With large financial firms like Goldman Sachs making headlines, once again, regarding alleged market manipulation and other untoward activities, it begs the question – do you really control your financial fate, and what should you focus on to increase the odds of a favorable outcome?

To answer these questions, let’s do an exercise. Draw a small circle, then a bigger circle around that circle, and finally a third larger circle around the first two. Inside the smallest circle, write “control,” in the second “influence,” and in the third “awareness.” Out­side the third circle, write “unaware.” These three spheres represent the various levels of control you have over things in life. Some things you have total control over, many you can influence but have no control over, some you are aware of but can neither influence nor control, and then there are certain things that you are not even aware of.

When you listen closely to successful, happy people, you will hear them use language consistent with an acute awareness, intuitive or otherwise, of these spheres. “Doesn’t it really upset you when the fans think you did not give 100 percentin a game?” Michael Jordan was repeatedly asked. “I cannot control what others think of me,” he replied. “I just focus on doing my best on the basketball court.”

Much of people’s attention is focused on aspects of the stock market over which they have no control. Even if you were Warren Buffett, there is not one single thing you can do to influence, much less control, the movement of the U.S. stock market for even a single day. Yet every day, otherwise long-term investors open newspapers, turn on the radio, flip on the TV, log on to the Internet, or in some fashion seek information on what the stock market is doing and why. So much thought, so much time, so much communication, so much emotional energy, so much stress, and so much prospective and retrospective analysis is dedicated to short-term movements in the broader market.

Warren Buffett is on record as saying he allocates almost no time to the information that average investors spend hours per day consum­ing as though their investment lives depended on it. Instead, Buffett focuses on what has always mattered, the fundamentals of a given company. This situation is equivalent to Tiger Woods telling the world exactly what he does that makes him a great golfer and the mil­lions of golfers out there fixating instead on the hour-by-hour weather and its effects on grass height and density. Surely Tiger would shake his head in disbelief, knowing that would-be golfing greats are dedicat­ing time to exactly the wrong issues.

If the average investor dedicated even half the time she spends on mar­ket-related matters over which she has zero control — reading about what the market did the previous day or predicting how it will do in the near term — to areas over which he had greater control, such as researching companies or not taking action when no action is warranted, then her returns would increase commensurately. If you feel, however, the need to take action in certain circumstances, then consider the fol­lowing techniques that might help you save you from yourself. First, put yourself into an environment where you can do no damage (go to the gym or take a walk on the beach).

If you still feel the need to take action, buy­ing stock, for example, consider buying more of a quality company that you already own — a core holding. This will tend to cause you to make a smaller purchase (since you already hold some of the stock) and to not buy some inferior company that you have not researched. Finally, if you feel the need to buy some company that you have read or heard about recently, layer into the position by starting with a very small initial alloca­tion. You will be pleasantly surprised at how this series of actions will satisfy your need to take action and maintain a sense of “control” when pundits are telling you, falsely so, that the stock market is just one big casino.