It Is What It Is (And Then What?)
You can't always control your circumstances. You can always control what comes next.
I’ve been catching myself saying it is what it is a lot lately.
I know how that sounds. Like a cop-out. Like someone who’s given up and wrapped their surrender in a tidy little phrase. But that’s not what’s happening when I say it.
Lately, life has thrown a string of circumstances and unexpected events my way, situations I genuinely cannot fix, cannot control, and cannot will into a different outcome. And so the phrase keeps coming out.
But here’s the thing. Every single time I say it is what it is, my mind immediately follows up with a question: okay, so what can we do right now?
Not tomorrow.
Not once things calm down.
Right now, in this moment - what actions can I take that are going to move my life in a better direction? Because while I can’t always control what happens to me, I can always control what I do next. And that distinction is everything.
I’m not saying this from a place of theory. I’m saying it from experience.
Seven years ago, I left high school, did a year of college, got married, and entered the workforce full time. I started out driving trucks - hauling materials between warehouses and a production plant, running machines in between routes. That was my starting point.
Today, I work at a soon-to-be billion-dollar company and recently received a job offer from one of the top creative marketing agencies in the world.
No degree. No fancy qualifications on paper. What I do have is a stack of proof - built day by day - that I showed up and did the best I could in the present moment. That’s it. That’s the whole strategy.
I’m a Christian, and I’m genuinely grateful for what God has placed in my life. But it wouldn’t be honest to suggest I’d be where I am if I’d just sat back and waited for it to be handed to me. Faith and effort aren’t opposites. For me, they’ve always moved together.
Here’s what I want you to take from all of this, especially if you’re sitting in the middle of something hard right now.
Time will pass no matter what you do. That’s not a threat - it’s actually the most freeing thing I know. You can spend that time consumed by the circumstances you can’t change, or you can keep moving, one day at a time, doing the best you can with what’s in front of you. Eventually, those problems will either resolve themselves or you’ll grow strong enough that they no longer have the same weight.
What I’ve realized is that the seasons of life where I’ve had the least control have given me the most clarity. I’ve thought deeper, connected more genuinely with people, and found myself sharing stories I wouldn’t have had otherwise. There’s something about pressure that sharpens you, if you let it.
Someone commented on a Substack note I shared recently, asking how to find peace when dealing with things outside of one’s control. My answer was simple: focus on the present. Do what you can, where you are, with what you have. Let the rest go - not because it doesn’t matter, but because holding onto it isn’t helping you solve it. Those things will still be there when you’re ready to address them. But in the meantime, you don’t have to carry them every hour of every day.
What you’ll find, when you start living that way, is that you actually do control your peace. Not your circumstances - but your peace. And that turns out to be the thing that matters most.
It is what it is. And then - what are you going to do about it?