|
Hi iza,
If you’re the person everyone leans on, you’ve been trained to believe that gripping harder is the job. Your kid’s choices. A parent’s health. A boss’s next reorg, a client who’s gone dark. Somebody has to hold it all, and somehow that somebody is always you.
On our Lifehack Tribe Quarterly Planning call a few weeks ago, I told our members something I want to say to you too: powerlessness can feel so bad on the way in, but it can feel so good on the way out.
On the way in, it’s brutal. You hit the wall of “I can’t control this” and it feels like you’re failing at your one job. I know this wall personally. Anything around my kids, I’d grab the steering wheel, white knuckles and all, and then discover the wheel wasn’t connected to anything.
But on the way out, it feels completely different. It feels like, oh, I was holding something that wasn’t mine to hold. I never controlled that. You set it down and you’re not weaker, you’re lighter.
Now, before anyone thinks I’m telling you control doesn’t matter: it’s the opposite.
|
What the research says
The Whitehall II study followed 10,308 British civil servants and found that people with low control over their work had a significantly higher risk of coronary heart disease, whether control was self-reported or independently assessed. |
Your body keeps score on control like it’s a survival need. Because it is.
Which is exactly why you can’t afford to burn it on things that were never controllable. Gripping your kid’s decisions gives you all the physiology of low control and none of the actual control. Worst trade on the board.
Here’s the thing. Command was never about controlling everything in front of you. Command is knowing precisely which levers are connected to something.
|
✓ In your control: your calendar, your weekly plan |
|
✗ Not in your control: another adult’s choices. Never were. |
Try this over the next week: name one thing you’re gripping that was never yours, set it down, and watch what happens to your energy.
And if you’re ready for an unbiased take on which levers you can actually pull, the ones that drive real results in the areas you do control, take our Stage Assessment. A few minutes, and it shows you exactly where to focus next.
|
