How to stop your mental spiral (with 3 categories of control)
When your feed sends you into a Scramble, use these 3 categories to regain composure and focus on what matters.
Hey friend,
Welcome back to the Primal Question Newsletter.
If this is your first time reading, subscribe here to receive future posts. If this edition is helpful, use this link to share it with someone else who may need to hear this!
There’s a lot going on in the world right now, and many people are feeling overwhelmed and overstimulated.
I’m not going to get into politics or the economy or the drama. I don’t do that.
But I do want to say this…
Be very careful about the conclusions you draw from macro forces.
I was talking with a new coach who’s starting his practice. He’s a Q1, which means his Primal Question is “Am I safe?”. Right now, with all the turbulence and the headlines and the chaos online and in the world, his brain is doing what Q1 brains do best.
Writing worst-case narratives at lightning speed… and then trying to figure out how to protect himself from them.
There’s going to be a recession.
People are losing their jobs.
People don’t have money.
Nobody is going to hire a coach.
This is not a good market.
Maybe I shouldn’t be taking risks right now.
Maybe I should play it safe.
As a fellow Q1, I get it.
I go to those same places, and those conclusions feel logical. But I no longer put stock in those things because they’re simply not helpful, they’re not true, and I have no control over them.
Let me explain…
During Covid, I went into all-out protection mode.
I sold pretty much everything in my house to try to make money.
Furniture. Electronics. Even stuff we actually needed.
The whole thing was kind of insane.
My wife and I still talk about this. Because at one point, I went and found her pink Bose headphones, posted them online without her permission, and sold them to a stranger. The worst part is, I priced everything way below what it was worth just to make a quick buck.
It was like a going-out-of-business sale at the Foster house.
But here’s what happened next.
Once I got out of my Scramble a little bit. Once I anchored back into my Primal Truth, started practicing self-leadership, and focused on the things I could actually control, guess what happened?
My business exploded during one of the most turbulent times in America’s recent history.
This is why we can’t always trust our own conclusions.
I mean, who would have predicted that the housing market and stock market would do what they did during that season? Nobody. Not even the people who study this stuff for a living.
And I could have never predicted that my business would skyrocket.
Looking back, it makes total sense.
Uncertain markets don’t shrink the need for coaching. They increase it.
People were transitioning out of jobs they’d been in for years.
Companies were scrambling to figure out remote work and new pain points.
Professionals who had been coasting suddenly needed to level up.
There was more need for clarity, direction, and support during that season than maybe any other time in recent memory.
I thought I was going to lose everything I built as a coach.
But in many ways, I was in exactly the right place at the right time. The crazy part is, the economy didn’t get better. The uncertainty didn’t go away.
All that changed was where I was putting my energy.
Here’s one of the most helpful frameworks I use with my clients…
There are 3 categories of control in life.
No Control
There are things in life you have ZERO control over.
You can’t control the economy. You can’t control other people’s decisions or feelings. You can’t control the headlines, the elections, the past, or the future.
These things are completely outside your influence, no matter how much mental energy you throw at them.
Partial Control
There are things in life you have SOME control over.
Results fall into this category. You have some control over the results of your career, your income, your relationships, and even your health. You play a part in how these things turn out, but you don’t get the final say.
With partial-control items, your job is to do your part to the best of your ability and then release the outcome.
Full Control
There are things in life you have COMPLETE control over.
Your attitude. Your perspective. How you spend your time. What you give your attention. The effort you bring to your work. How you treat the person in front of you.
Notice these are all present-tense things. They’re available to you right now, today, in this moment. And they are 100% yours to own.
Here’s the mistake most of us make.
We pour the majority of our time, energy, and attention into the things we can’t control.
We watch the news for hours. We scroll online. We run worst-case scenarios on repeat. We lose sleep over things that haven’t happened yet and may never happen. And then we wonder why we feel so exhausted, so anxious, and so helpless.
It’s because we’re spending our energy in the wrong place.
This is what I was trying to tell that coach.
The conclusions you’re drawing about the economy and the market and the future? Those are all no-control items. You’re building your entire strategy around a category you can’t influence.
Healthy adulting is shifting your focus to what you can control.
It’s taking all that energy you’ve been burning on hypotheticals and redirecting it toward the things that are right in front of you right now.
So here’s your action item for this week.
Take 15 minutes to write down the three things that have been taking up the most space in your head lately. Then sort them.
Which ones do you have full control over?
Which ones do you have partial control over?
Which ones are completely out of your hands?
My guess is you’ll find that most of your mental energy is going to the no-control category.
My encouragement to you is to surrender them. Open your hands. Let them go.
Then, give your time, energy, and attention to the people and problems right in front of you.
Take action on what you can control.
Warmly,
Mike Foster
P.S. If you’ve thought about coaching but held back because the timing doesn’t feel right, I get it.
But I can tell you from experience, uncertain times are actually the best time to start.
Even if you’re not charging yet, show up for your people. Help them process what they’re going through. Add value. The more conversations you have in seasons like this, the more you position yourself as a trusted guide and set yourself up for a thriving practice down the road.
If you want to learn how to coach people using the Primal Question framework, that’s exactly what I’ll train you to do in Primal Question PRO. The next cohort starts on March 30th, and there are only 30 spots.