions are in charge of what happens to you. But when you build your Strength and your ability to control how you show up, then you’re in a place to choose what you do next. You’re no longer a victim of the circumstances.”

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“If you haven’t exercised in a while and you go to a strength class, would you grab twenty-pound dumbbells off the shelf? Probably not. They have lots of different weights for a reason. As with physical strength, the Thoughtfully Fit practice of Strength requires you to start small.”

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“Strength is about consciously choosing how you want to show up, to avoid letting others dictate your emotions and behavior. If you set your own thermostat, you can always be a cool sixty-eight degrees even if everyone around you is at ninety-five. And if you’re feeling a little hot? Take a Pause and a deep breath, then Think about ways to bring yourself down to where you know you’ll be in better control of your actions. Then Act from that cooler place.”

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“Strength is about how you show up. It requires you to choose what energy and action you want to bring to a given situation. At its heart, Strength is about self-management. It’s not about controlling your emotions—it’s about honoring them and choosing what you do next. It’s hard to stay in control and get yourself off autopilot. It takes a lot of Strength to move through the world with more thoughtfulness and intention. And sometimes it requires a heavy lift!”

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“We hear all the time about how important it is to be physically fit. Our society has become ultra-focused on fitness and health. Our Facebook feeds are filled with seven-minute workouts. There are YouTube videos galore on seven days to rock-hard abs. The radio plays ads to lose ten pounds in ten days, but only if you call in the next ten minutes. Even the president told us to be physically fit. Remember the Presidential Physical Fitness Test in elementary school? A quick shuttle run, the dreaded flexed arm hang. It tested strength, endurance, flexibility, and agility. All different ways to prove we were physically fit. Or not. As a matter of fact, Americans now spend more on fitness than on college tuition.1 Over a lifetime, the average American spends more than $100,000 on things like gym memberships, supplements, exercise equipment, and personal training.2 Seems shocking, right? But where are the training programs for the thoughts in your head? Those thoughts that tell you that you have no choices when bad things happen. Those thoughts that try to convince you everything is out of your control in difficult situations. Where do you go if you want to be Thoughtfully Fit? Right here in this book.”

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“When you work to strengthen your Thoughtfully Fit core, you are building the power to harness your own expertise and find thoughtful ways forward in all areas of your life. This will bring you stability, prevent injury to yourself and others, and make you stronger to handle all that life throws at you.”

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“After John’s arrest, Stillness seemed impossible. My mind never stopped, and I kept ramming through the ever-growing to-dos as fast as I could. To be honest, I was afraid to stop. I was afraid to stop working, to stop making money, to stop moving long enough to let what was happening sink in. My whole life, I’ve been a doer. Now, I worried that if I stopped doing and started being, all of this would be real. I worried I’d sink into a dark hole of despair and never come out. But maybe if I kept checking off to-dos and focused on keeping all the balls in the air, I could fix it. That was, after all, what I was good at.”

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“After John’s arrest, life came at me fast. At every turn, I found myself in a place where my gut reaction was fear, anger, or deep sadness. I had to learn to Pause. This was my chance to take a breath and get myself grounded. It helped me not to react unconsciously (which didn’t turn out well when I did).”

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“Don’t talk to anyone. Don’t say anything about this to anyone other than your lawyer. (By the end of the day, I had hired three lawyers: One to deal with the criminal case and a divorce lawyer. And a third lawyer for John.) Don’t answer any questions. It’s going to be difficult, but you have to resist the urge to talk to anyone. The irony of these words would’ve been funny if it wasn’t so devastating. Not talking to anyone was a tall order for someone who has made a living encouraging others (and myself) to be more vulnerable, connected, and present in all relationships. Someone whose life’s work, and true passion, lies in talking with others about things that matter. And now, at the very moment I needed to connect with people, I was told I couldn’t talk to anyone. I’ve never felt so alone, so shattered, and so scared for the future.”

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“When you’re working to find Balance in a relationship, chances are you’ll have to confront any conflict head-on. These conversations have all kinds of names, but whether you call them crucial, fierce, or difficult, they’re necessary for relationships to grow in a positive and productive way.”

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“Thursday, John was arrested. His mug shot was plastered all over the news and social media. Our house was in shambles, ransacked by police, and left in utter disarray, with my files thrown around like confetti by the officers executing the search warrant. I searched for comforting words for my young daughters, while trying to reconcile what I knew and didn’t know about my husband and his secret life. All this under the spotlight of the public watching our family catastrophe unfold in real time. My husband of ten years went to jail, guilty as charged of something no one wants to talk about: sexual assault of a minor he had met online. And there I was, at the base of Mount Crisis.”

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“My life changed forever in 2016 when my beloved stay-at-home husband was arrested for sexual assault of a minor. He was dragged out of our home in handcuffs by a SWAT team, never to return. As tempting as it was to collapse, that wasn’t an option—especially for the sake of my two young daughters. Instead, I relied on what I know best: coaching.”

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“Oftentimes, your Flexibility practice won’t be visible to someone else, as it may be just letting go and moving on. In those instances, that will be for your benefit. But finding a way to demonstrate empathy or compassion, as opposed to judgment or avoidance, can also help strengthen the relationship. If you can’t accept and move on, can you get curious? Rather than making assumptions about what the other person is thinking or feeling, ask them. This can still feel like judgment, and so part of your job is to feel curious, not pretend or go through the motions. You need to try to move past your initial feelings and get to a place of curiosity and, ultimately, acceptance of what is.”

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“The months following my husband John’s arrest were like a Thoughtfully Fit boot camp. I had to make many hard choices and deal with crazy thoughts and emotions (mine and others!), so I worked to Pause and Think many times a day before Acting. I won’t lie—it was exhausting. It probably would’ve been easier not to worry so much about doing things right and instead mindlessly blast my way through the mess. But that would’ve come back to haunt me later. Thoughtfully Fit gave me the tools to come out the other side without extra emotional injuries to myself or others. While I couldn’t control what happened, being Thoughtfully Fit was how I recognized that I did control what happened next. That was a source of power: to explore the choices instead of being a victim. It also helped me access compassion and forgiveness.”

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“When you first start doing core workouts, it’s rough. It’s hard. And it hurts. But if you’re consistent, it gets easier. The exercises become less painful, and you start to feel and see the results. And one of the sneaky things about a strong core is that it shows up in places you might not expect. Perhaps you thank your core for the fact that your back doesn’t hurt anymore. Or perhaps it’s easier to shove your suitcase in the overhead bin on the airplane. A strong core provides a physical support system and helps you function better—whether you’re carrying the groceries into your house or competing in an Ironman. If you’re reading this book, you’re already putting in the work! You see that things could be better, and you’re ready to do something to make that happen. So, let’s engage your core. As with your physical core, your Thoughtfully Fit core can provide you with a support system that makes it easier to be thoughtful with yourself and others. You’re then less likely to have conflict and regrets. However, this also takes consistent practice. Just like ten sit-ups won’t give you much core strength, pausing once a month won’t have much impact on your life or relationships. But if you practice, engaging your Thoughtfully Fit core will get easier, and the effect will sneak up (in a good way, I promise). As your core confidence builds, your day-to-day decisions will be more thoughtful, better informed, and made with more empathy.”

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“You also can save energy by letting things go. Acknowledge that they’re out of your control, and be done with them. No venting, no post-meeting meeting, no middle of the night spinning. Instead, ask yourself questions to find a thoughtful course of action (which in this case might mean doing absolutely nothing) and move on.”

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“Will you get it right every time? No, my friend, you will not. You’ll need to appreciate that there’s learning in failure and that tomorrow is another day to try again. You may get discouraged, but I hope you’ll see enough success that you won’t give up. Failure is essential for progress.”

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“I sometimes describe conflict as dandelions. At first one pops up—maybe someone says something that rubs you the wrong way, and it’s not such a big deal. It’s a surface issue. No need to spray pesticides. Mow over it, and it’ll go away. Or better yet, ignore it. But then it goes to seed. That’s okay! The seeds are pretty, then they blow away, and your dandelion is gone. Except it isn’t gone; it’s just hiding. Until next spring, when you wake up and your entire yard is full of dandelions. In the book Have a Nice Conflict: How to Find Success and Satisfaction in the Most Unlikely Places, the authors point out that one of the biggest challenges is to learn how to manage a conflict when you’re already firmly entrenched in it.4 So, it’s better to deal with it before you’re firmly entrenched. The best way to get rid of dandelions is to pull out the roots when you first notice them. It’s the same with conflict, which is best resolved when you address it immediately, before it grows roots and spreads.”

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“When you start accepting others just as they are, you’ll have more energy to invest in things that are most important to you, personally and professionally. Does this sound impossible? Consider this: If you can’t accept other people as they are, can you at least accept that you cannot change them?”

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“We all have patterns and defaults, including in the roles we play at work. The better you can accept others for who they are, the easier it will be to work with them. Flexibility will help provide an environment where everyone feels accepted for their unique strengths and skills.”

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“If you can begin to stretch for complete acceptance, you’ll be in a place where you can focus on things you can change. Flexibility does not mean nothing can change, but it does mean that you stop trying to change others. Go ahead and change your own behavior, your reactions, your willingness to engage, and anything else you can control that will improve things. But don’t wait for other people to change.”

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“What do you do with this inner trash talk? Similar to athletes who deal with trash talk, you have to learn to focus on the task at hand, not the trash talk. Think about it. Do you ever see a visiting football player try to hush the home team’s crowd? Of course not—it’s not a productive use of energy. In the same way, trying to tell your inner voices to stop talking trash will only increase their volume. Once you allow yourself to confront this trash talk head-on, you may start to see ways to move past it. It can be hard to be honest with yourself, but the Think part of engaging your core is key here. Ask yourself: Where do these thoughts and beliefs come from? How do they serve me? What would it look like to move past them? This is the time to stop accepting all of your trash-talking thoughts as truth and discover new ways to move forward.”

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“My grit, patience, and ability to self-manage have been challenged over and over. My thoughts threatened to derail me many times along the way. I suddenly had more people problems than I ever could’ve imagined. The road has been long. But I’m a living testament that Thoughtfully Fit works. I wish I could say being Thoughtfully Fit made all the challenges go away. It didn’t. Not by a long shot. But by practicing Thoughtfully Fit principles, the challenges I faced became easier to overcome. I could focus on what was most important to me, while dealing with the chaos swirling around me. And it can work for you, too, no matter what challenges life throws at you. You can clear any hurdle, big or small.”

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“Being thoughtful can be both an internal practice and an external one. Internally, being thoughtful includes behaviors like careful consideration, thinking before speaking, and weighing your options. Externally, being thoughtful means you think about others, and their wants and needs, when acting. It’s this care and consideration that can show up in your daily life and your everyday behavior when you are Thoughtfully Fit.”

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“The Think step is about identifying alternatives, a key part of decision-making in everything from product design to public policy. First you must quiet the thoughts telling you things can’t change, and then you need to ask questions, to see what other options there may be for moving forward and lead to your desired outcome.”

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“When you’re aware of your thoughts, you’re able to consciously choose how you behave. When you aren’t aware, you go on autopilot and are likely to act without thinking. But if you can pay attention to what’s going on in your mind—and how it’s affecting the stories you’re telling yourself in any given moment—you can choose to adjust your behavior to get the best outcome. You can identify the choices available to you and focus on what you control, rather than be a victim of your thoughts and circumstances.”

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“Another perk of Thoughtfully Fit is that you don’t have to go to a gym or hire a trainer to get started. As you already know, life will hand you plenty of opportunities to practice! Whether it’s a disgruntled customer service worker, a challenging colleague, or a saucy teenager, every day we encounter opportunities to become more aware of our thoughts and behaviors. My challenge to you is to embrace this training ground. Find opportunities to engage your core, notice your thoughts, and make different choices. Be brave enough to override your defaults, quiet your trash talk, and challenge the stories you’re telling yourself. If you practice being Thoughtfully Fit, you’ll be prepared for whatever problems life throws your way. And while life won’t get easier—you’ll still have frustrating neighbors, annoying colleagues, bad news, and unwelcome adversity—it will feel easier because you prepared and trained.”

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“Your thoughts determine your actions. When you have greater awareness and more control over your thoughts, you have greater awareness and more control over your actions. Thoughtfully Fit teaches you to be aware of your thoughts and decide if they’re serving you well. If not? Well, it might be time to think again, consider the choices, and find a new path forward.”

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“Are your thoughts getting in the way? Telling you all the reasons you can’t do something or making you feel like you don’t have a choice? Or urging you to tell others what jerks they are? Time for these thoughts to get out of the way. When you are Thoughtfully Fit, your thoughts can lead the way to better actions.”

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“Working to be physically fit takes time and effort. In the same way, being Thoughtfully Fit—responding thoughtfully in every situation—also takes time and effort. When you’re physically fit, every movement feels easier. When you’re Thoughtfully Fit, you have greater stability in your thoughts and emotions, and your life and relationships feel easier.”

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“Sometimes we plow through our days without really Thinking at all. We just Act unconsciously. On autopilot. Spinning and spinning and hoping we get lucky. However, jumping straight to Action isn’t always most effective. Taking the time to ask questions and Think is where the magic happens, because this process creates new awareness. Thoughtful questions include, but aren’t limited to, the following: • What choices do I have? • What’s in my control? • What would a successful outcome look like? • What obstacles are getting in the way? • How can I address those obstacles?”

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“If you think of life as a game of dodgeball, Agility is about learning to stay light on your feet and think about what you want to do with all those balls flying at you. In the short term, it can feel easier to duck and avoid them or be more satisfying to throw a ball back even harder, but sometimes the right choice is to call for a time out.”

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“Letting go of judgment and accepting others just as they are is difficult. However, it’s one of the most powerful Thoughtfully Fit practices. Flexibility teaches us the value of acceptance—full and unconditional acceptance of others. Even, or maybe especially, when you don’t agree with their choices or behaviors. It’s much easier to accept others when we agree with them 100 percent.”

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“The key is to do all three steps in order. And repeat as necessary. When you encounter a hurdle, Pause. Give yourself time to Think: What do I control? What are my choices? After you choose your response, Act . . . thoughtfully. Acting without Thinking isn’t good, but Thinking without Acting isn’t much better.”

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“But on a deeper level, collapse was an option. Letting my business fall apart was a real possibility. Beyond the surface of managing bills and trying to stay on top of the daily grind, I made a choice, a conscious choice, that even though my world had turned upside down, the girls and I were going to survive this. Because, for me, letting my family fall apart was not on the table. I would not run, move, or give up, like many urged or predicted. I went back to my Thoughtfully Fit training plan. Guided by the sticky notes and years of success in making other people’s lives work, I became ground zero to test-drive my new model, to help me be Thoughtfully Fit through this crisis.”

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“Clients bring their challenges to coaching when they don’t know what to do or when people problems are getting in the way of success. They have conflict with colleagues. They don’t know how to communicate effectively. They become a victim in their own life, paralyzed by seemingly bad choices. They don’t think they have any ability to fix it. They feel like things are out of their control. And that’s all understandable. But you can navigate these problems successfully. I’ve witnessed my clients do it in coaching, and I’ve done it in my own life.”

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“When you learn to ride a bike, ice skate, or downhill ski, the first thing you’re taught is how to stop. It’s an essential skill because if things start heading the wrong direction, you can stop and limit the damage. This same skill is necessary with conversations that have the potential to go off the rails and create lasting damage. When someone blindsides you and says something that triggers you, find the brakes, so you can hit that Pause button. This can be tricky because, by nature, we often aren’t patient communicators. We expect responses right away and feel compelled to offer the same. I’m inviting you to challenge that and request a little time to gather your thoughts. It can happen faster than you think, so I advise my clients to make simple requests that allow them to Pause. Some examples include: • Let me catch my breath here. • Can we find a place to sit down to talk about this? • Give me a moment to close my door. • Let me go to the bathroom/let the dog out/fill my coffee, and then I will give you my undivided attention. The truth is, your brain needs time to overcome some of your initial reactions and access other choices.”

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“Life presents challenges, unexpected obstacles, and adversity. People die. Jobs change. Bad things happen. To good people. All the time. And sadly, that won’t change. These things happen whether we want them to or not. We don’t control the fact that there will be problems at work and at home. Because we’re human, and conflict happens whenever we’re in relationships with others. While you don’t control what happens, you do control what happens next. Always. It might feel like your life is out of control and that you have no choices when something bad happens. The reality is that you have a lot of choices. When you can’t see those choices—and don’t focus on what you control—you feel helpless. However, there is another way forward. You can stop letting your worries and anxieties dictate your life. You have choice and control. You can use these challenges to get stronger. To deepen your relationships instead of destroy them. To overcome the hurdles and move forward in a positive way. If your thoughts are telling you otherwise, it’s time to train to be Thoughtfully Fit!”

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“You might be thinking: Okay, great. I definitely have problems in my life and relationships, but how do I overcome them? Where do I even start? When you encounter challenges, adversity, or conflict, you must engage your core. I’m a lifelong athlete. Every sport I train for has one common need: a strong core. It helps prevent injuries. It gives you stability that makes you less likely to fall over, and it makes it easier to get back up when you do. Thoughtfully Fit also has a core that is central to everything you do in the model. It always comes back to control and choices: What do you control? What are your choices? For example, you can’t control what other people do, but you can control your thoughts and actions. You may not be able to control angry customers, the effects of a global pandemic, the results of a presidential election, or decisions coworkers make, but you do control how you respond. And you always have choices in how you respond.”

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