When you’re overwhelmed, one of the easiest ways to move into action is focus on what is in your power to change. Emmy and AACTA Award-winning producer turned creative sector coach Ellenor Cox explains how this philosophy works and some easy steps to put it into practice.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed or feel like life seems to be spinning out of control, then focusing on what you can control, rather than what you can’t, can very quickly bring about a sense of calmness and clarity.
Athletes have used this mindset strategy for years and it’s great to see it gaining more widespread traction as it’s one of the most effective tools that I know.
The first step to ‘controlling the controllables’ is to identify the things that are within your
control and the things that are not.
Too often, people waste time and energy on things that are beyond their control. Examples of these could include:
- Other people’s opinions, actions, emotions, or beliefs
- Being the successful candidate in a job interview
- Projects getting greenlight funding
- Box office and ratings
- Critical reviews of your films
- The weather
- The traffic
- The past
Make a list of all the things that are overwhelming you at the moment and then divide them into the controllables and the things you cannot control.
Your list of controllables may look something like the below. This is where you need to put your focus.
- Your own opinions, actions, emotions, and beliefs
- Your mindset
- How well you take care of yourself
- How hard you work
- How you choose to bounce back from knockbacks and rejections
- How you treat other people
- How you educate yourself and immerse yourself in your creative career
- Who your friends are
Once you identify the uncontrollables, it might take you some time to get used to not trying to control them because inherently your need to control everything stems from fear. That fear might look different for everyone. It could be the fear of being wrong, of getting in trouble, being ridiculed, judged, attacked or shamed.
When you look at your uncontrollables list, do you notice there are some which you try to control more than others? The areas that you try to control the most are your ‘Achilles heel’ and are the areas in which you carry your deepest wounds and fears.
Observe how you feel when you try to let go of control in one of these areas. If you notice underlying fears coming up, then the trick is to work on them. A key way to do that is look for ways to control your mindset, and what you choose to think and believe. The famous philosopher Vicktor Frankel said: “Everything can be taken from a man or a woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
Depending on how deep your conditioning goes, changing your mindset may take effort. Focus first on easy and actionable controllables that will enable you to see incremental change and improvements almost immediately.
Learning how to prioritise tasks in order of importance is a great way of knowing where you should and shouldn’t focus your time, energy, and effort.
One of the best ways to prioritise your tasks in both work and life is to use the analogy of rocks, pebbles, and sand in a jar. Imagine you have a large jar, a handful of rocks, a few dozen pebbles, and a couple of handfuls of sand. How can you fit all the items in the jar? If you put the sand in first, you won’t have enough room for the pebbles and rocks. There’s only one way to do it: put the rocks in first, the pebbles second, and finally, pour the sand into the gaps between the rocks and pebbles.
The jar is your life, the rocks are your biggest and most important tasks, and the pebbles are the things that are important but not urgent. The sand represents the short, ongoing tasks of dayto-day life, such as sending an email or paying your bills.
Another key and easy controllable that you can take better command of immediately is who you choose to spend time with. You may not be able to choose your family, but you can choose your friends and acquaintances. They say you are the sum of the five people you spend the most time with, so you’d better choose wisely. The people around you can bring out either the best or the worst of you.
Finally, another place to create some instant control is around the information you consume. The world can start feeling overwhelming very quickly if you aren’t intentional about your media consumption. If you tend to obsessively check the news or social media to find out about the latest disasters it might be the reason you’re feeling overwhelmed.
Compulsively checking the news is an attempt to control the outcomes of events that are beyond your control. Instead, focus on what you can control – the information you consume. For example, instead of watching the evening news, try 10 minutes of meditation. You will immediately notice a difference in how it makes you feel.
A person can choose to be positive or negative, to be a creator or a complainer, to take responsibility or avoid responsibility. They can choose to build on what they do have – their strengths and assets – or moan about what they don’t have. They can choose wilful intelligence – rather than wilful ignorance – and find solutions to challenges. They can choose to work hard to succeed or they can choose to sulk. Each choice has consequences, both for themselves and other people.
People love to feel in control. Sometimes, however, this simply means focusing on controlling the controllables. People can then aim to do their best in a situation. Strangely enough, this can produce a great feeling of liberation.
Ellenor Cox has been providing bespoke individual and group coaching, leadership development and workshop facilitations to the screen sector for the past eight years. Her website is full of free resources: www.ellenorcox.com