The World In Your Control

Imagine this: you’ve trained for years to run your first marathon. You’ve bought the shoes, logged the miles, and kept a disciplined diet. On race day, however, a thunderstorm rolls in. The event is canceled. No matter your preparation, you can’t control the weather.

This is the essence of the external forces that affect our lives. These are the environmental conditions, human influences, and random disruptions that impact your ability to make or act on choices. Unlike personal factors, skills, traits, or willpower — external factors lie outside your direct control.

Your interpretation of these forces often determines whether they become insurmountable obstacles or surprising opportunities. While you can’t eliminate external forces, you can influence how you respond to them and you can shape how they influence your future choices.

To understand the foundations leading to this article, explore the previous installments of the Demigods and Mortals Choice Series:

• A Framework of Choice

• First Cultivate Yourself

Understanding External Forces

External factors fall into three categories:

1. Environmental Factors (EF): Circumstances tied to the physical or social environment. Geography, culture, economics, even politics.

2. Human Factors (HF): The choices and behaviors of other people. Bosses, colleagues, friends, parents, or even strangers.

3. Interpretation (IE): How you perceive those forces. This is the bridge between external reality and internal response.

Together, they form the backdrop of your decision-making landscape.

When External Forces Seem Overwhelming

Sometimes, external factors feel crushing: war, natural disasters, systemic inequality. Here, it’s important to distinguish between control and influence.

• Control: Direct action you can take (moving to a new location, leaving a toxic job).

• Influence: Longer-term or indirect actions (advocating for policy change, building networks).

When you feel powerless, focus on your sphere of control first. Even small choices. Saving money, seeking allies, changing perspective can all build momentum toward greater influence later.

The civil war in Syria is a case study in overcoming overwhelming odds. Millions fleeing Syria faced an impossible environment: war, terrorism, and collapsing infrastructure. For many, leaving everything behind was the only way to preserve possibility. Though external forces were overwhelming, the active choice to leave opened new futures.

Environmental Factors: The Landscape of Life

Where you are born, where you live, and the context you operate in profoundly shape your opportunities.

• Growing up in a wealthy suburb offers different resources than growing up in a rural farming town.

• Living near mountains creates opportunities for skiing, while coastal living enables surfing.

• Political stability encourages entrepreneurship; instability forces survival decisions.

These factors are real and often unfair. But they are not destiny. The key is to recognize them early, then decide how to relate to them.

When we look at our environment, we must systematically break it down to identify what advantages that environment brings. Does where I live help or hinder my goals? What resources are available here?

If that environment hinders us we must ask the hard questions and make a choice to stay or leave. Is there opportunity elsewhere? Does that environment support my goals? What can I do to get there? Is it worth the risk?

Female education advocate Malala Yousafzai gives an example of someone who chose to fight her environment. Born in Pakistan’s Swat Valley, Malala faced an environment where education for girls was under attack by the Pakistani Taliban. Instead of surrendering, she reframed her environment into a global platform for change. Her advocacy for education was forged not despite her environment, but because of it.

Human Factors: Other People’s Choices

Every person you interact with carries their own set of choices, values, and goals. Sometimes their actions support you; sometimes they block you.

• A mentor may accelerate your career.

• A toxic boss may stall it.

• Supportive parents can provide confidence.

• Critical peers can instill self-doubt.

You can’t control their choices, but you can choose your relationship to them.

Dealing with human factors is about identifying and surrounding yourself with those who consistently support your growth while limiting time with those who drain or sabotage you.

You can’t choose your parents or bosses, but you can choose how to respond to them. You can choose who you spend time with, who you choose as mentors, and who you choose to trust with your development.

Steve Jobs is an example of someone who had to fight against the humans around him. In 1985 he was ousted from Apple, a decision of others, by a board of directors unconvinced of his leadership. Many would have seen this as career death. Instead, Jobs founded NeXT and acquired Pixar. These ventures shaped his return to Apple and transformed the company into a global powerhouse. The very human factors that rejected him became the forces that sharpened his vision.

Interpretation: The Power of Perspective

Here lies the real leverage point. Two people can face the same external event yet interpret it in radically different ways.

Examine Malala’s environment. How many other women and children did not fight back and try to make a change? She was attacked and shot in 2012 for her actions to push back, and yet she chose differently.

Steve Jobs could have focused all his energy on attacking the individuals who ousted him. Instead, he focused his efforts on founding a new company and supporting Pixar’s rise. His mindset and focus steered him to success and later return to Apple.

Both chose to take their negative external factors and find new pathways to success.

Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl described the ultimate loss of external control, his imprisonment in Nazi concentration camps. He wrote, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms, to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

Frankl’s interpretation of suffering as an opportunity for meaning not only helped him survive but has guided millions since.

When facing external challenges, ask:

• Is this truly a barrier, or a challenge to overcome?

• Can I reframe this as training, opportunity, or redirection?

• How much power am I giving to this event through my interpretation?

Turning Obstacles into Opportunities

Once you recognize external forces, the question becomes: how can you turn them into opportunities?

1. Reframe Setbacks as Training Grounds. Every obstacle strengthens resilience. Failures are lessons disguised as pain.

   Example: Oprah Winfrey was fired from her first TV anchor job. Instead of collapsing, she reframed it as misalignment and moved into talk shows, discovering her true calling.

2. Use Limitations to Spark Innovation. Constraints often force creativity. Example: The founders of Airbnb couldn’t pay rent, so they rented out air mattresses in their apartment. That “limitation” became a multi-billion-dollar business model.

3. Seek Alternative Pathways. If one door is blocked, another often opens.

   Example: Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team. Instead of quitting, he doubled his practice. That rejection fueled his legendary career.

From Blame to Agency

When the environment and people seem to be in control you must make a choice to take control of the things you can influence:

1. Identify the Force. Be specific. Is the force environmental, human, or situational?

2. Separate Fact from Interpretation. What is objectively happening? What is my perception?

3. Choose Your Relationship. Will you adapt, resist, or redirect?

4. Leverage the Lesson. Ask: how can this force make me stronger, smarter, or more resilient?

5. Act, Don’t Avoid. Even small proactive steps shift you from victim to agent.

It’s tempting to blame external forces for our lack of progress. And to a degree, they are real barriers. But the difference between those who stay stuck and those who thrive lies in interpretation and response.

Malala turned oppression into advocacy. Jobs turned rejection into reinvention. Frankl turned suffering into meaning.

External forces will always exist. Storms will cancel marathons, bosses will misjudge you, economies will rise and fall. What matters is not whether obstacles appear, but whether you treat them as permanent prisons or temporary training grounds.

You may not control the storm, but you can learn to sail through it. And in doing so, what once looked like an obstacle may reveal itself as the opportunity that shaped your destiny.