Control vs Power

I can’t let go or things will fall apart.

I need to be on top of everything.

Things have to be a certain way for me to be OK.

If I don’t do things myself, nothing will happen.

If I am careful enough, I should be able to prevent bad things from happening.

If I keep my life small and avoid certain situations, I won’t need to deal with difficulty.

What do all these statements have in common?

Control.

Control is something we tend to glorify. We admire people who seem to have their lives together. We think we should be able to control nature. We try to control our bodies by pushing ourselves beyond our physical limits.

Yet if we look behind the scenes of control what we often find is a profound sense of powerlessness. We find a deep anxiety about letting things happen, about letting ourselves happen without control, because we are scared that if we do, we won’t be able to handle the consequences.

So underneath control there is often a sense of feeling small and helpless in the world, a deep anxiety around:

I am not ____ (insert) strong enough / powerful enough / competent enough / smart enough - so I need to control things as this is the only way to deal with life.

Often this need for control comes from not having been able to feel an age-appropriate sense of agency in the world around us as children, perhaps because we were expected or forced to be more ‘powerful’ than was appropriate for our age (for example by taking care of a parent’s emotional needs, caretaking siblings, having to be self-sufficient or needless). Alternatively, our power or sense of agency might have been crushed by parents who were overprotective or controlling and we weren’t able to do age-appropriate tasks or face difficulty which would have given us the confidence of being able to handle what happens in life.

So either because we were faced with too much or not enough agency at a young age, the result is a deep down feeling of being unable to have an impact on the world around us. And what better way to avoid feeling this sense of powerlessness than to turn to control instead? Because if I can control all the variables, I can avoid needing to face my perceived limitations or deepest fears.

As Jungian author David Richo writes:

Control is the poor man’s version of power.

So control steps in as a way of compensating, of helping us feel less small and powerless. For example:

I feel like an imposter in this job so I have to work extra hard and control how everyone sees me so they never find out.

What’s so bad about control? Well, nothing if it works for you. And it usually does to a certain extent, or at least it does until it doesn’t anymore.

Because when we are moving from control we are not really making choices about what is best for us, about what we truly believe in. When we are moving from control, our focus is usually on avoiding a certain outcome or anxiously needing to ensure an outcome in order to feel OK.

We are constantly moving, but moving in an attempt to get away from something instead of moving towards something that is important to us, like a rabbit who is simply running away from a fox instead of moving towards food.

This doesn’t leave a lot of room for spontaneity, authentic expression, connection or living in a more whole hearted way, in line with our values.

It also doesn’t leave a lot of room for us to step into our power or sense of agency.

I see authentic power or agency or authorship as the ability to have an impact on the world around us, on people around us. I am not thinking of it in the way it is often seen, as power over others, as abuse of power or domination.

As researcher and author Dacher Keltner writes:

Power is the medium through which we relate to one another. Power is about making a difference in the world by influencing others.

I don’t think we can really step into our power and have an impact on the world and people around us and be fully in control at the same time.

Yet they are similar in some ways.

That feeling of powerlessness deep down that leads to control is not totally wrong. There are situations and aspects of life that we cannot change. This is true. It is part of the human condition. We are small and we are to a large extent powerless in the face of many things in life like sickness or death or loss.

Yet this is not the whole truth, either.

Because there are also things we can change and that we can take responsibility for. We are not totally powerless the way we might have felt as children.

The response to this is not a compensatory ‘I should be able to control everything’ that most of us have.

It’s holding BOTH realities at the same time, and being able to distinguish where and when we can have an impact and when and where we cannot. This can sound like:

I am powerless to change certain situations in life AND I can also choose certain things, like how I respond to them.

This is the idea of response-ability: The ability to choose how we respond even to situations we are not responsible for creating.

Moving from control into authentic power also involves trust: Trust in ourselves, trust in other people, trust in life.

I believe that the key to letting go of control and moving into power is to authentically be able to get to a place of:

SELF-TRUST: Whatever happens, I will handle it

TRUST IN OTHERS: Whatever happens, I am supported.

TRUST IN LIFE: Whatever happens, maybe it is meant to happen for my greater good, even if I don’t fully understand how yet.

I don’t think we need to trust all three at the same time. But we do need to trust at least one.

As Steve Jobs said:

You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

(I know that Steve Jobs was also very controlling. The irony is not lost on me! Yet I do feel he got this part right).

We can do our best and trust that even if things don’t work out the way we would like, we will find a way to deal with them, or even just that we will be OK. This is where we need to make friends with disappointment because it is an inevitable companion on the journey to authentic power.

We also have to be willing to lose. To fail. To make mistakes. In other words, in order to step into our authentic power, we have to be willing to be vulnerable. To be a messy human.

And I think if we can trust in something bigger than us, in some sort of fate or destiny, allowing things to happen without needing to over-control can even be a beautiful journey:

Once we understand that what happens beyond our control may be just what we need, we see that acceptance of reality can be our way of participating in our own evolution. - David Richo