What's In Your Control and What Isn't - Most Popular Episodes of 2024

Episode 165 – What’s in Your Control and What Isn't– Most Popular Episodes of 2024

Our family members are not people to be controlled, they are relationships to nurture.

You’re probably trying to control things that are not in your control. If you’re frustrated in your relationships, you are trying to control things that are not in your control. You don’t get to control what someone else thinks, feels, or does, even when you think you should be able to. 

What is in your control? What you think, what you do with your feelings, and what actions you take. 

When you’re able to let go of trying to control things that aren’t in your control, you’ll save yourself a lot of suffering. 

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If you have a relationship with an adult child that is suffering, download this free guide:

5 Steps to Reconnect with Your Adult Child

You’ll begin healing the hurt you’re carrying, and your heart will feel lighter and more hopeful. You’ll begin taking a different road to building that precious relationship instead of walking on eggshells and riding the roller coaster of disconnection and frustration. 

Click Here to Download the Guide

Tina Gosney is the Family Conflict Coach. She helps her clients move past contention in their homes and move into connection. Developing healthy family relationships can change lives.
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Tina is certified in family relationships and a trauma informed coach.
Visit tinagosney.com for more information on coaching services.

Transcript

Tina Gosney: 0:00

Tina, welcome to the coaching your family relationships podcast. I'm your host, Tina Gosney, the family conflict coach. This is where we talk about how messy family relationships can be. If you want to change in your family dynamics start working from the inside out. Now this is the second most downloaded podcast of 2024 and this is one about control. What is in your control was what isn't in your control. When I talk about control with people, everybody thinks it's a bad word. We almost they treat it like a four letter word. This is with clients. This is with people in general, friendships, family members. When you talk about control, no one wants to see themselves as trying to control another person. It's a bad thing. We all consider it to be a bad thing. What we don't see is the ways that control sneaks its way into our life and sneaks its way into our relationships. And hopefully this episode will help you to begin to see that very thing, because we all have control issues. I know in my life, I have dealt with a lot of control issues, and the longer I start to pay attention to them and try to work through them, the more I see that they're that's layered. It's they're like an onion. One is just hiding behind. One issue is hiding underneath, the other one. Used to think that by my efforts, I could put forth a lot of effort to get what I wanted. If I have a desire for something, then I can put forth a lot of effort. I can do a lot of work to get that thing. Sometimes that desire was to have things be a certain way, if I just do a lot of things. If I work really hard, I can get what I want, and if I just not, if I'm not getting what I want right now, I just need to work harder. I need to know more. I need to put out more effort. I have to just get up earlier and do more. Things will turn out the way that I want them to be. If I just work harder, and I had a lot of evidence that that was true. There were a lot of times in my life where I saw that that equation, my effort over time, gives me what I want. That equation worked for me. So of course, we just as humans, we just keep doing what we see works. And I hit a situation in my family over a decade ago now that that was was exactly what I was trying to do. It was something that was happening. I didn't like it. I needed it to be different. I needed to put more effort in. I needed to try harder. I had to work harder to get things to be the way I wanted them to be the way I thought they were supposed to be. But this particular situation was a relationship with one of my children, one of my emerging adult children. No matter what I did, no matter how much effort I put out, no matter how much time I spent on my knees in prayer and in supplication to the spirit, and how hard I worked and efforted, I had no control, and it made things worse. It drove that new, newly forming adult child further from me. I got less of some things and more of other things. I got less of what I really wanted, which was including a relationship with that child. The relationship was then very important to me. It still is extremely important to me. I got more through my efforts. I got more disconnection, frustration and a feeling of hopelessness that things could ever be different. And when I saw that happening, I in true form, doubled down on my efforts, and I tried even harder, and then I hit a day. This is, gosh, over 10 years ago now, I hit a day where I felt so exhausted, I felt so defeated, and I fell to my knees in prayer, and I said, the only words that I said were I give up. Now, in my mind, I was giving up trying to make anything different. I was giving up on a lot those words, those three words I give up, held a lot of meaning for me. And I was giving up on -my efforts. I was giving up on the relationship. I was giving up on just about anything that I had been trying to do, and I just felt this weight lift off my shoulders as I heard these words in my own head, which I know these words did not come from me, but these words said, "Now I can start to work with you." I know those were not my words, because I had literally never thought them before, and it just felt so out of character for me to be giving up and then here, now I can start to work with you. What I didn't do was give up on the relationship. I said in my mind that day, when I felt to my knees, I felt like I was giving up on it. I was really not going to give up on it, and I didn't, but I what I did do was I gave up on that situation, that relationship, looking like I thought it was supposed to look. I gave up on trying to control the situation to be what I thought it was supposed to be, what I wanted it to be that at that time, and when I did that, I was less frustrated. I was less disconnected from that child. I felt less hopelessness, and I had more of a relationship with my child, more understanding, more respect, going both ways, more connection, but more important than that, I received more divine help to guide and direct me to the work that I really needed to do, which was internal work. I couldn't affect anything outside of me, including that relationship, until I had done the internal work. So that day that I gave up, that I said I give up, is what has led me to talk to you today on this podcast. It's what has led me to do the work that I do, because I so firmly believe that we need strong relationships in our families, and that when we do our internal work, we can have so much more of an effect than we can by trying to control a situation or a person we do not control our way into better relationships, including with our family. Our families are not people to be controlled. They are relationships to be nurtured. I f you are having trouble letting go of trying to control a relationship in your family or a situation in your family, instead of trying to get what you want focus on letting that other person feel seen, heard and understood by you, and equally as important, pay attention to how you need to see, hear and understand yourself, because that will start you on a different road, just like it did for me, and that road for you will be much more beautiful than you can imagine right now, if you are experiencing disconnection with an adult child, I have a guide for you. This is some of the best work that I've ever done. Would really like for you to go download this free PDF. It's a workbook actually has some questions for you, to help you, but it's called five steps to reconnecting with your adult child. And if you're feeling disconnected from one of your children, I know that your heart is really hurting. This is going to help you to begin healing that heart you might be stuck in trying to force things to be the way that you want them to be. You might be feeling hopeless. You might have even given up. But letting go of control does not mean that you stop putting in effort. It means you stop trying to force the situation or the person to be who you want them to be. And instead, you open your heart up to new possibilities, and you get to decide who you want to be in this situation. This situation doesn't have to decide who you are. It doesn't control you. You get to decide who you will be in this situation. This is your agency. This is your right and this is your responsibility. Enjoy the second most popular episode of 2024 what's in your control and what isn't in your control? I have reached the ripe age of needing to see a doctor to help me with some health issues. I wish actually that I had paid attention to this at an earlier age, because I think it would have been so helpful for me 20 years ago. But I've reached an age where I'm very humbled by not being able to control as many things as I thought with my own body and. And very humbled by a recognition that my body is a very complex system of biology, chemistry, a lot of different things, and I am not a scientist, so I won't go any further into that. Actually, didn't do very well in biology in high school or college, so I'm not going to even try to tackle any more of that side of this, but I'm going to leave it to the people who do a really great job on their podcast of addressing all those health issues. But I have come to realize that there are many things going on inside my own body that I don't have a lot of control over. I'm subject to a lot of things, like age, environmental influences, genetics, basically, you know, being a human being, living in a human body, in a world that is flawed and that is not perfect. And I have tried to really, Get really clear about what are the things that I can control. And I've discovered, you know, I can control my inputs. I can control how I think about my body, how I feel about my body, and what I do with my body. When I first began seeing this doctor that I've been working with, it's been good two and a half years, he gave me five non negotiables, and actually he gives everybody these same five non negotiables, and then from there, he kind of branches often to see what you specifically need. But I thought it was really interesting that one of these five non negotiables that he gave me was that I need to talk kindly to myself and my body every single day. Isn't that interesting? Why would He say and put that on a list of non negotiables that I needed to talk kindly to myself? And he tells everybody this, it wasn't just me. He tells everyone, this is a non negotiable. What does talking kindly to yourself produce? It produces good feelings about yourself. Feelings drive actions. Thoughts and Feelings feed off of each other to produce actions. Actions can begin to change the thoughts and the feelings that I'm having. It's kind of a spiraling up, you know, we have some positive thoughts going on, which creates positive feelings, that drives different actions, and then is why I get some more evidence that I can feel better when I do certain things. That kind of feeds on itself into having more positive thoughts and feelings and actions. And it spirals in a way that is a positive way. And I give myself more evidence that I want what I want to achieve is possible. So how I treat my body is in my control. What I put into my body in the form of fuel and food, if I exercise or not that day, how much I move, whether I stretch, how much I sleep, how much water I drink, all of those things are in my control. But even with those inputs, there are still things that my body does that I don't get to say with 100% accuracy that I can control. There are things that my body does that I don't have control over. So how does this reply to relationships and why am I talking about my health journey in the last couple of years, because there are all things in our relationships. All of us have things that we want to control. We want to know that if I do ABC, then I'm going to get XYZ, like, if I just do these things, then I'm going to get a result that I want. Well, that might look like okay, if I talk kindly, if I show up and support them, if I treat them nicely, if I do these things, then this person is going to love me, they're going to respect me, they're going to think good thoughts about me. They're going to want to be around me. They're going to treat me the way that I want to be treated. And I could go on and on and on, but we actually don't get to control the way that somebody else thinks, feels or does in regard to us. We really want to be able to, and lots of times we think that we can, but when we finally realize, Oh, I did all those things and I didn't get that that was not in my control. It can be very humbling. It can also be very discouraging, and for some people, it's very anger producing. So want to go to the question, what is in my control, in my relationships, what is in my control? And to do this, let's look at Stephen R Covey's model that he calls the circles of influence. So I want you to picture three circles. One inside another. The biggest circle is called the circle of concern. Now think about all the things that you are concerned about. Maybe you're concerned about the election, about the economy, about the housing market, about the future of the planet, about what's going on in the other side of the world, there are a lot of things that we have concerns about. How much control do you have over those things? For me, I have very, very little, very, very, very little control over any of those things. I even have very little influence over any of those things. So let's just leave that big, giant circle of concern, because there's a lot of things in that circle that we can't do anything about but take up a lot of our brain power and a lot of our emotional energy. Inside that circle, we find something called the circle of influence. This is a smaller circle. There are less things in this circle, but these are things that I can't control directly, but I can influence them. For example, in this circle, I'm going to include some things like the local election. And I also recently joined the board of a nonprofit organization, organization in my community called connection is the cure, and we help people in our local community find resources for addiction and suicide. I have some influence there. There's a little bit of influence. I have that in that place, but I'm also going to include things like the way someone thinks of me. Do I have control over some the way someone thinks of me? No, but I have influence in that. I have influence over whether someone wants to be in a relationship with me or not, but I don't I can't control that, but I can influence it by different things, which we'll get into in just a minute. I have also have some influence in my own health. I don't always get to control the outcome of my actions, but I can influence the health of my body. You know, in this circle, the circle of influence, we're going to contribute to the result in a meaningful way. We don't always have direct control on the results, but we have influence on those results. So remember, in this relationship, regards to relationship with the circle of influence, I don't get to control someone else's thoughts, feelings or actions, but I certainly have influence in them by what then I put in my circle of control. So the circle of control we find inside the circle of influence, it's even smaller than the circle of influence. These are the things that I directly affect with what I do that I have control over, for example, with my health. I can control whether or not I exercise that day. I control how much water I drink, what kind of vitamins and supplements I take, what food or fuel I decide to put in my body, all of those things I do have control over. I don't have control over what my body sometimes does with them, but I have control over my inputs in a relationship. I have control over myself, what I do, especially when I'm facing something that's difficult, like someone else treating me in a way that I don't like. I have control over what I do with that situation, and I get to control the way I show up in a relationship, no matter what someone else is doing or not doing. Now we as a society have taught our children differently, and if you have thought differently, it makes perfect sense, because you were probably taught this way as a child. But then there's another part of us that might be thinking, well, of course, I don't get to control somebody else's thoughts, feelings and actions. There's really this kind of this gray area that we live in where we say one thing, like, of course, that that would be ridiculous if I thought I could control somebody else's thoughts and feelings. Of course, I can't control that. But then we act in a way that's different. Let me give you a couple examples, just from a typical example of if you had a small child, and some of the things that you might say to them, you know, little Johnny's on a play date, and he takes a toy away from someone, and you say, Hey, Johnny, you hurt his feelings. You need to give that back to him. Look how sad he is. You made him so sad. How many times did you do that? Or what? What about when you're trying to get your kids to eat healthier, and you say, Hey, if you eat your broccoli, you're going to make mommy so happy. I will be so happy to see you eat your vegetables. We're teaching little Johnny that he can control other people's feelings. And on the flip side, if he can control other people's feelings, he's going to also believe that other people get to control his feelings. And we get this really mixed up, because none of that is true, none of that is in our control, but we do have influence there. And what happens when we mix up the circle of influence and the circle of control. When we start getting these these lines get confused. We start blaming ourselves or other people. We start blaming ourselves for so how someone else thinks, how someone else feels, and we start letting ourselves blame them for how we are thinking and feeling, just because things are not going the way that we want them to, we start to look outside of ourselves for something or someone to blame. And then sometimes we internalize that same blame ourselves. But if we assign blame to either ourselves or to someone else, it just becomes something then that we don't have control over. We say this is just the way things are. I don't have any control over this person. What about instead, if we stopped looking for someone to blame and we just made the lines a little bit more clear, what if we start looking at what is in my control? Was I thinking something was in my control, and it wasn't. Did I think that I had control over something that I didn't what's in your control? Remember what you think, what you feel and what you do that is in your control. What somebody else thinks, feels or does, is not in your control. It's in your circle of influence. Think about this. Some people will use this line that I've heard many times. They say, Oh, well, I can't help it if you're offended, that's your problem. It's your problem if you're offended. And then they use that, that thought that they've had. They've heard from people to say, I get to show up however I want to get to say, Do think anything that I want, and it's your responsibility to deal with the aftermath of the garbage that I dump at your feet. That is terrible, because you have influence on another person, don't you? Is that really the way that you want to influence someone? So where you put your attention and your focus really matters. The attention and focus, when you use it to look at what kind of inputs you're giving to a relationship, you get really clear about yourself, about where the lines are of control. The line between control and influence, and your control is in what you think feel and do. Your influence is in what you think feel and do about another person and when your thoughts, your feelings and your actions align with who you are working to become, then you are acting with integrity. You are seeing, where is my line? Where is the line of what I can control and what I influence? And even when you see that line, you're still going to make mistakes, because you're a human being, and humans make mistakes, and we need to forgive ourselves when we do. I want you think to think about sometimes you're going to get out of your even, even out of the circle of influence and control, and you're going to go to concern, and you're going to think that you can control a lot of things out in the world, and you're just confused about that. You're going to forget that you don't control what other people think, especially about you, that's in your circle of influence. And then something's going to happen, and you're going to remember, oh, yeah, I don't get to control what they think, but I can influence what they think. And then sometimes you're going to get mixed up about how you have that influence, and you're going to maybe try to influence them in a way that to them seems kind of controlling and maybe manipulative, even when you don't mean to, but you're still going to do it because you're just figuring it out. You're going to make a lot of mistakes, especially when you're trying to change the way that you've been showing up, and it feels all really awkward and confusing. You have to think through everything, and you're not sure what to do and what not to do, and you're going to fail a lot, and that's normal, so forgive yourself. And ask for forgiveness from others when you have affected them and influence them in a way that you didn't want to. And then just keep trying, because it does get easier. The more you get really clear about your inputs and what you want to be putting into your circle of control and then how you want to influence others. The more you do it with integrity, the easier it will get. I think it's really important to normalize this process of trying and failing, trying and failing, try and succeeding, and then trying and failing, and then repeating that all over again. Because, you know, if we didn't normalize that, this is how change happens, we start to think this is too hard. Nothing works. Nothing is changing. So why do I keep giving in all this effort that is such a natural place for us to go when we're not seeing and not looking at what we should be looking at? There's an author that I really love. He's the author of atomic habits. His name is James clear, and he says in his book, he said, every action you take is a vote for the person you're becoming. You don't have to get a unanimous vote to win. We just need to have a majority. So think about over time. You want a majority, you might not get the majority at first, but over time, as you keep trying to figure out, where is my control, where is my influence, and you keep making mistakes and getting picking yourself up and trying again, making repairs where you need to your votes are going to be on the majority side of who you are working to become. If you have a relationship that is suffering, look at your inputs. That is what is in your control? What are you contributing to the relationship? If you plant corn seeds, you're not going to harvest wheat, but if you plant wheat seeds, there are still things that aren't in your control, like, what about the weather? You don't get to control whether you harvest a great wheat crop, crop or not. But if you want wheat, even if the storm came and destroyed all of your crops, you get to plant again. You get to start again. So are you expecting something different than what you're giving? Are you in it for the long haul? Are you trying to force something to happen before it's really ready to happen? Here's a journaling question for you. Who am I being in the relationship, and how is that in my control? Explore that. Listen to this podcast again, explore that and journal it through, through your journaling. Hey, thank you so much for being here with me through this podcast. And just a reminder, there's a free download for you. Five Steps to reconnecting with your adult child if you're feeling disconnected, if you are feeling hopeless, frustrated and wanting things to be different, this is your guide. Go to the show notes. Download that guide and stay tuned for the next episode to find out what is the most downloaded podcast episode this year of 2024.