The Only Things You Can Control

Right now, you are stuck to the earth.

Does that bother you?

People don't walk around frustrated at gravity. Nobody wakes up annoyed that they can't lift themselves off the ground and fly.

And yet, so many founders feel stuck. Stuck in a business that isn't growing the way they thought it would. Stuck in an ongoing issue with their co-founder, investor, or team. Stuck in a pattern where they're working harder than ever but nothing seems to shift.

But the feeling of stuckness isn't caused by actually being stuck. It's caused by trying to control something you can't control.

You don't feel stuck to the earth because you're not trying to control gravity. You've fully accepted it. The moment you stop trying to control what isn't yours to control, the stuckness dissolves.

If it's that simple, why do most people (especially founders) struggle to discern what they truly can and can't control?

Where the Need to Control Comes From

Our minds are wired to seek three things: security, approval, and control. For our ancestors, being powerful and winning the approval of the tribe were necessary for survival. We haven't evolved much neurobiologically since then. So most of us are sourcing our sense of security, approval, and control externally.

There's nothing wrong with wanting security, approval, and control. But when you believe you lack them, you look to get them from people and circumstances outside yourself. And that's when you start trying to control things you can't control.

The question is: are you willing to experience no lack of approval, control, and security? Are you willing to let go of sourcing them from the outside?

• Approval. You try to control what people think of you. You run a chess game in your mind before every hard conversation, trying to figure out how to get people to feel a certain way about you.
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• Security. You try to control outcomes. Your startup's trajectory, your finances, your future. You end up in frenetic, over-functioning mode, working constantly because the activity soothes the fear of what might happen if you stop.
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• Control. When seeking approval and security externally isn't working, you try to force it. You invest massive energy trying to manage people and circumstances to behave exactly the way you want them to, convinced that if you could just get everything lined up, you'd finally feel at ease.

Underneath all three, the same thing is happening. The belief that you lack approval, security, or control creates feelings you don't want to feel. And instead of welcoming those feelings and questioning that belief, you reach outward and try to control people and circumstances as a strategy to control how you feel.

What You Can and Can't Control

There's a simple exercise I learned from the Conscious Leadership Group that I love, called Sorting the Files. Two folders. One labeled "things I can control." The other labeled "things I can't control."

It sounds almost too simple. But the reason it can be hard is because of everything we just talked about. When you're sourcing externally, putting something in the "can't control" folder could feel like a survival threat. That's why most people missort.

And to accurately place something in the "can control" folder, you must be able to absolutely guarantee its outcome. With that standard, what goes in each folder is probably not what you expect.

Things you can't control:

• What other people think of you
• What other people feel
• Their choices, behaviors, and reactions
• Whether they keep their agreements with you
• The macro environment
• The outcome of your startup
• Your own thoughts: you cannot predict or choose your next thought
• The spontaneous arising of your own feelings

Things you can control:

• How you respond to your emotions and thoughts
• Whether you believe your own stories or question them
• What you say and do
• Where you place your attention
• Your boundaries
• Your agreements
• Your state

If you look at those two lists, most founders are spending the majority of their energy on the first one. And all of that energy trying to control what you can't is energy that could be going toward the things you actually can control.

The key to sorting the files is taking 100% responsibility. Not more, not less. Taking less than 100% means giving up on the things in the "can control" folder. It's abandoning the power you do have. Taking more than 100% means trying to control what's in the other folder.

This doesn't mean you stop caring about your impact. I don't believe I "make" my wife upset. I see her as the creator of her own experience. But I understand, for example, that given her belief patterns and how she's organized herself, when I snap at her, it tends to lead to her experiencing upset. So I choose differently.

That's the distinction. You take responsibility for your own state and being in presence, which naturally influences others in a positive way, without attempting to control their experience.

Less Control, More Power

If all you need to control are the things that are actually within your control, there's no problem. There's no unmet need.

Read that again.

We don't fight gravity. And that doesn't make us passive. We build planes. We climb mountains. We launch rockets. We work with it, and all the energy we would have wasted fighting it goes into things we can actually create.

The same is true here. The less you try to control, the more powerful you become as a creator. You still play to win. You still have a vision. You still take massive action. But it comes from presence rather than threat. From creative energy rather than survival fear.

And the need to control doesn't just waste energy. It actively gets in the way of doing what you actually want: having the hard conversation, letting that person go, giving the honest feedback. But the attempt to control their reaction, their feelings, your own discomfort overrides what authentically feels right.

So the question is: where is your wanting to control or needing to control things getting in the way of you doing what feels authentic?

You're still stuck to the earth. That hasn't changed. But if you can accept what you can't control the way you've accepted gravity, you'll find that everything worth controlling was already completely under your control.

With love,

Dave Kashen