Only Worry About What You Can Control

There are some thing’s worth getting upset about and some things to let just go by you. Today was a travel day for me. I woke up at 5:00 and Russ took me to the airport for my 6:50 flight. Amazingly RDU at 6:00 am on a Sunday in July is packed. The TSA lines were full, full, full. But I can’t complain. I have clear and Pre-check and I practically walked right through in two minutes. The scanner guy did not even stop my big canister of magnetic signs I use for teaching.

I went to the gate and got a bad feeling. The crew was not boarding the plane. There was some issue. I had a very tight connection and I looked at the Delta app and saw there were two more flights after my initial one and they both had available seats. If I missed my first flight I was fairly sure I would get another. Not as good a seat, but still get me to the Bahamas.

I watched at the gate agents calmly explained to passenger after passenger what would happen to them if they missed their connections. People were going nuts. One man practically had a hissy fit that he had to get on this plane and make it to ATL to get a connection to get home. The agent could not have been more patient and kind. Practically Job like.

Sure enough, my spidey sense about the crew issue did cause the plane to be delayed exactly the amount of time I had to get off my first flight and run to the gate of my next flight. So Delta rebooked me automatically and when I landed and turned on my phone I had a new flight.

Nothing I could do. Nothing to really worry about. I called the front desk who organizes my pick up and let them know and all was fine. So I just went to the club and hung out with all of humanity. And while I was checking in the man who so desperately had to get to ATL was there and I asked him if he was going to make his connection and he said with a big smile, “Yes, Thank goodness.”

You can only worry about what you can control. Worrying about what you can’t control will just make you crazy. That does not mean that people will stop worrying.