Have you ever seen the movie, Passengers? It’s a good movie, but this blog isn’t going to be a movie review. I want to mention a brief scene where Chris Pratt’s character is talking to the bartender. Don’t worry, if you haven’t seen it, I’m not going to spoil the movie for you. In the scene, the bartender comments that Pratt’s character is unhappy with where he is, but that even if he could snap his fingers and be exactly where he wants to be, he would still be wishing for something else. The bartender tells him that he should stop focusing on what he can’t control and focus on finding happiness where he is. Hard to do, when you know the plot of the story, but not impossible, and it is an excellent point.
It made me think of a workshop I attended a few years back. The topic was dealing with burnout, and at one point the presenter asked us to all make lists of our top concerns. Then she asked us to stop and look at our lists to ask ourselves how many of our concerns we actually had control of. When our focus is on the concerns that we can’t control, it can lead to anger, resentment, and bitterness. Because we can’t do anything about it, people often do the only thing they can think of: rage against the unfairness of the situation. When we stop and get honest with ourselves, though, that doesn’t actually make our lives any better.
There are many things in this world that we can’t control. We can’t control other people any more than we can control the weather. According to an article by Dr. Jacquelyn Johnson, *All that we can control in some situations is how we react to them. That may not seem like much, but it’s actually a big deal. One recommendation from Johnson* for helping with distressing situations that we can’t control is mindfulness. Mindfulness is something that I recommend frequently in this blog and to my clients. I’ve written a much more thorough blog on this topic previously, but in short, being mindful is being present. There’s nothing mystical about it. Focusing on the movement of your breath or the sensation in your shoes as you walk down the sidewalk is mindfulness, as is searching inward for feelings and sensations. There is a ton of research about the benefits of this practice, and it can help people to learn to handle what they can’t control by grounding themselves in the present. Often connected to mindfulness is the next suggestion of deep breathing. As you practice deep breathing, do so slowly, and Johnson cites the value of specifically breathing with the belly. To do this, attempt to have the movement of the breath occur in the belly instead of expanding the chest or raising the shoulders.
Johnson notes that one of the things that gets in the way are cognitive distortions, which are thinking patterns that negatively impact your view and interpretation of things. Here at RSC we have a favorite handout for clients that list some common cognitive distortions:
All or nothing thinking: Also called black and white thinking, which doesn’t leave room for middle ground or balance.
Mental filter: Only paying attention to evidence that confirms what we already believe.
Jumping to conclusion: either by mind reading or fortune telling (“he thinks I’m…” or “now he’s going to…”).
Emotional reasoning: Allowing ourselves to confuse our feelings with facts.
Labeling: Giving ourselves or others labels.
Overgeneralizing: Telling ourselves a pattern exists with limited data.
Disqualifying the positive: Telling ourselves that the good we do or the good that happens to us doesn’t count.
Magnification or minimisation: Blowing things out of proportion or overly minimizing things.
Shoulds: We second-guess ourselves with what we think we “should do” or “should’ve done.” We also get bogged down with what we think others should be doing.
Personalisation: Blaming ourselves for things that aren’t our fault or blaming others for things that we are responsible for.
Working to gain insight can help with battling cognitive distortions, and things like journaling can definitely help. Sometimes it is necessary to speak with a counselor to really make some progress in working through these common, but unhelpful, thinking patterns.
The next thing Johnson recommends* is searching for what we can control. When we start looking for what we can control, we take our focus off of the problem and start to look for solutions. This is empowering in multiple ways, and sometimes we can even find things that we can influence or control in the areas that we thought were beyond our control.
It isn’t helpful to suggest that people just “get over it” when it comes to a focus on problems that we can’t actually control. I definitely don’t want that to be the takeaway from this blog. What we can do is decide to shift our focus toward what we can control, and this is a process that we often have to do again and again until we finally get it. We can also remind ourselves in distressing and uncontrollable situations that we can only control our reaction. These small shifts in focus take time to master, but they can give us our power back.
*https://psychcentral.com/blog/coping-with-what-you-cant-control