How Much Control Do You Have?
How Much Control Do You Have?
More than you think. Less than you want. 1-Minute Tip Sheet
Not having control over uncertainty is a major cause of stress and anxiety. My 2000-some lifestyle coaching participants told me this. They ultimately developed a healing habit of resilience to this common stressor in daily life with the solutions below.
Instead of craving control, capture command. Use the control you need. Give up the control you don’t want or can’t have. And turn inevitable uncertainties into welcome advantages.
Easier said than done? Let’s see how it has worked in the real world in a couple of intimately familiar instances.
Just ‘Kidding’, Seriously
You have certainly been a kid and maybe even a parent like me.
Parents crave more control over their children to gain certainty on what’s happening with them. Kids wish the parents would just let loose or let go of their control. Much stress in a family can come from just that.
It's a good thing neither side gets what they want entirely. Take this example of a true story in Europe a century ago. It is not unlike many families everywhere today.
Mommy had little control, and no concept, of what her son was up to in his head all day. She was uncertain, yet nurturing and hopeful, of how this curious child might turn out. They had a lovely, loving relationship.
Daddy certainly wanted his son to take over the family business, except the boy was no good in school. Constantly frustrated by losing control over Sonny, he grew certain his oddball son would amount to nothing. They had a stressful, strained relationship.
Sonny certainly had a mind of his own, of course, being Albert Einstein himself. Seriously! Imagine his parents having control over him! For certain, we wouldn’t have our GPS satellites to command today. We still can’t predict the limits his Relativity Theory can take us in outer space.
Total control comes with total responsibility. Sure you want that all the time? Want to be Hitler’s parent? Or Einstein’s kid?
“If I was meant to be controlled,
I would have come with a remote.”
Kushandwizdom
[and all kids not AI-generated]
Uncontrolled Auto-Pilot—Your Body
In reality, even though you don’t have control over many things, you can still manage quite well and accomplish many vital functions—like your own body. Outside of that, maybe not so much.
You have little certainty, and virtually no control, over how it (you) functions. How does a thought out of nowhere suddenly pop into your mind? How do your hormones perform their millions of complicated tasks in the 30+ trillion cells inside you?
When you are in sync with reality, Nature, and your nature,
life will flourish naturally with minimal stress, like a flower,
even without your control.
Metacardio©
The important thing is to know what you can control and command it effectively. It is equally important to know what you have NO control over, and go around it so it doesn’t disable you.
We can have so much self-generated stress over so many things not under our control! For instance, what if you were to consciously run your body’s Kreb Cycle below? And that’s only a ‘simple’ task of regulating a single molecule of simple sugar in every cell.
One of millions of processes in all 30+ trillion cells of your body every second, over-simplified (Wikipedia)
But relax. Getting paid for life for being an unqualified supervisor, mostly sleeping on the job, you do just fine—so long as you don’t “suicide bomb” your body too badly.
Is Predictability Preferred?
Another aspect of certainty is predictability—also another source of stress and anxiety. Which is worse for you: the stress from the uncertainty of your income or the anxiety from the uncertainty of any outcome? Yeah, I know. Both are unpredictable.
The outcome is NEVER predictable when you are doing something meaningful, and certainly something big or complex. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be big, complex, or meaningful, such as raising a child.
A certain outcome is a confined outcome. You might get that, but only that. By contrast, an unpredictable outcome can be limitless. For example, in our space exploration, an unpredicted side outcome was the creation of the portable computer. In raising a child, wondering how it might turn out, a mother ended up with Albert Einstein.
“It ain’t over till it’s over.”
Yogi Berra
A Sure Bet – Don’t!
The greatest and most useful certainty you can hold on to is a built-up confidence that you can face and handle whatever may come. Not because you are cocky, but because you have made all the preparations you can and weathered your past setbacks.
Not everybody has a job at NASA to explore space or an Einstein at home to raise. Everybody has a body to keep healthy and well. So, let’s leverage the “uncertainty principle” here to build this Healing Habit of taking command over control.
Even if you’re already in good shape, what follows is still a useful mental exercise for other challenges. Let’s look at three vital body functions.
(1) Eating – Lose Control To Gain Command
Industry has engineered many foods to manipulate your brain chemistry. Thus, many people can’t control their cravings for junk food. But you can control the availability of junk food around you by not gathering any. And you can walk around or away.
You couldn’t control your upbringing (or ‘down-bringing’) where grownups had you clean up your plate because “children are starving everywhere”. Now that you’re the grownup, you can control your portions by using smaller plates and saving the 1/4 portion you want to trim off BEFORE eating.
Say, you can’t control your appetite for the gravy-drenched, buttered potatoes. You can exercise your control over eating most of the veggies FIRST and drinking lots of water. Then, see how much you still want all that other stuff.
If you’re losing all control over the craving for XXX you have just managed to ‘detox’ from eating. Rather than fighting a predictably hard battle, try this instead:
After savoring your first bite of it slowly, drink plenty of water, then do at least a few cycles of your breathing exercise. You may or may not regain control, but by then, your body will certainly have informed you (softy) what serves you best. And if you end up choosing to push XXX away, you won’t feel deprived. You only feel proud, making the craving less likely to return.
Assist before you desist,
so what you resist won’t persist.
Metacardio©
(2) Moving - Move Your Mind To Move You
You can’t always control your workload to allow time for the gym. But you can control your home furniture placements to do some workouts during your daily screen time.
In a viral outbreak, you are uncertain when it is safe to take the elevator or public transportation again. Yet, you can be quite certain the staircases are safe, and the open-air roadways are free and good for walking.
Suppose you truly can’t control your weight even though you’re not the worst dieter. You can control your limb movements, which are your best calorie burners, just by doing reps, even on the couch. It’ll make you fitter.
Fit and fat can be healthier
than slim and slack.
(3) Recontrolling Genes – Like Recontouring Jeans
Certainly, you have no control over what genes you’re born with. However, recent medical research has discovered controllable on/off switches on top of your DNA, called Epi-genes.
For many aspects of wellness, the switches for these Epigenes are under the control of nontoxic environments and healthy behaviors like all the Healing Habits advocated here. You can take command to throw the switches off your bad genes and turn on your good ones.
While there’s still some uncertainty about how predictably Epigenetics works every time, we are certain that our genes don’t always dictate our destiny. Better environments and better behaviors can make us better in most instances.
You can alter your genes—if only one switch at a time, just as you can alter your jeans—if only one stitch at a time.
Even genetically,
You are no longer just born to be good or bad.
You can now bring yourself to become better.
Metacardio©
1-Minute Tip Sheet for
Optimal Command over Obsessive Control
Be clear about what you can, want, and need to control and take responsibility.
One certainty you can count on is your ability to handle however reality unfolds. Having recovered from failures builds that command authority.
Turn unpredictability from a threat into hopes and possibilities.
Take command by controlling your actions and environment. Examples:
Use portion and timing controls to ensure your eating Healing Habit.
Place furniture to automate your activity Healing Habit during screen time.
Build Healing Habits to facilitate your Epigenetics in controlling unruly DNA.
When it’s right, let Nature (like your body) do its job without your control (or sabotage).
Why stress over an obsession for certainty?
Loosen up and take firm command of reality.
Welcome the surprises from unpredictable possibilities!
Work on turning worries into wonders…
Metacardio©
Bonus Podcast on Something Light as Air
2-3 minutes each
This seventh stand-alone post is of a series, Healing Habits, based on successful solutions of 2000 patients and coworkers in a lifestyle clinical program over 25 years.
The images are curated from iStock with subscription.