You Control Less Than You Think (And That’s Not a Bad Thing)

What a simple, but surprisingly difficult question to answer.

Maybe we think we have control over what we’re eating tonight, the assignment we plan to work on later, the night out planned later in the week, or the lectures we’re going to tomorrow. But if I asked again, could you say with 100% certainty exactly how any of those things will go?

Of course not. Can you be completely certain you’ll eat the exact meal at the exact time you expect? Can you guarantee you’ll complete the full assignment exactly as planned? Can you predict with total accuracy what will be discussed in tomorrow’s lectures or how that night out will unfold? We might have a rough idea. Ring of Fire might end up on the agenda. I used to play the Higher or Lower pyramid game. But certainty? Not really.

In reality, the only thing we ever truly have control over is one small slice of time: the exact moment you are in right now, reading this.

That thought makes you reflect a little.

When I was a student, I spent a lot of time in my head. Expectations, pressure, anxieties, worries, overwhelm. One thought would appear and I’d immediately question it. Why am I thinking this? Before I knew it, I was analysing it like Sherlock Holmes (Ritchie, 2009) trying to solve the case of the insecure thought. But instead of solving anything, it would create another thought, then another, and another. Before long I was overwhelmed by them.

Something I was told a while ago has always stuck with me.

Imagine a bubble machine. What’s the main purpose of a bubble machine? To produce bubbles — an endless supply of them. Those bubbles float around in whichever direction the air takes them and, eventually, they pop. No effort required. No intervention needed. They simply disappear.

So what does this have to do with thoughts?

When we get a thought we don’t like, what do we usually do? We analyse it, inspect it, and try to figure it out. We attempt to remove it or control it. But what tends to happen instead is that it multiplies. One thought becomes two, two become four, and four become eight. Before long, that single thought has turned into a swarm of different variations of the same idea.

Now bring it back to the bubble machine. What happens if we simply leave the bubble alone? It floats around for a little while… and then pop. It’s gone.

Think about this for a moment. What were you thinking about exactly fifteen minutes ago? Chances are, unless you’re the detective from the TV series Unforgettable (Redlich and Bellucci, 2011–2016), you probably can’t remember. It’s gone. What about five minutes ago? Two minutes? What about just sixty seconds ago? What were you thinking about then?

See the point?

If left alone, even the random, strange, annoying, frustrating, and sometimes disturbing thoughts tend to disappear on their own.

And the interesting thing about bubbles is that they tell us something important. They tell us that the bubble machine is working exactly as it should. Our minds are designed to produce thoughts. That’s simply what they do. It tells us we're alive.

What’s also interesting is that many of the overwhelming thoughts we experience are about things outside of our control. Future possibilities, past events, endless “what ifs”. An infinite supply of things we cannot actually influence.

All we really need to bring our focus back to is what is within our control: the present moment. And the present moment is often much simpler than we make it.

It usually comes down to just one thing.

The next step.

Take the next step in front of you, and the rest will reveal itself once you get there.

Life unfolds one step at a time - not all at once

References:

Redlich, E. and Bellucci, J. (2011–2016) Unforgettable. CBS; A&E.

Ritchie, G. (2009) Sherlock Holmes. Burbank, CA: Warner Bros. Pictures.