In the 16 years that I’ve been helping clients navigate change, in my roles as a residential real estate broker and executive coach, one pattern emerges repeatedly:
The grasping for control.
It can show up in a myriad of subtle ways, but an obvious tell is a client who seeks to have everything be “their” way, from trying to negotiate standard agreement terms to asking for special exceptions.
Sometimes, in an attempt to appear above the fray, they lay the blame on another person: an uncooperative spouse, a boss, a child, another decision-maker.
It’s a natural human response.
Change breeds uncertainty.
Uncertainty triggers fear.
Control is a form of resistance to change and fear, an attempt to create certainty in the midst of an inherently uncertain situation.
We can’t control outcomes. We can’t always even control the process. We can’t control markets. We can’t control other people.
Many times we don’t even have as much control over our own actions as we think we do.
When we give ourselves over to an expert we can state what we want, but then it’s out of our hands. We can’t control how it comes out or how they do their job.
All of this is hard to reconcile.
Control makes us feel like we have power. Control makes us feel like we have agency. Control gives us the illusion of certainty.
The paradox is that control actually does none of these things.
What we seek to control controls us.
We realize that we don’t have as much control as we’d like to believe. That makes us feel powerless and more uncertain.
So what’s the solution?
It’s not to “surrender” or “give in.”
When we seek control as a form of resistance to change, the work is to sit with the fear of change and the discomfort with uncertainty.
The way out is through: acknowledge the fear and the part of ourselves that yearns for control in response to that fear. Welcome that part of yourself into the experience, the way you’d soothe a small child who is scared.
Learning how to be with the fear is the best way to find certainty in the face of change.
[…] a world teeming with uncertainty, our impulse is often to reach for control. We may seek to control a process, an outcome, other people, a narrative. Control makes us feel […]