161 Letting Go of Control and Embrace Emotional Freedom with Carol Clegg

What if you could let go of outcomes and embrace the present with confidence?  Through the lens of the Positive Intelligence model, Carol shares her personal insights into managing personal saboteurs like the controller. 

In this episode, I explore how to release the need to control outcomes and how letting go can lead to emotional freedom. By detaching from specific expectations and embracing uncertainty, we create space for growth, learning, and progress. I share a few practical steps for reframing outcomes, setting realistic goals, and building a mindset of adaptability and self-compassion.

• Ask yourself why a particular outcome is important, then set realistic plans to release the need for immediate results.
• Explore areas of your life where outcomes feel less critical and practice a relaxed attitude toward them.
• Shift your mindset by focusing on positive or neutral outcomes instead of fearing the worst.
• Affirm that your self-worth is not tied to external outcomes or validation.
• Embrace mindfulness, practice gratitude, and acknowledge that failure can be reframed as growth.

Action Item for Listeners: Choose one small area in your life where the stakes are low, and practice letting go of your attachment to the outcome. Try to focus on progress rather than perfection and reflect on how this shift impacts your mindset and emotional well-being.

Hello from your host, Carol Clegg. A coach for coaches! I work with women coaches to find balance with ease and flow, manage stress, cultivate self-empathy, and set meaningful goals that resonate with their individual coaching practices.

My clients often have too many ideas and struggle to decide which one to focus on first, leading to a HUGE BLOCK in just getting started. I love to help simplify the process, explore what is getting in the way and guide you to choose the next project, enjoy the journey, and celebrate progress while taking small, meaningful steps.

If you would like to take the complimentary Saboteur assessment to discover what gets in your way and then follow up with a complimentary coaching session to explore your results. Take your assessment here or visit carolclegg.com

BOOK your ✅ 30 minute complimentary exploration call HERE

Connect on LinkedIn and Instagram or join my LinkedIn Group Creative Ideas for Women Business Owners

Chapters

• 0:00 Empowering Mindset Moments With Carol Clegg
• 11:03 Positive Mindset With Carol Clague

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Well, hello and welcome to Connect Inspire Create. I'm your host, carol Clegg, a progress and mindset business coach, here to help you thrive and flourish and turn those challenges into opportunities for growth. I'm so pleased you're here. Join me for the discussions that I hope will not only encourage you but also provide the dose of inspiration that you might just need today. This podcast is all about giving you your weekly dose of practical strategies, motivation and insightful conversations designed to boost your business skills, personal growth and happiness. So, whether you're looking to find balance, say goodbye to procrastination, or just in need of a friendly nudge towards your goals, remember we're all on this journey together. So grab your favorite cup of something, be it coffee, tea or something else, and let's dive into this conversation today. Well, hello and welcome. Welcome to Mindset Moments.

Speaker 1: 1:18

This is going to be a new way that I'm going to try and just share some moments with you on Connect Inspire Create. As I reflect back and started this podcast, wow, it's almost been four years and when we first started, there were three of us, three women entrepreneurs growing their business. We were connected through a mastermind, became really good friends and still are in contact with each other, but it has been interesting to watch the changes. So if you are a podcast host, I encourage you to give yourself grace and ease and flow and pause when you need to and take changes. But I absolutely love this journey of meeting the wonderful guests that I have had on the show and with an opportunity just to inspire and hopefully just share a nugget or two that might bring a little brightness or a little inspiration into your day. So when we first started many years ago Trish Kathleen and myself, carol we used to bring in bits and bytes and those were mindset moments. So I am coming back again with this, and so I would love to know if this is something that you'd like to have more of.

Speaker 1: 2:35

These episodes I will plan to be a lot shorter, so some of you might know that I am a business mindset coach and I weave my coaching around the positive intelligence model, and within the positive intelligence model, we start off with doing an assessment to find out what the saboteurs are that often have more control in our life than we should give them. And this episode that I'm recording with you now is inspired by my own personal journey, because I decided one of mine is the controller, and although the controller, as it says, likes to take control. There are some positive attributes to the controller strengths, and one must not always allow oneself to fall into the trap of spiraling into negative thoughts all the time, and that's what I love about the positive intelligence model is that we have tools in our toolbox to help us shift from that negative thought process and into finding more ease and flow with exploring different ways that we can do that. But what got me going on this particular episode that I'm recording with you now is learning how to let go of outcomes and possibly finding more emotional freedom, and this has been a challenge for myself. So learning how to surrender to the need to control outer circumstances, and this has just been very upfront for me in the last week or so, and so I thought, you know, let me do a little bit of digging and research and exploring to see what this is all about, that this need to control the outcome and obviously, the impact that that has for us if we're always trying to control the outcome and not be present in the moment. So just some things that I came up with and I'm just going to share and chat with you about these.

Speaker 1: 4:32

So, first of all, asking yourself why a particular outcome is important to you and some outcomes are important and then we can plan and be realistic about them, but others we can let go but also detaching oneself from the expectations of the results, because that gives us permission to just learn from the process, give ourselves permission to make mistakes and in the process we are growing. So perhaps one of the areas to explore in letting go of this controller controlling circumstances is to test the waters and to start off with surrendering areas of your life where things don't feel like they have such a high stake, areas of your life where things don't feel like they have such a high stake, and you could be more relaxed with your attitude to the outcome and thereby exploring, being more present in the now and allowing the outcome to unfold. So you could start by just testing the waters and taking these small action steps of letting go of outcomes. Another way of thinking about the outcome is thinking about the negative outcome or the positive outcome. Can you switch your thought process to imagining a positive outcome and offering yourself some positive affirmations along that journey and stop fearing the worst?

Speaker 1: 5:59

I know that I can be very guilty of expecting the worst or also taking on too much responsibility for the outcome for others, and there's two ways to look at that. One is actually denying them of being themselves and taking responsibility for the outcome for themselves and the other things that I cannot control the outcome for somebody else. So it's switching and changing that thought process and then also just to trust the process while you're waiting for the outcome to adjust as you move along. Perhaps it means dividing your goals down into smaller steps so that you could see the immediate progress, celebrate and then take the next step and let this outcome unfold. And a big, important reminder is that not to tie your self-worth to the results of the external outcomes, your self-worth to the results of the external outcomes. So letting go and letting go help you be more present and adaptable.

Speaker 1: 7:06

So some areas that I like to bring into my toolbox and to remind myself when I want to take control of the outcome looking at mindfulness, embracing, being present and living in the moment, just being more present with the process and letting the outcome go. Setting more realistic expectations, because often we want everything to be perfect before we start and then we presume that the outcomes won't deliver or live up to our expectations. So setting more realistic expectations and then also just acknowledging to ourselves that outcomes can be unpredictable. Can we be curious, can we realize that some things are beyond our control and sometimes, if something doesn't happen the way we think it should, it may be for a good reason. So we can also look at reframing what we might want to label as failure and rather looking at it as a growth opportunity, shifting our perspective on these setbacks and practicing gratitude Gratitude from the heart.

Speaker 1: 8:13

There is so much to be grateful for and it definitely is a tool that we can go to to calm down our nervous system, to focus on the good, to look at the good things and the good people in your life and then question why are you attached to this outcome? Perhaps you could try to imagine, just for a few moments, letting that attachment to the outcome go and see what you might discover. Perhaps something else becomes available to you. To explore this option and then learn how to embrace the beauty of uncertainty, such as the thought detaching from the outcome and observing your thoughts without judgment. Perhaps this needs you to give more compassion, more empathy to yourself and to others in the situation. So I wanted to share some of the controller strengths that help take this greatest strengths that we have, and although they get converted into weaknesses because we overuse or abuse them, they definitely are strengths, and so, for the controller, it's being confident, action-orientated, decisive, persistent, being able to challenge oneself and others and seeing the possibilities in circumstances and activating yourself and others towards a fresh perspective.

Speaker 1: 9:42

So I invite you, if you've been listening to this episode and you're curious to know more about your own saboteurs, I do offer a complimentary explore call after you have taken the saboteur assessment, which is provided by Positive Intelligence. So you will find that both on my website, carolcleggcom, and on the Positive Intelligence website, which is positiveintelligencecom, and then you are welcome to reach out and connect with me. My email is carol at carolcleggcom, or connect with me on LinkedIn, send me a private message and we can set up a time to look at what your results say and then take a look at some of those strengths as well. So, until the next episode of Mindset Moments, I hope that you've enjoyed this. If you pop over to the website for the podcast Connect, inspire, create, you'll see there's a little button on the far right-hand side, and I'd love to hear your comments, thoughts, if you think these are practical, useful, encouraging, and I can include some more in the show. So until the next time, take care.

Speaker 1: 11:03

If you are looking for tools to build powerful habits around a lifelong positive mindset, then I'd love to explore what results you are looking for in your life and your business. Every coach needs a coach. I'm sure you've heard that before. As a mindset and accountability coach, I work with women coaches in midlife to find balance in their business endeavors and prepare their foundation for a positive mindset. By blending my personalized accountability and mindset coaching along with the powerful positive intelligence program, you'll learn about saboteurs and sage powers and gain lifelong tools to create a shift in all areas of your life, from personal to professional, and reduce the negative self-talk and discover more self-love. Curious to know what your own saboteurs are, I invite you to take the free assessment provided by Positive Intelligence that you'll find on my website, carolclaguecom, and then book a call with me and let's explore the results, because I am here to support you on your journey. You can connect with me on LinkedIn just search for Carol Clague, or pop by my website carolclaguecom.