The talk about control is omnipresent in our social media life, successful people with mega routines and they execute on them daily. The news are full of entrepreneurs and CEO who made it. We admire their discipline and determination. They wake up early in the morning, go for a run, meditate, setup goals for the day and seem to have everything under “control”.

Secretly we want to be like them!

On the opposite, there are “we” the normal people, trying to setup routines, goals, execute and fail, at least that is sometimes how it feels. How many of us remember their new year resolutions? How many of us gave up on them already? How many feel guilty reading these sentences? Then we get our daily dose of the Elon Musk, Oprah Winfrey, Gary Vaynerchuk or Jeff Bezos. Fueling our guilt, them sharing their success formula and we simply not having the discipline to execute.

I’m not disciplined! What do I need to change? What is wrong with me?

How not having everything under control feels

Sometimes life happens, just today, I overslept! Yesterday, I spent time with my son in the evening, then had a wonderful call with a friend and forget to look at the time, so went to bed too late. So my morning meditation gone out of the window, breakfast in a rush and guilty for oversleeping – stress. When I arrived in the company the whole day was chaotic, I was stressed and had the feeling that I couldn’t catch up with the loss I made at the beginning of the day. Oversleeping = ruined my day! Why did one hour make such an impact on my day? Why didn’t I manage my time well enough?

What are the roots of this

I started to change the question to change my perspective. What made the impact on my day? What action, what emotion triggered the stress? What could I have done differently? What made me feel guilty for oversleeping?

With the last question in dawned on me, why the heck was I feeling guilty for oversleeping. It is not the case that I oversleep daily and if so why is this a negative thing – because of what?

If I have feelings that bother me, they are usually signs of my beliefs system kicking in and my autopilot on emotions starting. The emotion in this case “guilt” subconsciously accompany me the whole day. Sucking up energy, lowering self-confidence, increase the desire to even more control, creating pressure and stress.

Apparently, my belief is “oversleeping is equivalent to not having your life under control”.

So guilt is fueling my desire to control, putting me under stress and sucking up energy. In my article below I gave some hints on how you could change your desire to control.

Reduce stress and be happy is so simple, if you have the right intuition and tools to change it.