Why High Achievers Struggle With Letting Go of Control

Society teaches us that if we cannot control every outcome in our life, we are doing something wrong. We carry an exhausting amount of pressure, believing that enough willpower and force can guarantee certainty in an unpredictable world.

In this episode, I break down the Certainty and Control Myth and why ambitious people get trapped in exhausting cycles of self-criticism, anxiety, and micromanagement. Drawing from personal experiences in rehab, corporate sales leadership, and family dynamics, I unpack what is actually happening beneath the surface when we try to force outcomes.

What you will discover in this episode:

• The hidden trap behind the Serenity Prayer that most high achievers miss completely
• Why the need for control shows up as blame in your relationships and self-criticism in your head
• The dangerous imbalance between discipline and surrender when chasing goals
• What retail sales quotas and family dynamics taught me about the physical cost of forcing outcomes
• A simple shift to stop identifying with anxious thoughts and build strong self-trust

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

If you're somebody who considers yourself to be controlling, then I want you to watch this episode or listen to it because I think we've been really misled when it comes to certainty and when it comes to control in our society. And the way that that's shown up is that we believe that we can control certain things that we actually can't. We also don't really know all the things we can truly control. And that leads to a lot of issues. In fact, when I was in rehab for being addicted to pain medication after a bunch of surgeries, I learned the serenity prayer. And what that serenity prayer says is God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. And unfortunately, society doesn't really give us the wisdom to know the difference before we have to learn it ourselves. And so the goal of today's episode is to help you understand the certainty and control myth, meaning the myth that is spreading around in a lot of the minds and the bodies and the spirits of high achievers that says that if you're not fully in control of your outcomes in your life, then you're a failure. Because if you truly believe that, then that leads to a lot of self-criticism, a lot of self-doubt. It also gives you an unrealistic perspective of yourself and the world around you. And that's a lot of pressure to carry. Thinking that your life is solely in your control, damn, how much willpower and pressure and force will you have to have in order to actually make that real? Because it's just fundamentally not true. And so the way I'm going to be talking about this is the perspective of what's of what's going on mentally, emotionally, and then in the nervous system. Okay, so let's start mentally. So what does it look like when you have a control uncertainty pattern? Well, what it looks like mentally is typically self-criticism when things don't happen the way that you want them to happen. So for example, let's say that when you were younger, you really liked a girl in class, and then that girl in class didn't like you back for whatever reason. And the story that you're telling yourself is because you're not cool enough, you don't have cool enough friends, you're not wearing cool enough outfits, you go straight to self-criticism. Well, that's a form of it. Uh maybe if you don't get good enough grades at school, it's because maybe you're telling yourself the story you're not smart enough, you didn't study hard enough, whatever. Another way is victimship, meaning that you're kind of blaming your circumstances and your environment around you. And that leads to you trying to control other people. So for example, let's say that you and your partner get in an argument and you get really upset and you get really angry. Control in that sense looks like blame. So maybe you go to this person and you say, You made me feel this way. Sometimes this shows up as you blaming your circumstances for your own experience. So that's kind of the fight way it shows up. The flight way it shows up is self-criticism, typically. You berating yourself to try to change. And I would say those are the main two ways. It's either you are blaming your circumstances because you don't get the results that you want, or you're blaming yourself for not getting the results that you want. So next let's talk about emotionally. So emotionally, the way this shows up is you feel a lot of anger towards not getting the results that you want. So one specific story from my life is that my old job that I used to have, our success was measured by average ticket, meaning the amount of money a customer would spend when they came in the store. And we're taught a ton of different tactics and methods to get people to spend more money than when they came in. So if somebody would come in and I ran them through the whole process and they would leave with the same amount of items they came in for, then I would beat myself up because of this. And I would feel a lot of shame. I would feel a lot of anger at myself, and yeah, I would feel sadness. And those emotions aren't bad inherently, but it's the interpretation of why I felt that way that was really the problem. Because I thought that not only I wasn't good enough for not getting the outcome I thought I should get, but I also thought the emotions that I was experiencing shouldn't have been there. And so I was like mad about being mad. I was guilty about being pissed. Like it was just a weird pattern to where essentially my entire life felt like hell if I wasn't achieving the goals that I set out to achieve. And if I didn't achieve these things, what happened most of the time how I would deal with it is I would double down and I would try to train more or read more of the sales script or do something to try to quote unquote improve. When in reality, it was just a lack of acceptance of the outcome. In better words, it was a lack of surrender. And so it's important to understand that there's there's two aspects, I think, to actualizing a goal for yourself. One aspect is discipline. So it's controlling the controllables, and that's your behavior, your actions, your mindset, and then also surrender, which is what other people are doing, what other people are experiencing, what other people are saying. And the problem becomes when we overvalue discipline and we undervalue surrender. Because a lot of what we're taught is that if an outcome doesn't happen the way it's supposed to, it's because we're not disciplined enough. It's because we're not working hard enough. We're really good at listing the things that we're not doing right, but we're not good at listing the things that we can't control, right? I can't control whether or not somebody spends more money. I can't control the way people perceive certain things that I say. You know, that shit's in my control. But because I'm scared that if I don't perform, I'm not good enough, then my interpretation of other people not doing what I want them to do is gonna be something I'm doing wrong. And then that pattern didn't just show up professionally for me. It also showed up in my relationships too. Like I used to feel accountable for my partner's emotions, which is out of my control, right? So instead of focusing on regulating my own nervous system and nourishing myself, I would put all my focus, time, and energy on the other person, which led to resentment. It led to more anger, it led to more guilt, it led to more of the things that I was trying to control my way out of. So that's how it shows up emotionally. And I guess I talked about mentally too, but it's just this whole conglomerate of it's unpleasant. Okay. There's no peace that's involved with this typically. It's typically like a wave of highs and lows, which is where I also think a lot of stress comes from. We think we're superhuman in the sense of we think we can control other people. And a lot of times we try to resort to things like manipulation or deception, or we just use these methods all to cover up the fear of uncertainty, which is wild to me. The way this shows up in the body is an unease, a discomfort. And a good example of this also from my childhood is my stepmom was very much so controlling. So it was her job in her head to whip us in the shape. And the way that she would try to do that is she would always hold me accountable to helping my younger brother because he had a hard time making friends and he didn't really hang out with the same groups that I hung out with. And so, in her mind, the way that he could have a better experience in his life was me dragging him along to these social functions and outings that he wasn't really invited to. And looking back at it now, I think that came from a fear in her eyes. I don't think she was conscious of this, but it was a fear that she wasn't a good enough mom and that she didn't prepare him to be in positive relationships in his life. And so the way that she tried to rectify that is by forcing him to be in my own social circles. And that actually led to me and his relationship being damaged, and it just led to him feeling like crap about himself. And so it just it wasn't productive at all. And I think the trap here too is that temporarily sometimes these things can have a solution. Like, for example, at first, it seemed like he had more friends because he would come and hang out with me and he was out of the house more. So temporarily it may provide some relief when we try to control these things we can't control, but long term, they're damaging and they're destructive. So mentally, a lot of times it's the stories that you're telling yourself. So if you're telling yourself things like, I'm not good enough, I should have done this better. There's nothing wrong with looking to better yourself in the sense of being curious around what you could have done better, that's fine. But if it's coming with the energy of self-deprecation, if it's coming from the energy of shame, that's when it becomes destructive. So just pay attention to the tone in which you're talking to yourself whenever things don't happen the way that you want them to. And you can choose to not engage in those thoughts as well. So when you tie your identity to those thoughts, that's when you start to get emotionally involved, typically. So if you're finding yourself also being shameful and guilty and frustrated and all that stuff too, the most important thing that you can do is just let yourself fully feel it, separate yourself from it in a way that's not disassociating. That doesn't mean don't feel it. So I want you to feel it fully, but kind of in a way separate your identity from it. So just know that you can just be the observer of your thoughts and your emotions. You don't have to identify with them. Yeah, in your nervous system, it's kind of the same thing. Like pay attention to the sensations in your body. Like, are you tensing up? Are you sinking down with your shoulders? Are you tight and not feeling comfortable? Just do what you can to try to let yourself relax into these emotions and not really listen as much to the stories in your head and not judge yourself by them. And then that's gonna really take you a long way. That's gonna help you with debunking the certainty and control myth in yourself. The whole takeaway here is that just because you're not controlling every outcome in your life does not mean there's anything wrong with you. If you're listening to this, then you're probably somebody who cares about empowering yourself, bettering your life. Not every single thing you set out to do is gonna happen the way you think it will. In fact, most of the amazing things that happen in our lives are things that happen unexpectedly. You can go from borrowed certainty, feeling like you control you need to control everything, to self trust and knowing that you're exactly where you're supposed to be. And as always, you deserve to stop surviving and start living.