The illusion of control

Do you strive for control? If so, how is it serving you? How does it feel when your sense of control slips?

Today I want to talk about and invite you to get curious about your relationship to control. And as a recovering control-lover myself, offer up a couple of alternatives to consider.

Let's dive in.

Episode transcript

Laura Jean 0:04

Hello Hello and welcome to this episode of The dietitian values Podcast. Today I want to talk to you about control, or more specifically, I want to invite you to consider the role control plays for you or what happens, what shows up when you are striving for control. Now, for myself, I've had a, I suppose, a long journey, perhaps still a recovering control, control lover? I think humans as a general rule, we like to feel safe. And one way that we try and gain safety is around controlling things. So controlling, trying to control our environment, kind of trying to control situations, trying to control outcomes. And one thing that I have learned through my journey of being curious around control and how it shows up to me, is that control is an illusion. For me anyway, that control actually is a distraction from what opportunities are available when I'm not focused on control. So I'm gonna talk a little about that. I want to invite you to consider your relationship with control, trying to control outcomes, control environment, trying to control you know, yourself or whatever it might be, however it shows up, and also to offer up a couple of alternatives.

So like I said, humans most humans are interested in control or brought to it because it creates a sense of safety and we as humans, as mammals, safety is a really important piece of being able to function and do what we need to do. When we're not in a state of feeling safe or in that state of safe and social connection of our nervous system. Then we can be more reactive, we can be triggered into those stress responses. So creating a space of safety can be, is really important and what I feel like has been, I don't know the roots of it all or where it started, but what is sort of being created is this association with safety and control. So, if I can control my environment, I can control my outcomes, if I Control all these things, you know if I can be perfect if I can keep the looking at my terribly messy desk, I can keep the desk mess tidy and, and some of these things are just things that people appreciate, some people really love a tidy desk. But sometimes those things can be coming up through that sense of wanting to have a sense of control and a sense of safety. There's nothing wrong with wanting a sense of safety. What I think sometimes we can be set up, for when we're striving for control is, you know, the real focus on that kind of outcome, like what's going to happen and the alternatives I'd like to offer up to you are choice and connection. And if we can try and create a sense of choice. So sometimes people in the business world, and maybe the reason you got into business was to create a degree of control over your environment, control over how you practice your work, control over more control, and more and more choice really over how you show up in your work.

And so what I'd like to offer up is that alternative of choice and what does it feel like? What would it feel like if instead of focusing on trying to control things there was s a shift in thinking about how can I create opportunities to choose, how can I create choice and space to actually make choice without that feeling of threat to safety, without that feeling of urgency, without that feeling of being pushed in certain directions. opening yourself up to the possibilities and creating space for choice. And so what would that feel like in your business? look like? What choices would you make? If you're thinking particularly, if we bring it back to values, if you were looking at things, you know, opportunities or decisions as a choice to move towards your values, and opening up the possibilities of how you take action into creating choices that move you toward your values versus in creating a sense of control?

And that is one of the pieces the other piece that I really bring in all things for myself and has always been supportive and helpful for me around it and when I work with in particular, I work with women around their relationship to food is connection, connection to our self, connection to our values. And when you can create and strengthen connection, the need for control actually can reduce when we are connected to ourselves. When you connect to yourself, you know who you are, your full humanity, when you're able to connect to your values and make choices based out of that then the whole kind of peace of needing to be in control lessons slightly. So instead of needing, to give an example an overarching example. So instead having to feel like that you have to control say the outcome of a launch, lets use that, so you might feel you have to control things to make sure that this and this happen, so that I get this thing, people signed up to do this and this and this and so there's like these things need to happen for it. To be successful quote unquote. Instead, by looking at connection using connection as a tool or metric can be looking at, how do I show up if I connect, if I connect to my value,s if I connect to how I want to share or how you want to share your work and what would that look like to shift away from needing to feel a sense of control to feeling a sense of connection. So there are two opportunities, alternatives that I think can be really helpful when you are thinking about ways to bring more those values, bring your values more into your work, ways to build a business that actually works for you and it actually can be fluid can be flexible, and also can be sustainable, because sometimes control can end up being quite rigid and in real life and if the last several years have anything, have shown us anything it is that our level to actually be able to control things is very limited. And like I said earlier in the podcast, I truly believe control is an illusion. It's a distraction from creating choices and creating connection. And so that's why I wanted to offer those two as alternatives.

So if this resonates with you, if you sort of feel like your somebody who likes control, I like control, I like to, I do and if I could if it actually I mean there because I feel like there's elements of what may be happens in a day that can feel like control that I'm you know, quote unquote in control, but really what it is is creating opportunities to make choices that align with my values, choices that build connection with myself and connection with my priorities. You know, maybe it's people maybe it's connection with my work, maybe it's connection with the environment, with nature, with my place where I am. When I work with women around their relationship with food often its connection with their body, connection with food and creating opportunity to make choices around that as opposed to try to control. So if we think, and for the nondiet dietitians this'll resonate or even anyone who eats. if we think about in our relationship food often what, what in my work what I come across is that humans who are wanting to, who have a history of trying to control food, trying to keep that grip really tight on food. And what that control does is create an environment of rigidity and often creates an environment of restriction. And this control by focusing on what is trying to be controlled, there is a natural exclusion of certain things or restricting certain things. And by holding on so fast to the idea of control, when things aren't feeling quote unquote in control, then the alternative is to feel out of control, to feel like there is no choice, to feel completely disconnected from food and body. And so when I work with women around their relationship with food often they will talk about feeling out of control around food, feeling like the only because when they feel like when they're not controlling food, things go everywhere. And often actually that's just a reaction. It's actually a reaction to the control. So if you find this for yourself in your relationship with food, reach out to a nondiet dietitian. And this applies to dietitians too, because many dietitians have this controlled relationship to food as well, through our training we're encouraged to adapt and adopt that kind of relationship to food. So if you're a dietitian who struggles around that, or feels like that's an issue, then do reach out to another nondiet dietitian, because it's really important that you feel supported in your relationship with food too. tangent. but definitely worth saying. and then if we think about it in a business sense, if you are really trying to focus on controlling what happens or controlling your time or controlling, you know, having a sense of control around what goes on in your business, you might find often you feel out of control. Often you can feel like there's so many tasks, they're mounting up, they're piling up, you're not feeling on top of them. The case notes are piling up the letters to doctors, If you're working in a clinic space. You can feel like you're chasing your tail when that sense of control slips. And instead, if we can reorient and think about it from that point of view for connection, and we change the goalposts to be instead of trying to maintain that control, try and hold on to the reins, you know to use a horse analogy, you know hold the reins, be in control, of course. what we can do is we can create an environment where you can work with what's going on, where you can build connection to yourself, connection to your work, connection to your values, and how they show up in your business and create opportunity for choices. So, rather than having to feel like you have to be in control or controlling it, creating that foundation of what are my values? What are the choices that move me towards my values? And what's the choice based on my resources in this moment, based on what's going on in this moment? What's the choice that moves me towards my values, and that gives us options.

So if we think about the last couple of years managing things in a pandemic, creating like, you know, trying to survive, but also also trying to still move forward with life and living, which many of us are doing right now. And there is privilige involved in being able to do that. But if you're like me and you've been trying to still work on running a business and you're still working on surviving yourself and creating safety for your family or whatever it might be, or more a sense of safety, we can't create safety for anyone else. So you start working on these sorts of things, and it can certainly feel like things are out of control. whereas if we shift that focus or shifted that goalpost to be okay, I'm not trying to control this, but I'm just trying to create opportunities where we can make the best choices to move us toward values in the moment. where we can make the opportunity to connect to ourselves, what's important to us, what our priorities are, we can connect to your values and use those as as a choice maker, as a decision maker, as a compass for your choices. to create a sense of connection in your life versus a sense of control.

So I'm going to keep this one short, because it's really just a seed planter and I'd love to hear what you think about this. Is something that you have found useful, like is it something that comes up for you. is that kind of drive to want to be in control, is this something you've been thinking about, is it something you've been working on, and how would it feel to instead focus, instead of focusing on that tight control element or the you know, that really like rigidity, and maybe the limitations of control or that come up when we focus on control, what would it feel like to open up to choices to create a sense of choice or to create an opportunity to make a choice? So instead of feeling like you have to stay in control, you can create an opportunity, create an environment, where you have a choice. to create an environment where you are connected to your values and to yourself. Connected to the work you want to put out into the world, connected to the humans you want to share it with and connected to your vision of the world you want to be building with your business. And bringing it back to well, with that connection, starting and rooting and having a foundation in that connection, what are the choices available and what choice do I want to move towards and looking at that as an alternative to control.

So I'd love to hear from you reach out by DM or hop over on Instagram @dietitianvalues and pop a comment under this podcast post. I would love to hear your thoughts I always love continuing the conversation, often you add extra kind of thoughts for me and extra sort of angles to kind of noodle on this. But also just it really gives me opportunity to know what lands, what out of what I'm sharing or speaking about actually resonates for you. If you know someone in your life a dietitian, a therapist, a physio any healthprofessional or even any human, who would really benefit from having listen or who this would really resonate with or would be really right up their alley then please feel free to share the podcast. In fact, I would really love it. I would love to ask a favour of you to actually share the podcast with somebody who you think would really either enjoy it or benefit or who would resonate with it and until next time I hope that you can open yourself up to an opportunity for choice and build your own connection in your business and in your life to yourself and to values. Bye for now.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai