Ep #02: Control What You Can
episode summary
This episode is all about what’s in your control - and what’s not! When you’re feeling stressed and overwhelmed, taking the time to determine what you can control not only makes you feel better, but also gives you a “to do” list and a “to don’t” list.
Your own thoughts, feelings and actions are always in your control. What other people think about you or what they do is always out of your control. I’ll teach you a quick tool to reduce your stress by focusing on what’s in your control.
For the full show notes and transcript, head over here.
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What You’ll Learn:
Worrying about something ahead of time never prevents it from happening. It just prevents you from feeling calm before it happens.
If you pause and write down what’s in your control, and what’s out of your control, you can give yourself permission to only focus on what’s in your control.
The only thing that’s in your control are your own thoughts, feelings and actions.
Other people's thoughts about you (and anything else) are always out of your control.
It’s helpful to remember that other people probably aren’t thinking about you at all.
listen to the episode:
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Hey, I'm Michelle Gauthier and you're listening to The Overwhelmed Working Woman Podcast. Hello friends. Welcome back. Thanks for joining me for episode number two. I am getting ready to go on a trip with my kids. We are heading out this weekend. We're going to head to Phoenix to visit my parents, which will be a great time.
And then I'm also going to take a two day trip to the Grand Canyon with my kids. I've been there before, but never on the south side. I've only been on the Utah side, which was amazing. So I'm really excited to take my kids and show it to them. They've never been, and for me to see it from that side as well.
When I used to work in my corporate job, I traveled all the time. In fact, in one of my jobs I traveled like 40 weeks a year. So I'm sort of a travel pro and I set out to basically force that on my children. So now they're like mini business travelers at age 12 and 15, and it is fantastic. They pack just carry on only. They have their boarding passes on their phones. They zoom through TSA precheck, like bosses. It's so great. It's so easy to travel with them. I remember when they were little, it was always, uh, quite a production to travel with them by myself, but I did it all the time. I think putting in that time helped them turn into pretty good travelers by the time they were like six and nine or something like that.
I remember one time I was managing my way through the airport security. With a baby. My daughter was a baby and then my son was three and I saw this other mom struggling. She had put her, um, stroller through like the security check and she was trying to get her stroller popped back up and didn't really have a free hand to do it.
So I had my daughter strapped to me and I had my son. I was holding his hand with like a death grip cuz he was a complete runaway. He would've been out of there in two seconds flat. And I'm trying to help her with my spare hand. And finally we get it up and get it together and we're kind of laughing and sweating and I look over and there is her husband just standing there.
I completely thought she was alone. And here we are both like killing ourselves with handfuls full of children and he's just standing there. Oh my gosh. I just thought of that story and I was so representative of what we do as women. Like we manage it all. We solve all the problems. We just figure it out somehow, lots of times without even asking for any help.
Anyway, all that to say, travel is so much easier and better now that my kids are bigger. I'm really looking forward to it. But I wanted to talk about this particular example today because I think as working women, traveling is one of those things that is often required of us and often can be really stress inducing and make us feel overwhelmed.
There's just the natural tendency to worry about what's going to happen at the office or at home while you're gone. Or if you're taking your family with you, all the worries that go along with that. So I just wanted to talk through that a little bit and give you a tool that you can use - a really quick, simple thing that you can do when you start to feel overwhelmed.
So in my example, when I think about going out of town this week, I could be worried about several things. The first is, my daughter is not going to go to school next week. My son is off and my daughter is not. So I'm just choosing to take her out of school and take her on this trip so I could be worried about what her school is going to think.
What are her teachers going to think when she goes and says, “I'm going to be gone. What do I have to make up?”
Are they going to be thinking, oh great, I'd love to go out of my way. You know, give you your homework ahead of time so you can go on this trip while I stay here and teach. Is the school going to be thinking that I shouldn't be taking my child out of school?
That's one area that I could definitely worry about. I also worry about my own work and my clients like, will I get behind? Will I not post all the things I meant to post on social media? Are my clients going to be upset because I'm going to be on vacation and I won't be seeing them next week like I do? I usually see my clients every week.
Then I think about my kids. Like I said, they're good travelers, so I don't have to sweat that part anymore. But I can think about and worry about how they're going to act. Like, for example, are they going to fight with each other when we're at my parents' house, are they going to use nice manners? I sure hope so. But you know, you never know.
That could be a worry. I really want to have a great time at the Grand Canyon. I could worry about if it's going to be too cold or if the weather's going to be cruddy and we won't be able to see, like I want to be able to see, I could worry about if the plane's going to be late, if we lose luggage. So many things that you could worry about and start feeling out of control and overwhelmed.
So here's a trick that is very simple and you can use it for this situation and any really other situation, which is just pausing to decide what's in your control and what's out of your control. The easiest thing to do is just grab a piece of paper, blank piece of paper, draw a line down the middle, and on the left half right in my control and on the right half right out of my.
And I want you to remember what is always in your control and what's always out of your control. So what's always in your control are your own thoughts and your own actions. What you do and what's out of your control is anyone and everything else. So, for example, if I'm worried about my daughter's school, what's in my control is that I get to decide.
I get to decide if I take my daughter out of school or not. I also get to decide, and the action I can take is to notify the school and the teachers with plenty of time, and I will tell my daughter to coordinate with her teachers too. What's out of my control is what those teachers will do or say or think.
So maybe I'm worried that they'll be thinking, oh my gosh, Josie's mom is such a bad parent. I can't believe she's taking her out of school like this. Or maybe they're going to think that it's a lot of work for them to have to make up for her being gone by giving her the homework ahead of. Something that's really good to remember in this situation, like anytime you're worried about what somebody else is thinking about you, what I'm telling myself is when I tell them that my daughter's not going to be in school next week, then they're going to think I'm a bad mom.
The truth is, they could already think I'm a bad mom. They could think I'm a great mom and they might still think I'm a great mom, or the very most likely scenario is they're not thinking about me at all. We're always worried what somebody else is going to be thinking about us, and I swear, most of the time we are not even crossing their mind.
Everyone's very busy thinking about themselves. Okay, so for that one, I have in my control, I get to decide that my daughter's not going to to school, and I get to notify the school and the teachers out of my control is what the teachers or anyone else thinks about it. Next up in my line of potential worries is my own work.
So what's going to happen to all the stuff that I normally do in a week? For example, I usually would write and record a podcast and write a blog post and do social media posts. What will people think if I don't? Send out my weekly email, for example. I also think, what about my clients? They're used to seeing me every week.
Will they be upset with me? Will they be mad? I'm on vacation? A whole host of things I could worry about with regards to that. So if I take my list and I look on the left side, which what is in my control, what I can write down there is I get to decide to take vacation, and I get to communicate that to my clients.
And what's out of my control is what my clients think about that or really what anybody thinks about that. So if I don't post on social media or send out a weekly email, again, probably no one's going to notice. But even if they do, they might think “good for her, she's on vacation”. Or they might think, “oh my gosh, she's the worst coach. I can't believe she took a vacation.” Either way, it doesn't matter because I absolutely can't control it. And just like I said before, they're probably not thinking anything about it. So when I think about communicating it to my clients, I can just rest assured that when we start coaching together, I do one-on-one coaching and it's for six months.
And at the beginning of the six months, I say sometimes you go on vacation. Sometimes I go on vacation. Maybe one of us will be sick or have something come up. We have flexibility, we can always cancel and just move it to the end. All my clients know that. So chances are when I go on vacation and I give them plenty of notice, they're thinking, great, I have a free hour this week and I will see her next week and not worrying about it at all.
Next up is my potential worry and overwhelm about my kids. So what are they going to do? Are they going to fight a lot at my parents' house? Are they going to like leave their, I'm trying to think of the worst thing they could do at my mom's. Probably wear muddy tennis shoes in the house or like leave their dirty dishes somewhere.
Something rude like that. I could definitely worry about that cuz both of those things could happen. But I really can't control how they will behave. So I'm going to put on the in my control as that. I can tell my kids my expectations. Okay? I want you guys to be on your best behavior. Please do not fight.
Please be nice to each other. Please clear your dishes. Take off your shoes when you walk into the back door. Follow all the rules that Grancy and grandpa want us to have. And then out of my control is if they actually do it or not. I will cross my fingers. I will hope they do. If they do get into a fight or do something they're not supposed to be doing, I'll address it in the moment, but it is not worth pre worrying.
Worrying about something ahead of time never prevents the thing from happening. Sometimes our brain will try to tell us, well, I'm going to worry about it to keep it from happening. It doesn't work that way, so you might as well just not worry. The last thing I could get overwhelmed about for my vacation is the weather, the travel, those logistical kinds of things.
What's in my control is I can choose what to pack so I can look and see what I think the weather's going to be. If I think it might be really cold at the Grand Canyon, I can bring a winter coat and a hat and whatever else, and I can choose what to. Travel wise, we never know when the flight's going to get delayed.
You never know when luggage could get lost. So what I like to do is just keep it in my control and just pack, carry on, and carry on my own bag. That way, I just minimize it. If our flight should get canceled, we can just come back home. I'll have all my stuff with me, and everything will be just fine. So, like I said at the beginning of this example, I'm talking about this through the lens of taking a vacation with my kids, but you can use this tool where you put on the left side what's in your control, and on the right side what's out of your control with just about anything.
I just had a client a week or two ago who was feeling like she didn't really get any work done during the day because her team was coming into her office all day long and asking her question. So she decided she was going to set a boundary where she would close her office door for two hours every afternoon.
And as soon as she decided that she started worrying and feeling overwhelmed, thinking, what is my boss going to think about this? Is my team going to think I'm unsupportive? Is everyone going to assume I'm not working? And just like, I don't know, playing games on the internet or something when I have my office door closed.
So we did this exercise and in her case, what ended up on the, in my control side was if she communicated it to her boss and her team ahead of time, which she did decide to do. It's in her control when she gets up and closes the door and what interruptions she allows. What anybody else thinks about it is totally out of her control.
So it's really nice when you have it as cut and dry as that because what you can do is you can take that piece of paper and just fold it in half so you have your in my control side, and that can become your to-do list. So if I'm looking at my control side, which can become my to-do list for my trip, I've got notify the school, let them know she's not going to be there. Communicate to each one of my clients that I'll be on vacation, tell my kids my expectations, and then pack according to what I think their weather will be and carry on my bag. And that's my to-do list. In my client example, her to-do list was communicate to her boss, communicate to her team, and then close her door for two hours in the afternoon.
This just really helps you reframe what is in your control and what's out of your control in a very simple way, and helps you worry less about what's out of your control. There's something about putting it on a piece of paper that gives you permission to stop worrying about it. But if it's as easy as just saying, don't worry about it, then we would probably not worry about much.
So if you do notice yourself worrying about it, like if I, for example, if I notice that I am worrying about my kids fighting a lot while we're on the trip, I can just look at my list, know that's out of my control, notice without judgment that my brain still wants to worry about it and just redirect it over to what's in my.
So it's okay if you still worry about things. It's okay if they still come up just gently and without judgment. Redirect your brain over to what's in your control. Okay, so that's it. Thank you so much for listening to episode two, and I will see you next week.
Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman Podcast. If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website@michellegouthier.com. See you next week
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