June 12, 2026 • 12 mins
On this episode of “Tommy Talk,” Tommy discusses something we all continue to fight for: trying to stay focused on what we CAN control instead of getting consumed by what we can’t. When we spend too much time worrying about things outside our control, we end up missing out on the life happening right in front of us. The constant spiraling. The anxiety. The hyper fixation on worst case scenarios. So today Tommy is sharing some very specific (and realistic) things he does to avoid that spiral and stay grounded in what he can actually influence. Because while we can’t control everything life throws our way, we can control where we place our attention, and that can make all the difference.
Subscribe, rate, and leave a written review if you enjoy this conversation! Tune in every week for new episodes of I’ve Never Said This Before.
Executive Producers: iHeart Media and Elvis Duran Podcast Network
Producers: Andrew Pugliese & Stephanie Lane
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hey, guys, welcome to Tommy Talk, and today's topic is
how to stop focusing on what you can't control. Oh God,
I am really passionate about this because when we do this,
it truly robs us of our current life. And I'm
all about appreciating and taking this life we have and
living it to our fullest potential. And when we focus
(00:27):
on what we can't control, we take so much time
away from our life to worry about those things. And
we all do it. We all do it. We all
have anxiety about different things, or we start hyper focusing
on things that are so beyond our control. And in
terms of me, I'll speak for myself, like, when I
do that, I then hit a wall and I'll be like,
why am I freaking out or stressing this much? It's
(00:49):
literally making me miserable, It's robbing me of my joy.
So I'm like, let me do a little conversation about
this to remind us of the importance of not doing that,
and also how we can stop focusing on what we
can can't control. So I used to do this with
career all the time as I was coming up in
this business. I would do this about opportunities that I
really wanted that. I would grip so tightly onto the
(01:11):
hope that I would get that opportunity, and it would
drive me crazy. And sometimes I try to picture myself
literally gripping those opportunities so tightly, and I feel like
I must have looked crazy or desperate or like obsessive,
and there was no need for it. There was no
need for it, you know. And I would grip opportunities
about that hosting gig I wanted and hyper fixate on that,
(01:31):
and it felt like I was only living life for
that one job and it was too much. I did
that at one point in my career when I was
wanting to be an entertainment correspondent. I would think every
day how nobody was giving me my shot right every day,
and I would watch other people getting there shot and
it would make me upset or I'd be super super
(01:51):
angry about it, you know, and it wasn't healthy. It
wasn't healthy. And I had to learn over time that
it really does come down to time and you know,
opportunity and a little bit of luck, and that if
you just work hard and believe in yourself and focus
on you and not other people, that you can get
to where you want to get and if you don't,
(02:12):
it's okay. You can pivot and make a change, but
you can't always compare yourself to other people. So that
all ended up making me, one day, you know, create
my own show on Instagram during COVID, which gave me
a career interviewing people because people took a notice and
I kind of created my own opportunity to do it.
And I only thought to do that because I stopped
(02:33):
focusing on what everybody else was doing and thought, what
can I do during a time when we're all home
and I have the free time to do it that
can help me in my future. And that's when I
created a show on Instagram live interviewing the biggest people
in the world, which then actually led me to interview
the biggest people in the world in a paid capacity
with different networks and companies. So anyway, that's what happens.
When you stop focusing on what you can't control, you
(02:55):
get opened up to possibilities that you never even saw coming.
And here's the thing. The truth is, we can't control
what you can't control. You cannot control other people's actions,
you can't control past mistakes, you can't even control the future,
just to name a few of the things we can't control.
But what we can control. We can control our attitude,
we can control our reactions, our boundaries, the steps that
(03:18):
we're taking today to be a better person, to be
a better professional, those are all things we can control. Right.
So here is how to stop focusing on how much
on what you can't control, right on all the things
you can't control. This is kind of my playbook on
how to do that and how I've helped myself over
the years not focus as much on the things that
(03:39):
can control and let me The caveat is We're not perfect,
and of course every once in a while will fall
into a pattern. That's life. I'm never going to sit
here and partially I'm perfect. I'm not perfect, okay, But
overall I'm very proud to be at this place that
I'm at and I just wanted to share this with you.
So I think Number one, Hm, where do I want
to start? Number one? I would say, God, I have
(04:01):
so many thoughts, okay. Number one is a look for
sources of stress that you can limit or eliminate, and
then take those steps to actually limit them. So this
might mean anything from turning off the news. We are
inundated with news twenty four to seven. You open social media, boom,
there's a headline that the world's ending or we're all doomed,
(04:23):
or we're moving in an awful direction. And if you're
someone that can't handle that, stop scrolling through new sites,
unfollow those sites that make you feel that way, or
don't watch in the morning if you're not feeling good
like that's all well and fine, although you need to
watch my husband, Geo Benitez because he is on Good
Morning America and he anchors Saturday and Sundays and his
(04:44):
program is genius and he's full of love and uplifting joy. Sorry,
my phone just rang, but I'm not redoing this because
this is real time and I always pride myself on
this being a real time, unedited episode. So anyway, turn
off those those things that make you feel stressed. And
if it has to do with news or social media,
have less contact with it, and even with certain people,
have less contact with certain people. You need to protect
(05:06):
your peace bubble. That's what I always say, and it's
such an annoying phrase. I feel like my friend, my
one friend always makes fun of me. But you got
to protect your peace bubble. It's so important to protect that. Okay.
Number two, I think we have to really try to
spend time doing things that are meaningful to us. For example,
you could do projects with your kids. Maybe if you
(05:28):
love animals, who want to foster an animal or good
friend Wi Johnson does that. He fosters so many dogs
and it means something to him. You can write letters
to friends who are far away and who you want
to keep in contact with. What's meaningful a random act
of kindness. If you're somebody who likes to give back,
do something nice for your neighbor or for a friend,
or for someone in your community that you know needs
(05:50):
a little help. Do things that make you feel good,
that make you feel joy because you can, you can
focus on that. That's what you can control, right, And
you want to feel those things. You want to feel
those feelings and it pushes away anxiety and negativity. And
it's always nice to do something for someone, especially if
it makes you feel good. I think a really big
(06:10):
thing that I worked on Number three is you got
to notice your mindset, the way you think about things. Man,
it does affect the way you feel. It absolutely does.
If you're telling yourself that you're never going to get
to where you want to go. You're not going to
get there because you're blocking yourself from achieving that. If
you tell yourself something's too hard or too stressful, it's
(06:31):
going to feel that way when you have a lot
coming up on your plate. I was notorious for being like,
oh my god, I have too much ado, I'm spinning,
I'm not going to do it all. And GEO would
be like one thing at a time, one thing at
a time, one thing at a time, right, and that
way you can handle it. And if you tell yourself
that you can handle something that's hard, or you can
handle something one thing at a time, you're more likely
(06:51):
to be able to I really believe in mind over matter.
I do. I believe in it. I think our minds
are so powerful. And if we tell ourselves that we
can do something or that we're not gonna do something
because of how it makes us feel, guess what you're
gonna win. You're gonna win in your mind, your body,
your spirit, your soul. I truly, I truly believe that.
Have you ever had that like, oh, I can never
do that, And then you do it and you feel
(07:12):
really good about it. That's mind over matter, right, that's
mind over matter because something inside of you, whether you
noticed it or not, told you you could do it.
So I think noticing your mindset is so big and controlling,
you know, the things that you can control, and kind
of I guess similar to that would be self talk.
What we say to ourselves is probably one of the
(07:34):
top things we can control because we're the ones saying
it to ourselves. So you might as well be nice
to yourself because you're literally the only one who's gonna
be with you forever. I mean, this is it, like
we I am with me forever. So be nice to yourself,
like hype yourself up. You've got to treat yourself with
respect and care and love. You can control that. You
can control how you talk to yourself. If you notice
(07:56):
your being mean to yourself, you're saying, you know, I'm stupid,
or I'm not talented, or I'm ugly or I'm overweight,
Like stop, stop, step stop, don't treat yourself like that.
You don't need to talk to yourself in a negative way.
Self talk is so important, it really really is. And
then I think, like, you know, if you are somebody
(08:17):
who needs a little more clarity or work through some
tough times. Like, therapy is awesome, man, it's really good.
Like we can lean on friends and we can lean
on family, but you shouldn't always be dumping your inner
monologues and thoughts onto them because that can be really
exhausting for someone in your life too. So I think
that having a therapist if you're somebody who needs a
(08:38):
little more extra time to sort through some issues, is
never a bad idea. And I always want to be
a champion for that because it's not a sexy thing
to talk about. I've used the therapist before. I don't
go to one regularly, but I have gone to one
and it's been really helpful for me in my life.
So that's that is a way you can focus on
the things you can control one hundred percent one hundred
percent and making that time to do things to help
(09:03):
keep you calm and relaxed, right like read for fun,
take a bath, spend time being mindful of those things
that do reduce that stress in your life. I think
that's all really really really important. So to kind of
like wrap this all up, we've got to take action.
And all the things I talked about can't really be
(09:23):
achieved unless we do take that action. Like I gave
you that example with work earlier on how I was
just in a really negative spiral about it and I
took action. I started something on my own that gave
me the opportunities I have today. And that's a way
I improved myself and my career, and it gave me
really really specific steps towards achieving my goals. And at
(09:46):
the time, I didn't really know where it would bring me,
but I knew it put me in the arena. It
put me in the place I wanted to be. And
it seemed like a small thing at the time, like, oh,
I have a little Instagram live talk show that I'm
not even getting paid for. But it wasn't a small
thing because it led to something quite large. It got
me my start on Extra the TV show and a
show with iHeart, and you know, it got me opportunities.
(10:09):
So taking action is truly one of the most mindful
ways we can control the things in our life that
we can control and that we will stop focusing on
what we can't control. That's kind of the biggest hack
is taking action allows us to do that. And I
think at the end of the day, I just want
to remind you that the journey that we're all on
(10:31):
is truly the most beautiful part of our lives. The
destination is not always what it feels like. You know.
I know a lot of high performing, high functioning, very
successful people who are at that quote unquote destination and
they're not truly happy and they're not truly fulfilled. And
a lot of them have said to me over the years,
don't miss out on the journey, don't miss out on
(10:53):
what gets you to that place. And I think that
really comes down to living. You've got to live. You
can't forget to live your life, because suddenly you'll be
at that destination. You'll be at that place you thought
you've always wanted to be, and you look around and
you're like, well, what did I just do for the
last decade of my life? Like where are my friends?
Where are my family? Where are my memories? Like where's
my full life? So you have to enjoy the journey.
(11:16):
It's so important have those goals work towards them, but
enjoy the journey and enjoy that full, messy, wild, chaotic,
joyous ride. Okay, so again, none of us are perfect,
but these are always that we can truly live a
present life and live a life that we all deserve,
(11:36):
in the hopes that we stop focusing on how much
is out there that we can't control and focus on
what we can, focus on what we can. We have
one shot at this life. Let's make sure we live
a life that truly makes us feel our best. I've
Never Said This Before is hosted by Me Tommy Didario.
This podcast is executive produced by Andrew Puglisi at iHeartRadio
(12:01):
and by Me Tommy, with editing by Joshua Colaudney. I've
Never Said This Before is part of the Elvis Duran
podcast Network on iHeart Podcasts. For more, rate, review and
subscribe to our show and if you liked this episode,
tell your friends. Until next time, I'm Tommy Dederio.
Hey, guys, welcome to Tommy Talk, and today's topic is
how to stop focusing on what you can't control. Oh God,
I am really passionate about this because when we do this,
it truly robs us of our current life. And I'm
all about appreciating and taking this life we have and
living it to our fullest potential. And when we focus
(00:27):
on what we can't control, we take so much time
away from our life to worry about those things. And
we all do it. We all do it. We all
have anxiety about different things, or we start hyper focusing
on things that are so beyond our control. And in
terms of me, I'll speak for myself, like, when I
do that, I then hit a wall and I'll be like,
why am I freaking out or stressing this much? It's
(00:49):
literally making me miserable, It's robbing me of my joy.
So I'm like, let me do a little conversation about
this to remind us of the importance of not doing that,
and also how we can stop focusing on what we
can can't control. So I used to do this with
career all the time as I was coming up in
this business. I would do this about opportunities that I
really wanted that. I would grip so tightly onto the
(01:11):
hope that I would get that opportunity, and it would
drive me crazy. And sometimes I try to picture myself
literally gripping those opportunities so tightly, and I feel like
I must have looked crazy or desperate or like obsessive,
and there was no need for it. There was no
need for it, you know. And I would grip opportunities
about that hosting gig I wanted and hyper fixate on that,
(01:31):
and it felt like I was only living life for
that one job and it was too much. I did
that at one point in my career when I was
wanting to be an entertainment correspondent. I would think every
day how nobody was giving me my shot right every day,
and I would watch other people getting there shot and
it would make me upset or I'd be super super
(01:51):
angry about it, you know, and it wasn't healthy. It
wasn't healthy. And I had to learn over time that
it really does come down to time and you know,
opportunity and a little bit of luck, and that if
you just work hard and believe in yourself and focus
on you and not other people, that you can get
to where you want to get and if you don't,
(02:12):
it's okay. You can pivot and make a change, but
you can't always compare yourself to other people. So that
all ended up making me, one day, you know, create
my own show on Instagram during COVID, which gave me
a career interviewing people because people took a notice and
I kind of created my own opportunity to do it.
And I only thought to do that because I stopped
(02:33):
focusing on what everybody else was doing and thought, what
can I do during a time when we're all home
and I have the free time to do it that
can help me in my future. And that's when I
created a show on Instagram live interviewing the biggest people
in the world, which then actually led me to interview
the biggest people in the world in a paid capacity
with different networks and companies. So anyway, that's what happens.
When you stop focusing on what you can't control, you
(02:55):
get opened up to possibilities that you never even saw coming.
And here's the thing. The truth is, we can't control
what you can't control. You cannot control other people's actions,
you can't control past mistakes, you can't even control the future,
just to name a few of the things we can't control.
But what we can control. We can control our attitude,
we can control our reactions, our boundaries, the steps that
(03:18):
we're taking today to be a better person, to be
a better professional, those are all things we can control. Right.
So here is how to stop focusing on how much
on what you can't control, right on all the things
you can't control. This is kind of my playbook on
how to do that and how I've helped myself over
the years not focus as much on the things that
(03:39):
can control and let me The caveat is We're not perfect,
and of course every once in a while will fall
into a pattern. That's life. I'm never going to sit
here and partially I'm perfect. I'm not perfect, okay, But
overall I'm very proud to be at this place that
I'm at and I just wanted to share this with you.
So I think Number one, Hm, where do I want
to start? Number one? I would say, God, I have
(04:01):
so many thoughts, okay. Number one is a look for
sources of stress that you can limit or eliminate, and
then take those steps to actually limit them. So this
might mean anything from turning off the news. We are
inundated with news twenty four to seven. You open social media, boom,
there's a headline that the world's ending or we're all doomed,
(04:23):
or we're moving in an awful direction. And if you're
someone that can't handle that, stop scrolling through new sites,
unfollow those sites that make you feel that way, or
don't watch in the morning if you're not feeling good
like that's all well and fine, although you need to
watch my husband, Geo Benitez because he is on Good
Morning America and he anchors Saturday and Sundays and his
(04:44):
program is genius and he's full of love and uplifting joy. Sorry,
my phone just rang, but I'm not redoing this because
this is real time and I always pride myself on
this being a real time, unedited episode. So anyway, turn
off those those things that make you feel stressed. And
if it has to do with news or social media,
have less contact with it, and even with certain people,
have less contact with certain people. You need to protect
(05:06):
your peace bubble. That's what I always say, and it's
such an annoying phrase. I feel like my friend, my
one friend always makes fun of me. But you got
to protect your peace bubble. It's so important to protect that. Okay.
Number two, I think we have to really try to
spend time doing things that are meaningful to us. For example,
you could do projects with your kids. Maybe if you
(05:28):
love animals, who want to foster an animal or good
friend Wi Johnson does that. He fosters so many dogs
and it means something to him. You can write letters
to friends who are far away and who you want
to keep in contact with. What's meaningful a random act
of kindness. If you're somebody who likes to give back,
do something nice for your neighbor or for a friend,
or for someone in your community that you know needs
(05:50):
a little help. Do things that make you feel good,
that make you feel joy because you can, you can
focus on that. That's what you can control, right, And
you want to feel those things. You want to feel
those feelings and it pushes away anxiety and negativity. And
it's always nice to do something for someone, especially if
it makes you feel good. I think a really big
(06:10):
thing that I worked on Number three is you got
to notice your mindset, the way you think about things. Man,
it does affect the way you feel. It absolutely does.
If you're telling yourself that you're never going to get
to where you want to go. You're not going to
get there because you're blocking yourself from achieving that. If
you tell yourself something's too hard or too stressful, it's
(06:31):
going to feel that way when you have a lot
coming up on your plate. I was notorious for being like,
oh my god, I have too much ado, I'm spinning,
I'm not going to do it all. And GEO would
be like one thing at a time, one thing at
a time, one thing at a time, right, and that
way you can handle it. And if you tell yourself
that you can handle something that's hard, or you can
handle something one thing at a time, you're more likely
(06:51):
to be able to I really believe in mind over matter.
I do. I believe in it. I think our minds
are so powerful. And if we tell ourselves that we
can do something or that we're not gonna do something
because of how it makes us feel, guess what you're
gonna win. You're gonna win in your mind, your body,
your spirit, your soul. I truly, I truly believe that.
Have you ever had that like, oh, I can never
do that, And then you do it and you feel
(07:12):
really good about it. That's mind over matter, right, that's
mind over matter because something inside of you, whether you
noticed it or not, told you you could do it.
So I think noticing your mindset is so big and controlling,
you know, the things that you can control, and kind
of I guess similar to that would be self talk.
What we say to ourselves is probably one of the
(07:34):
top things we can control because we're the ones saying
it to ourselves. So you might as well be nice
to yourself because you're literally the only one who's gonna
be with you forever. I mean, this is it, like
we I am with me forever. So be nice to yourself,
like hype yourself up. You've got to treat yourself with
respect and care and love. You can control that. You
can control how you talk to yourself. If you notice
(07:56):
your being mean to yourself, you're saying, you know, I'm stupid,
or I'm not talented, or I'm ugly or I'm overweight,
Like stop, stop, step stop, don't treat yourself like that.
You don't need to talk to yourself in a negative way.
Self talk is so important, it really really is. And
then I think, like, you know, if you are somebody
(08:17):
who needs a little more clarity or work through some
tough times. Like, therapy is awesome, man, it's really good.
Like we can lean on friends and we can lean
on family, but you shouldn't always be dumping your inner
monologues and thoughts onto them because that can be really
exhausting for someone in your life too. So I think
that having a therapist if you're somebody who needs a
(08:38):
little more extra time to sort through some issues, is
never a bad idea. And I always want to be
a champion for that because it's not a sexy thing
to talk about. I've used the therapist before. I don't
go to one regularly, but I have gone to one
and it's been really helpful for me in my life.
So that's that is a way you can focus on
the things you can control one hundred percent one hundred
percent and making that time to do things to help
(09:03):
keep you calm and relaxed, right like read for fun,
take a bath, spend time being mindful of those things
that do reduce that stress in your life. I think
that's all really really really important. So to kind of
like wrap this all up, we've got to take action.
And all the things I talked about can't really be
(09:23):
achieved unless we do take that action. Like I gave
you that example with work earlier on how I was
just in a really negative spiral about it and I
took action. I started something on my own that gave
me the opportunities I have today. And that's a way
I improved myself and my career, and it gave me
really really specific steps towards achieving my goals. And at
(09:46):
the time, I didn't really know where it would bring me,
but I knew it put me in the arena. It
put me in the place I wanted to be. And
it seemed like a small thing at the time, like, oh,
I have a little Instagram live talk show that I'm
not even getting paid for. But it wasn't a small
thing because it led to something quite large. It got
me my start on Extra the TV show and a
show with iHeart, and you know, it got me opportunities.
(10:09):
So taking action is truly one of the most mindful
ways we can control the things in our life that
we can control and that we will stop focusing on
what we can't control. That's kind of the biggest hack
is taking action allows us to do that. And I
think at the end of the day, I just want
to remind you that the journey that we're all on
(10:31):
is truly the most beautiful part of our lives. The
destination is not always what it feels like. You know.
I know a lot of high performing, high functioning, very
successful people who are at that quote unquote destination and
they're not truly happy and they're not truly fulfilled. And
a lot of them have said to me over the years,
don't miss out on the journey, don't miss out on
(10:53):
what gets you to that place. And I think that
really comes down to living. You've got to live. You
can't forget to live your life, because suddenly you'll be
at that destination. You'll be at that place you thought
you've always wanted to be, and you look around and
you're like, well, what did I just do for the
last decade of my life? Like where are my friends?
Where are my family? Where are my memories? Like where's
my full life? So you have to enjoy the journey.
(11:16):
It's so important have those goals work towards them, but
enjoy the journey and enjoy that full, messy, wild, chaotic,
joyous ride. Okay, so again, none of us are perfect,
but these are always that we can truly live a
present life and live a life that we all deserve,
(11:36):
in the hopes that we stop focusing on how much
is out there that we can't control and focus on
what we can, focus on what we can. We have
one shot at this life. Let's make sure we live
a life that truly makes us feel our best. I've
Never Said This Before is hosted by Me Tommy Didario.
This podcast is executive produced by Andrew Puglisi at iHeartRadio
(12:01):
and by Me Tommy, with editing by Joshua Colaudney. I've
Never Said This Before is part of the Elvis Duran
podcast Network on iHeart Podcasts. For more, rate, review and
subscribe to our show and if you liked this episode,
tell your friends. Until next time, I'm Tommy Dederio.
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