Why You Have More Power Than You Think

Summary: Too much of our life force is squandered focusing on items outside of our control. What if they think I’m not smart enough? What if people think I’m a failure? What if instead of worrying about extrinsically determined events, we worked to strengthen our locus of control? What if we focused on the very smallest next step? How much positive change could we affect with that mindset?

When I was offered my first job in engineering, I was grateful. But far too often I was haunted by an underlying sense of worry – an imposter syndrome. I was good at focusing deeply on a specific task and coming out with a body of work or a solution. I was good at sitting down with a problem I’d never encountered and developing a method of upskilling myself for the benefit of my team. But as soon as I’d walk down the corridor or through the canteen, I’d see all these other graduates optimistically clad in T.M. Lewin suits and feel intellectually inferior.

The presupposition I was making in these early days of my career was that whilst I’d been through a challenging 4 year masters programme at a respected university to equip me for the world of engineering, just like my peers, they simply had an innate sense of self-efficacy and drive that I didn’t. In hindsight, this type of thinking was borne of a fixed mindset and a blindness to the power of focusing on what was within my control – the power to learn, absorb a new experience and embrace a beginner’s mind. Ultimately, I missed out on the joy that was on offer at that point in time.

The myth of the innate driven

As a society we like to romanticize the intrinsically “gifted”. We love the idea of the artist who disappears into a cabin in the woods for 3 weeks and emerges with a masterpiece. Or the entrepreneur who’s so driven by the fire of a thousand volcanos that sleep is a luxury she effortlessly parries away as she relentlessly marches towards building the next Amazon. This narrative whilst entertaining can be somewhat demoralizing. It can lead to the belief that skills are inborn. Innate. It leads to us thinking that building anything of meaning is reserved for the superhuman amongst us. It can lead to an overwhelm when taking on big projects. More dangerously, it can lead to apathy. It can lead to a learned helplessness and powerlessness.

But what if this logic was flawed. What if there was a different approach?   

In my control / not in my control – the locus of control

Many alcoholic anonymous groups practice the serenity prayer which goes,

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. 

The idea is simple – recognize what’s in your control, recognize what isn’t in your control and focus on what is in your control.

See, there’s a great deal of power in recognizing what is up to us and what isn’t up to us. Because the more we recognize this we can:

A.    Give more focus and drive to what we can affect and well…

B.     Let go of everything else.

I like to think of this in terms of traction vs friction.

Traction is developed in the place where things are up to us. The decision to learn a new skill. The decision to recognize our shortcomings and make the promise to work on them. The decision to develop a new habit. The decision to always meet people with respect and integrity despite the unfairness they might throw at us. The decision to take that very smallest next step, and the one after that and the one after that.

Friction on the other hand is fuelled by a focus on things that aren’t in our control. Ruminating over that one mistake we made. Being attached to people’s opinions of our every move. Comparison. The list goes on.

Building traction

So how do we build traction? How do we get out of that rut when it feels like we’re stuck in the mud?

1.     Recognize that not being the most powerful person in the world or room isn’t the same as being powerless. Life can be difficult. The cards we’re dealt can be less than ideal. We might be living in a country with a corrupt government where systems work against us. Sometimes we might just feel left behind our peers. And while there’s no value in pretending the circumstances and facts of life aren’t real, there’s equally no progress that can be made from dwelling on the negative or the items outside our realm of control.

Instead

2.     Focus on the very smallest next step in your realm of control. There’s a great story about how Zorro was once a lost and broken man. Having seen some potential in Zorro, Don Diego the sword master then takes him under his wing and starts training him. What he does next is to draw a circle in the sand with the simple instruction “This circle will be your world. Your whole life. Until I tell you otherwise, there is nothing outside of it.”

The idea is simple – to concentrate on the smaller efforts in his control and forget the one hundred other overwhelming things he could have tackled at that time. The same applies to our endeavours. If we focus on the very smallest next step in our realm of control, we start to regain a sense of empowerment and control. Soon enough, like Zorro, we start to take on and overcome bigger challenges. Forget about everything else outside of the Zorro circle and the circle will start to grow.

3.     Keep the promises you make to yourself and celebrate the small wins. For a long time, I never quite understood the concept of confidence. I couldn’t quite wrap my head around this idea of simply waking up and feeling like you could tackle anything life threw at you and that you were somehow this incredible person. But I had it slightly backward. Nowadays I prefer to define confidence as simply a trust in yourself. A trust and belief that you can figure things out. And that largely comes from keeping the small promises you make to yourself - consistently. It’s reading those 10 pages a day. Every day. It’s sitting at your desk for 30 minutes and working on that side hustle. Every day. It’s remembering not to be a moron every time something goes wrong. And it’s in these moments where we can start to reward ourselves. As we do these things it’s important to celebrate these little wins because this is ultimately what solidifies and highlights little milestones of achievement in our brains. Our neural pathways literally become accustomed to solving problems and setting ourselves up for success. Soon enough, we start to truly relate to a quiet confidence and self-belief – because we have evidence.

A more powerful self

What I started realizing as I followed these small steps is that an internal power and self-reliance is something that can be developed. And the people we look up to who seem to have this innate self-confidence, reliance, and internal power, well – they’ve also developed this, over time. It’s developed every day by the simple unglamorous choices we make each day. Eventually, there’s a sense of stillness and peace that comes from knowing that even though you don’t have all the answers today, you do have it within yourself to figure things out. Not through some quick transformation fad or set of affirmations, but through the smallest next step in our circle of control.