What is lost in controlling all the things we can’t control at the expense of what we can control?

If you consider your day up until this point what are the things you can point to as solely the result of you and your actions? 

In considering your day, what are the things you would like to be different? How much of what you’d like to be different can you actually control, or even influence?

Control the controllables — focusing on what we can control and not thinking about what we cannot control — is a common and often repeated tenet to performance and achieving what we want. 

And yet, while it is widely known and shared, how widely do we apply this idea as an approach in life? 

My experience both in my own life and in conversations with others is that we can still spend a lot of our effort, energy and time trying to control things we have absolutely no control over at the expense of devoting that energy to things we not only can control but would really make a difference to us and to the world around us. 

Confronting what we can’t control

What causes us to try and control what we really cannot control? 

What gets in the way of us focusing on what we really can control? 

What would allow us to accept the things we’re trying to avoid accepting by controlling or trying to control something else? 

By trying to control something we are resisting accepting we cannot control it or the outcome we are trying to create. 

What are we holding onto by controlling what we’re trying to control? 

What would allow us to accept what we’re resisting? 

Taking responsibility for what we can’t control

At the heart of all this an acknowledgement of fragility and uncertainty. 

A lot in our lives is out of our control and a lot more beyond our lives can also feel out of control.

What if to focus on the few things we can control is to ease the reality of that uncertainty and life’s uncontrollability?

We have written before about how for Viktor Frankl, the only thing we can control is how we respond to life. He wrote that

‘Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.’

Can we ever truly take responsibility for our lives if we are trying to control things that we cannot control?

In an interview with Philip Crocker he spoke of how we as individuals cannot create world peace but we can do a lot more to create peace in our worlds. And no doubt if we all had a greater sense of peace in our world, the world would too. 

Taking control of responding

Does being responsive to life not undermine our ability to create or be active agents in our lives and the world? 

No. 

Being responsive reorients how we relate to the world around us. 

A business is a response to an opportunity in a market.

A piece of art is a response to an experience.

Even leading is responding to situations and contexts.

This blog is a response to my reflections on what a life well-lived may mean for me, and the stress and frustrations that have come from the efforts to control things out of my control, at the expense at times of a more well-lived life.

What if reacting is in fact an effort to control what we cannot and responding is to focus on what we can control. 

We are already reacting to every moment so why not respond to it more consciously instead? 

What if every moment is an opportunity for us to respond to? 

Then it becomes a question of how would you like to respond to the questions life asks? 

And surely the more we respond to those moments in a way we want the more of the things we want will be present in our lives. For example if I want more joy, what may be a joyful response to this situation? If I want more ease, what would be a more easeful response to this moment? 

So what do you need to respond as you want to? 

If we took the energy we put into controlling things we can’t into controlling things we cannot what would be possible? 

What would it look like to focus only on what you can control? 

What would the impact be if we all accepted the things we cannot control? 

What world would we create if we focused only on what we can control?