A control freak coming to terms with losing control
In 1990, Nicole Kidman, as Dr. Claire Lewicki in Days of Thunder, said it best: “Control is an illusion, you infantile egomaniac. Nobody knows what's gonna happen next: not on a freeway, not in an airplane, not inside our own bodies and certainly not on a racetrack with 40 other infantile egomaniacs.”
Fast forward to 2020 and I am reminding myself of the wisdom of that quote.
I am a control freak. In recent years, I’ve worked hard to relinquish control and let things happen as they may. I’ve worked on being more vulnerable, with others and myself, and accepting that the only thing I can control is my reactions and behaviors.
I don’t deny that external forces, those beyond my control, could up end my apple cart. My planning and need for control positions me to better handle those unexpected forces. Until now. In our current environment, I feel like I am losing control of everything. I know I’m not alone.
I feel like I am losing control of everything. I know I’m not alone.
Many of us are spending our time trying to come to grips with all that has changed and grieve what we have lost, which does include the feeling of control. My process has involved deliberating identifying what I no longer have control over, working to accept the situation, and identifying ways I can feel like I am moving in the right direction.
The good news is that there are ways to feel in control when the external world is trying to take it away from you. This applies to both our personal and professional lives. We all have control of our reactions and behaviors but it’s important to spend the time identifying how you want to react and your preferred behaviors to feel less out of control.
Here are three things I have found helpful, both personally and professionally.
Identify specific behaviors you want to focus on. My focus is on fitness and writing. Making those activities priorities supports my need for resiliency and calm. I’ve been journaling to work through the roller coaster of emotions each day brings, but also writing content to benefit my business.
Create scenarios of what could happen and what you’d like your response to be. I had a forecast for my business. I had a healthy pipeline to support that forecast. Now things are different. I don’t know when and how things will change when we return to some sort of normal. I’ve plotted out different scenarios – worst, conservative, and best case – for the external world and mapped out what that might mean for my business. I’m spending time determining what steps I need to take now to be prepared for each scenario.
Embrace a benefit of losing control. It’s been an emotional roller coaster as social distancing evolved into staying home. I’ve felt a lot of grief and anxiety and sadness, but also many positive moments. Losing control has shown me areas where I would benefit from letting go, both personally and professionally. My daughter is learning a lot of new skills that are allowing me to be more creative. Yes, she makes a huge mess when she paints, but she’s happy and content for a long period of time and I’m getting to paint too. The creativity has expanded into my professional work and it turns out big painting messes aren’t that difficult to clean up.
With each passing week, we will all become more comfortable with the current reality and what we can and cannot control. Even as I work through my control issues, I will remain a control freak. And when things return to a level of normal, I’ll still work to have control over my reactions and behaviors and personal environment. But until we know what normal is, let’s all work together to focus on what we can control, map out how we’ll respond when things change again, and embrace the messy things we never had control of. As Nicole Kidman said in Days of Thunder: “Nobody knows what’s gonna happen next.”