Having Control Issues?

You don’t have to be in the driver’s seat trying to control the direction of everything. This doesn’t mean we should sit back and do nothing. It just means trusting our inner wisdom to guide us from moment to moment. Don’t create a life where you need a lot of detailed plans, check lists, and to-do lists.

We try to imagine everything that we’ll do. How everything will play out. How to solve all our problems at once. But it’s impossible. We have to take it one moment at a time. And things often turn out differently than we imagined.

Focus on What You Can Control, Leave What You Can’t

“Incredible change happens in your life when you decide to take control of what you do have power over instead of craving control over what you don’t.” — Steve Maraboli

Knowing the difference between the things we can control and the things we can’t is a topic that comes up frequently, both in my own self-reflection and in conversations with others too. It manifests in many contexts and situations but always comes back to a single principles:

We can control our input, but we can’t control the outcome
I can control how I show up in my relationships but I can’t control what other people think of me. I can control how much time and effort I put into preparing for goals, but I can’t control when it shows up in my life. I can control how diligently I work to lose weight to be fit, but I can’t control of the timing and where the fat comes off of. 

In all of these situations, we can influence the outcome, but we can’t control it.
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​This was a huge learning curve for me when my wife was pregant after our first miscarriage. There are certain things most, if not all, pregnant people and couples worry about: miscarriage, birth complications, the baby’s health, whether baby is early or late and so on. These are the big things. They are also the things that, ultimately, I can’t control. I can influence them, but I don’t get a final say on how they turn out and worrying about them doesn’t change this. 

After spending weeks obsessing over every twinge and ache my wife would have, I made a decision: to focus purely on the things I have control over and to accept that, for everything else, just let it be. I discovered that, while I didn’t have control over many of the big things, there was a laundry list of smaller things I did have control over: how I loved my wife, how I kept attention on my other children, making sure my wife got to her appointments and would be as stress free as possible plus so much more. Does this mean I was completely worry free? No, but that worry was tapered by reminding myself to refocus on how I can make a difference, rather than spending precious time and energy worrying about all the areas in which I can’t.

I pray this helps you on your journey in life and remember to maximize the moments.

Coach Milton

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