What if I don't want to "let it go"?
What if I don't want to "let it go"?
What is something that you can control in your life?
When my father died last year of brain cancer last year, my world crumbled. I had never felt so helpless in my entire life. And everyone kept telling me that I had to let go, that I had to move on, that time would do her magic.
The thing is - letting go of control is hard work for me. Call it type A personality, ambition, or optimizer syndrome. I like to plan and have a clear path forward. Accepting that I do not always have all the knowledge/resources/options is not a position I enjoy.
This doesn’t change reality though. There are things that I can’t control. And there are also things that I CAN control.
This is the Serenity Prayer. When I grew up, there was an engraved version on a bronze plate mounted to the wall in our living room.
Most commentators focus on the “accept the things I cannot change part”, the letting go of control. It’s about trust that things will work out, or that you will heal enough to be able to live with whatever happened.
And there’s certainly truth to that. It’s not the entire truth though.
There’s also the part about having the courage to change things that are in your control.
What is one thing that you can control, even when everything else falls apart?
I wish I came up with the solution myself. Unsurprisingly though, those looking at your situation from the outside often have a clearer view on what you are going through.
(Hence the importance of friends, mastermind groups, therapy, or coaching.)
If feeling out of control creates stress for you, what is something in your life you can work towards that is (almost) entirely under your control.
Bonus points if it doesn't happen at your computer.
For me, that’s running. I choose the routes. I choose the distance. I choose to put on my running shoes. I can optimise the heck out of my hydration pack or layered clothing. I can create a training plan, I can set my own goals. It’s control freak heaven.
So I signed up for an ultra marathon in May. I made a plan. I created rewards along the way for fulfilling my training plans. And this is what I look like on a 19k training run:
Content. Happy. And maybe a little smug at a distance.
I blame this control exercise for being able to get back to life, for giving me the wisdom that this I can control. Which in return helps me to accept that other aspects are outside of my influence.
Of course, running an ultra marathon also fits in very nicely with my theme of ambition this year 🙂
And here’s another thing that I can control: the quality of the Remote Leadership Accelerator. If you want to level up your leadership skills and become a consistently reliable remote manager: find out more.