How to Control the Uncontrollable In Life
The pandemic has disrupted or stopped critical mental health services in 93% of countries worldwide while the demand for support increases.
With a long road ahead, we need to fill our heads with good stuff to support us (not the endless bad news and devastation that stand to monopolise our lives).
Understand that you could be suffering from a lack of control and not knowing what it’s doing to you
Understand that you could be suffering from a lack of control and not knowing what it’s doing to you. If you experience any of the following
- A need to gossip and find out what everyone else is thinking
- Reduced productivity at work or at home (or both)
- Overworking and burnout
- Micromanagement
- Illness – physical and mental
- Exhaustion
- Defeatism
- Lack of creativity
- Feeling angry and resentful
Share your goals
- When you bring everyone together to a common goal that they feel invested in, they are more likely to persevere and keep going for each other.
- Tell people what you need and ask for help
- These aren’t always comfortable conversations, but they help restore a sense of control if boundaries are respected and enforced
Start with you and what you think
Is it really true?
- Start with you and what you think
- We can’t magically make the issue disappear, but we can control how we feel about it
- You don’t need to know how you will do this, but acknowledging how you see the world and what it does to you physically, emotionally and mentally, you can then decide “I’d like something better than this!”
Let’s go on holiday!
- Honor the person you are and don’t try and make changes in life by copying others
- Think of something you excel at and how you migrate those skills
- This will help you understand what you need to do to be able to make a difference in how you feel
Create a mental health tool kit
- Relax, evaluate, set an intention, and take action
- Work out something that makes you stop in your tracks – a song, a play, a walk, mediation, etc.
- It’s difficult to alter what you do if you are entrenched in what life looks like
Turn your brain around
- As you create solutions to the way you think and what actions you will take, your brain is going to prove you right regardless
- Imagine you had a magic wand that can fix the uncontrollable in any way with no restriction on cost, time and skill, what would you do?
- “And what would that give you?”
Challenge what you know to be true
- Working from home, there’s nothing you can do about this – it’s just the way it is.”
- This is often the root cause of why people are experiencing issues and suffering.
- Say, “I must work that many hours to get it all done. It will be better when the pandemic is over.”
Remind yourself there’s another way
- Reframe your thoughts
- Find potential in the harshest of situations
- You don’t need to believe everything is true, just be able to reword your thoughts to find the good in every situation
- More control of your thoughts leads to better thoughts and better actions and results