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
If you experience any of the following, a lack of control could be impacting your personal and professional life, your happiness and even your success.
- A need to gossip and find out what everyone else is thinking
- Reduced productivity at work or at home (or both)
- Unable to drop a subject or walk away from a discussion/argument
- Overworking and burnout
- Micromanagement
- Illness – physical and mental
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
Ask yourself: 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 by 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!
- Honour 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
- The first thing to do when things are too much for you is to R.E.S.T – relax, evaluate, set an intention and take action
- Work out something that makes you stop in your tracks – a song, a play, a walk, meditation, 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?
Challenge what you know to be true
You don’t try to stop the sun from rising, why? Because you know it to be out of your control. Do you try to get out of the way of a stampeding bull? Yes, but why? Because you believe you have control.
These are obvious examples but it’s not always obvious. In life, the statements that take away your control are likely to be more subtle and are statements that no one pays attention to.
Remind yourself there’s another way
- Reframe your thoughts and 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