"You can’t control what happens to you, but you can decide what you do next"
About this Quote
The intent is practical triage. In news culture, where tragedy arrives as a headline and then becomes content, there’s pressure to make events legible fast. “What you do next” redirects attention from the unanswerable “Why did this happen?” to the only place action can honestly occur: the aftermath. That’s not just self-help; it’s a way to preserve dignity when circumstances have already stripped away power.
The subtext is quietly resistant to the outrage economy. It refuses the fantasy that perfect planning or perfect politics prevents all harm, while also rejecting fatalism. You don’t get to rewrite the inciting incident, but you do get to author the next paragraph.
Context matters: as a morning-show anchor who regularly narrates crises to millions, Guthrie traffics in language that can stabilize without sounding clinical. The sentence is designed to be repeatable, portable, and nonpartisan - a compact ethic for living inside the news without being swallowed by it.
Quote Details
| Topic | Resilience |
|---|---|
| Source | Mostly What God Does: Reflections on Seeking and Finding His Love Everywhere (2024), Savannah Guthrie |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Guthrie, Savannah. (2026, February 11). You can’t control what happens to you, but you can decide what you do next. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/you-cant-control-what-happens-to-you-but-you-can-185267/
Chicago Style
Guthrie, Savannah. "You can’t control what happens to you, but you can decide what you do next." FixQuotes. February 11, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/you-cant-control-what-happens-to-you-but-you-can-185267/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"You can’t control what happens to you, but you can decide what you do next." FixQuotes, 11 Feb. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/you-cant-control-what-happens-to-you-but-you-can-185267/. Accessed 11 Feb. 2026.







