How to stop controlling everything
Wound-up Wonders! Graham here.
I write this issue from snowy Chicago. We’re here to accept our fancy international podcast award for No Feeling Is Final.
(Heck yeah.)
Right now there are two security guards on the roof just across from my hotel room. They seem to be enjoying the recent snowfall as much as any tourist, skating across the ice in their sensible shoes, practicing snowball throws against the brick wall.
And who can blame them on a day like this?
Type 2 fun
We’ve been away for over a week now. I’m enjoying myself, in that very particular sort of way you enjoy yourself on trips well outside your comfort zone.
What a friend of mine calls “Type 2 fun”.
There’s Type 1 fun, things that are fun in the moment.
Then there’s Type 2 fun, things that you will remember as fun, once you’ve forgotten all the awful bits.
Getting caught in a Chicago snowfall is Type 2 fun. Your feet are wet, you’re freezing, but it makes a great memory.
Most of the fun I have on trips away is Type 2 fun. I’m tired, I’m constantly overwhelmed and in need of somewhere quiet to lie down. But oh the memories I’m making.
The disposable ponchos we got from reception are largely useless in the snowfall. But they do at least help make sure everyone knows we're tourists.
Trying to have more Type 1 fun
The night before we leave for this trip, I speak to my mum.
I'm worried about the trip. Every little detail is a reason to tense up even further -- will we make the flight tomorrow morning? Will we make our connection?
My mum says the perfect mum thing: ‘You know you don’t have to go, right?’
It helps me realise something underneath all the churn. I do actually want to do this trip! Buried underneath all that anxious energy is genuine excitement.
I tell my mum I’ll go on the trip, on one self-imposed condition.
If I’m going to have any chance of actually enjoying myself (in the moment, not just in retrospect) I’ll have to take a different approach. I’ll need to try not to control everything. I’ll need to unclench.
‘And breathe’, she adds.
Oh yip, that too.
‘It’s okay, I’m not in control’
This becomes my mantra for the next few days.
I barely sleep the night before we leave. (‘It’s okay, I’m not in control.’)
No one at the airport can tell us whether or not we’ll get fed on the first 14-hour flight, and it’s too late to purchase meals. (‘It’s okay, I’m not in control.’)
It provides a little breathing room.
A different kind of discomfort
After a few days of this I notice something.
Traveling can be experienced one of two ways. As a never-ending torrent of small hassles and tasks to be checked off. Or as a state of being in which almost everything around you is novel and new.
I also notice how either one of these approaches is uncomfortable.
But for those stretches when I can manage the second one, it’s a different kind of discomfort. A nervous, open-to-possibilities kind of discomfort.
Intriguing. . .
Nervous for no good reason
After a few days of hanging around Baltimore with an old friend, we head to Chicago for the start of the festival that’s hosting us and our award ceremony.
Any claim to Zen presence I’ve managed in the first few days of our trip evaporates as I consider what lies ahead. Three days of mingling with 800 fellow attendees. Shared meals and parties and wait didn’t we just do that yesterday, now we’re doing it all again??
Getting ready to head down to the opening night mixer, I’m nervous even though the stakes couldn’t be lower.
I’m one of the award winners, so I have instant cred no matter how tired or uncharming I may appear. Plus, I live halfway across the world, so I will likely never see any of these people again!
Does that help? Not remotely. Still super nervous.
Yay!
What are you believing, that’s causing all this anxiety?
I spend some time capturing my busy thoughts before I leave my hotel room.
I ask myself, what am I believing right now, that’s causing this anxiety?
I hit on two connected beliefs:
That I won’t be okay if I don’t really impress and charm everyone I meet.
That the only way I can impress and charm people is to make a huge, concerted effort. To perform.
I look at these two beliefs on the page, and I’m struck by something.
All this nervousness, it’s not just about the uncertainty of how I’ll go tonight at the mixer (will I be okay?). This nervous, churning energy is my actual strategy for making sure I’ll be okay. A strategy I've been using for a long, long time.
I’ve somehow got it in my head that the only way I’ll be okay in a social setting is if I make a huge, exhausting effort. So all this churn and nervous energy in the hours before such an event is my way of feeling like I’m preparing appropriately.
If I was relaxed and confident, to me that would feel totally wrong, like not studying the night before a big exam.
A strategy that works (but at what cost?)
In the hours leading up to the mixer, I keep imagining how the event will go. I imagine who I might talk to, what I might say.
In other words, I keep trying to see the future.
Reliably, these sorts of thoughts don’t calm me down, they stoke more anxiety, which then stokes more thoughts of the future, and on and on we go.
In other words, I'm engaging my usual strategy for a stressful social situation. And to be fair, this strategy has actually worked pretty well for me over the years.
If the goal is to perform well in public, then all this angsting and pre-planning works just fine.
The only problem is, this strategy is also goddamn exhausting, by definition.
If the goal is to actually enjoy myself (to have some Type 1 fun) then I need a new strategy.
‘I don’t need to know what happens next’
I decide to try out a new belief, just for tonight. First I write out the old belief again, to get a little more distance from it:
I’ll only be okay tonight if I angst and prepare and make a big effort all night. The sign that I’m on the right track is that I will feel worried, nervous and tired.
Then I write out a new belief to replace this one with:
My priority tonight is to be effortlessly present. The sign that I’m on the right track is that I can check in with myself whenever I need to, and gently let go of any thoughts about what’s going to happen next.
This is a good start, but I know this new belief won’t magically stop my anxious planning mind. So I also come up with a new mantra to use, whenever I catch myself worrying about how the rest of my night will unfold:
It’s okay to relax, I don’t need to know what happens next.
The energy of not-knowing
The night goes well. So do the next couple days. And for once I don't just mean I make a good impression - instead, I mean I manage to have some good honest Type 1 fun.
I haven’t suddenly become a total extrovert -- I still retreat to the sanctuary of my hotel room three or four times throughout each day -- but I’m able to ride the bursts of energy I get from meeting new people, while they last.
And here's the thing. There’s still discomfort there. Nervousness, every time I leave my hotel room. But again it’s a different kind of discomfort.
It’s not the closed-off discomfort of trying to plan for every eventuality.
This nervous energy doesn’t need to be channeled into prepping or problem solving.
It simply needs to be felt.
It’s the energy of not knowing what happens next, and not particularly needing to.
I catch myself wondering if this nervous feeling will go away any time soon, and then I realise what I'm doing. 'It's okay', I say again to myself, 'I don't need to know what happens next.'
