It’s an adage seemingly as old as time, but when your world seems like it is spinning out of your grasp, be it from work, politics, or just life, remind yourself to focus on the things you can control.
For accountants in particular, this time of year, despite best intentions, tends to get the best of you. I’ve seen it for decades. You plan, you promise yourself, your staff, your family even, that this year will be different and you won’t let things get out of hand.
And with the political environment being what it is, combined with the myriad client questions and issues with the IRS, with data security, software, and AI, it is enough to make any tax pro want to pack it in. For these, and all reasons that point to you wanting just to maintain sanity, you would do yourself well to be in the mindset of what you can control versus the things that you simply can’t even wrap your head around and overwhelm you the most.
What you can do is impact change and the things that will, at the very least, make you feel more in control. Focus on your expertise, your ability to price your services with some level of confidence, and the processes you have put in place to have both efficiency and some level of sanity. Also, I cannot stress enough to find your “no.”
It is good to finally see more accountants finding their No the way Simon Sinek encouraged them to find their Why. In my view, they are one in the same because the end result is you in control.
It is you saying what stays and what goes and how it will go. It is you saying when work stops and ends, what deadlines are going to work best for you and your staff, not any outside organization or factor. It is you standing by your fees, your overall workload, and what you use to do the work.
These may seem like comparatively minuscule things to have power over, but the fact is, these things add up, just as the things that frustrate you most and make you feel most out of control do. Which is why you need not look at everything coming at you, or for you, as it were.
See your world in terms of where your hands are on the wheel, the foot is on the gas or the brake, and the vehicle responds to you. Not sliding or speeding, but coasting smoothly. Dven over the bumps, you are on the road.
This is my hope for the profession at large and anyone who feels the world is against them. You have a say, you have a community at your back, and you have…You and your ability to say Yes or No. That’s not a bad thing to enter this year, and what you can foresee in your life.
Here’s Seth David reiterating my views at the conclusion of an interview we did last year.
The best!