How often do you feel stressed by the fact that you canโt control something or its outcome? Your 6 point plan will make a positive difference.
The sense that you need to gain control of an issue but cannot do so is all consuming and dominates every thought when it takes hold of you. As desperate as these feelings are, there are solutions that are in your control.
- This feeling is painful because it is based on fear
- This feeling is painful because we are not the best version of ourselves when it takes hold
- This feeling is painful because it creates an anxiety to control things beyond the original issue
When we feel this way a huge part of us knows that we are potentially being self-indulgent, we feel that others just donโt understand why gaining this control is so all consuming. This means that we canโt possibly rest until we have forced ourselves onto our perception of the solution.
But just hang on a moment, be a little kinder to yourself before you start to rethink your process of taking control. This article includes some tips and a 6 point plan to get in front of this painful emotion.
So how does this pain feel when you fear the lack of control?
This fear of losing control means that we are certain something is about to get out of hand and almost impulsively we start to try to grapple for control. Our instinct to protect is as natural to us as holding our breath when we go underwater. A broad array of fears takes over and they are all such difficult feelings that our instinctive brain seeks to avoid them and forces us to behave to protect. These feelings may include hopelessness, powerlessness, despair, rage, grief and loneliness.
It is the fear of feeling our instinctive emotion in an unbearable way that again harkens back to the human instinct to survive at any cost and to stay alive. We project this fear onto others in a doomed to fail effort to prevent those awful feelings and that projection comes in the form of trying to take control over the outcome. It is important to understand this better, this cognitive recognition means that :-
- We see that this is a natural instinct
- We start to understand it better
- We start to demystify it
- We start to believe and accept that we can gain a sense of personal agency
This feeling is also the root of why so many people fear change on an almost visceral level and for leaders and people going through change it can be liberating to understand this fear. We are then able to identify what this feeling is and take charge of ourselves and find our ways of understanding that our chimp brain can be corrected through rational thought processes.
Why is this so important now?
The reason that understanding this now is so important is that post covid and at a time of economic crisis there is a great sense of uncertainty and a great sense of the loss of all our norms. The so-called โnew normalโ often does not feel normal in any sense to us. These events mean that those that feel this anxiety are likely to attempt to gain control even more, they feel disenfranchised unless they get in control.
For us to be able to do well, to be successful and to be happy as these challenges are upon us as a society and as individuals then finding a way of navigating these negative emotions is important. This means that using these tools to think differently about the process of gaining control will enable us to handle change, to embrace opportunity and really start dealing with this issue here and now.
The avoidance of this behaviour will also lead to us having better relationships with those around us because the very process of gaining control can create conflict or at the very least resentment in others who are unfortunate enough to come across us on our โcontrollingโ mission!
Help is on the way, needing to stay in control is perfectly normal!
When we have this instinct to maintain the status quo and to avoid our feared inevitable destiny by taking back control, we are simply responding to our natural human instinct and also to the natural way that our brain works. The reason that we naturally do this is that from our early childhood we interpret change as uncertainty and in that state there is danger to our life. It is about our instinct to survive. It is said that 5 times every second our brain tries to assess if what we are doing and where we are is safe, if not we start to protect and disengage. This happens subconsciously as well as at a conscious level.
Why not check how you measure up on this fear?
If you try the link below you will see a brief questionnaire that will allow you to place a gauge of exactly where your focus is in terms of these fears taking control over you. This test allows you to see if you have a tendency toward an external locus of control, this means that you will be routinely worrying about aspects that you cannot influence in any way. If you have an internal locus of control then you are much less likely to behave the way that this article describes. It is a really useful process to try before you start the 6 point plan.
Your quick control checker – https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newCDV_90.htm
So what can you do to change your fear of losing control? Circles will do it!
This pattern of behaviour that almost constantly can create white noise in our lives can be avoided, it can be controlled by us. It really is possible to reframe the things that trigger us to try to feel back in control and as a habit that we learn we can grow to decrease our fears.
The start of this process is to ask yourself what things you honestly truly can control rather than merely influence or worry about. Some of this thinking was put out there initially by Steven Covey in โThe 7 Habits Of Highly Effective Peopleโ. In this book he considered circles of concern and circles of influence, and this has been taken further with another circle, the circle of control.
This is a fabulous way that we can differentiate between what issues might be going on in general (concern) or in some very specific cases such as improving our wellbeing through exercise, diet, positive thinking and creating more time for ourselves (control). What will typically happen without being able to apply this technique is that we may find ourselves worrying about all things and attempting to gain control over all of them.
When we discover that we cannot gain that control we may experience very specific anxieties about these issues and in the process of trying to gain control we cause damage to ourselves, waste our time, we waste our energy and there is a good likelihood that we will damage our relationships with family, friends, colleagues and potentially in a business environment, we will do damage to our business, organisation or team.
The basis of this model is that we can disentangle all of those fears, worries and psychoses into a process where we narrow down from concerns, to issues we may have an influence over to the final matters that we alone truly have complete control over.
By doing this and by really focusing positively on letting those concerns go in terms of believing our personal mission here and now is to control such issues then we better understand our circle of concern pain points. If we then focus on being positive about where we may have an influence only and understand fully to what extent that is possible then our approach to our circle of influence can become more realistic and less fraught with anxiety.
This then allows us to truly focus our energy on what we can directly control, this then become fruitful and enables a more balanced and wellbeing driven series of actions that we learn and can repeat. This approach means that then we lighten our load of stress and worry and we prevent our natural human brain from attempting to control concerns, influence and control areas. This is a way of truly giving ourselves the energy to make a difference where we can and to give ourselves a holiday from trying to control what cannot be controlled and all of the negative consequences that this causes.
What might a typical circles of concern/influence/control chart look like for you?
This process can be done with a little time and patience to start to map the issues that trouble us into the three circles. It will be unique for each of us and it demands absolute honesty with ourselves. This is something that we are doing for ourselves and in many senses this supports us to have an internal locus of control that leads to better wellbeing, to a greater sense of personal agency and to the avoidance of the waste of energy stressing about the non-controllables.
Try this to tackle your loss of control feeling โ your 6 point plan
- Print out the blank circles of control poster above, this will allow you to start the process to consider your mindset on what you feel is a concern, what you have influence over or what issues you have complete control over.
- Make sure you are in a place where you can think and wonโt be disturbed, this should definitely be a little time away from the white noise that you are putting to one side just for you.
- Ensure that you have some post it notes, or similar and write down the things that occur to you as concerns to you, these will be the things that have been troubling you over time and you will find it eye-opening just to write them down and to see them together. Place them inside / around your circle of concern circle.
Prepare yourself for this list because seeing the issues together can be overwhelming but remember this process is about navigating a way to see these issues in a more philosophical way. - Now, your next stage, look at your concerns again and looking at the example above try to see if any of those notes can be placed into the circles of influence or control. Controlling is a high bar though as they are entirely in your control to be placed there.
- Challenge yourself on those matters that are in the Concern circle, check if there is a way that you might be able to gain some influence. This might be covering issues such as tricky colleague, manager or friend relationships, but through a third party route you may be able to build some bridges, in which case this will be able to move this issue to your Circle of Influence. Think about ways you might be able to influence the things that are still in your Circle of Concern.
- So at this point, having truly exhausted what can be moved to the Circle of Concern and Circle of Control you now have your final list. Write them up from the post it notes or type them if you are creating a digital copy. I would recommend that you save the document on your phone or mobile device as a photo or PDF so that you can refer to them when you have feelings of growing anxiety about your feelings of a lack of control. Remember these key FACTS:-
Areas of Concern – If you look at your areas of concern that you may have been taking so personally in the past and may have been exacerbating your anxiety, in fact in truth you have no ability to influence or control them. Your values and beliefs are a huge part of your strengths and so it is ok to consider wider society issues without them dominating you and in so doing find a new found freedom. Remember they may also sit alongside other realities that are not influenceable by you such as the weather. Puts the worries into context doesnโt it?
Areas of Influence โ So these sat amongst the whole range of issues that were stressing you and often meant that you felt high frustration and to a certain extent not able to clearly see what to do about them. Now in fact through this process you recognise that you cannot control them, but with some tact and diplomacy and with a plan you can get some influence over them. In many ways this is cathartic, it gives you a release and leaves you feeling that you can be more proactive in dealing with the issues themselves without feeling abject fear and the need to over-respond in gaining full personal control.
Areas of Control โ so these are those that you can legitimately say are entirely your responsibility and do not rely on third parties. This will be a small list but understanding it allows you to only feel responsible for a much smaller number of issues. This hands more control to you as you focus your proactive energy at what really matters and recognising these three types of issue supports your sense of wellbeing too.
This 6 step process will give you a plan that truly demonstrates to you how you break down the myriad of worries and concerns that have been causing sleepless nights into a manageable format in which you can remind yourself how to interact with them and what you can truly control.
So, give this a go and see what differences it makes for you
As a coach I am very well aware just how common these feelings are and they can be affecting you as you read this, you may know someone else who suffers from this anxiety or you may be a manager or leader who see this in your team members. Please share these thoughts and ideas and see if they can make the difference.
