2 CONTROL IS AN ILLUSION
prophecies of the future, we are attempting to fix the problem before it happens.
It’s usually my thoughts about my thoughts that get me into trouble. I think the boiler is making a weird noise – then fast-track to how much a new one would cost and ‘How will I afford it? I’ll have to cancel my holiday. I won’t be able to buy that new sofa’ and so on… Rather like a child drawing a picture of a spider then running terrified from the room, I am creating a future scenario that isn’t real, then scaring myself by believing my own stories.
It’s normal to feel anxious and frightened during times of uncertainty and crisis. I used to waste so much energy trying to manage my thoughts but now I know that they can’t hurt me, I allow myself to feel whatever I feel in the moment. A hurricane of anxious thought is always about the past or future, never the present. I know from my crisis that if there was an emergency, I’d be too busy dealing with what was in front of me to be consumed by thought.
Feeling frightened simply means I’m having some not very nice thoughts. The more I see that I’m creating my own experience, the faster I begin to unwind from the drama and come back to reality. And from that calmer place, I usually know the right thing to do.
We all want to feel in control – it makes us feel safer. Studies have shown that the more in control we feel, the happier we are. When my life started unravelling three years ago, it felt like I was in mortal danger. So many things I took for granted disappeared in an instant. Yet it was only when I lost control of my life as I knew it that I realised that I had always been heading into the unknown. No one knows what’s going to happen, we just live in the illusion that we do. The only thing that had changed was the story I’d been telling myself about how much I could influence the future.
Think about it: how often does the unexpected happen? How often does something we expect to happen – good or bad – never materialise? How random are many of life’s biggest turning points? I would love to have more control over what happens to me, and I wouldn’t mind being able to control other people a bit more, too. But this is not how life works.
We like what’s familiar, but we learn from what’s new. Adversity creates new perspectives, different priorities, a deeper appreciation of life and, crucially, a trust in ourselves that we can handle this disordered, uncertain world. We’ve all had experiences when we’ve risen to the occasion. Three years ago, I learned that I was stronger than I knew. That even in the worst circumstances I had the capacity to find something good.