Control
The Illusion Of Control
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The person trying hardest to control everything is often the one most controlled.
That realization hit me sitting in an airport high in the Himalayas.
After finishing my Everest Base Camp trek, I arrived at Lukla Airport before sunrise. If you’ve never heard of it, Lukla is considered one of the most challenging and unpredictable airports in the world.
My flight back to Kathmandu was supposed to leave at 6 a.m., and I was already imagining the simple luxuries I had been craving after nearly two weeks in the mountains: a hot shower, clean laundry, good food, and a well-earned massage.
Instead, a wall of fog rolled in and shut everything down.
Hour after hour, hundreds of climbers sat waiting, with no real sense of when flights would resume or whether we’d leave that day at all.
At one point, a Sherpa told me he had once been stranded there for twelve days.
Imagine being trapped at a tiny mountain airport with no idea when you’ll get out.
The weather and the mountain were operating on their own schedule. Our plans never entered the conversation.
As I sat there, something interesting happened.
The people who seemed most at peace weren’t necessarily the people with the most experience.
They were the people who had surrendered.
Not given up. Surrendered.
There is a difference.
They understood something that mountains teach very quickly:
You can prepare, plan, and adapt, but there comes a point where life is going to do what life is going to do.
Weather shifts, flights get delayed, relationships change, opportunities appear and disappear, people disappoint us, and plans unravel.
The more tightly we grip reality, the more exhausted we become.
That got me thinking about how much energy we spend trying to control things that were never ours to control in the first place: outcomes, timing, how we’re perceived, the decisions other people make, and the countless ways life refuses to follow our script.
Most of us call this being responsible or prepared, and sometimes it is.
Other times, it’s something else entirely.
Sometimes it’s an addiction to control disguised as responsibility.
And the cost is enormous.
Every attempt to control what cannot be controlled consumes attention.
That attention consumes energy.
That energy is no longer available for creativity, joy, presence, or peace.
I’ve been exploring this lately through the lens of Energy ROI.
Most people think exhaustion comes from doing too much.
Perhaps.
I think a surprising amount of exhaustion comes from carrying things that don’t belong to us and trying to control things that were never ours to manage.
The irony is that the person trying hardest to control everything is often the one experiencing the least freedom.
Years ago, one of my mentors asked me a question that I wrote down and never forgot.
She said:
“How badly do you want freedom?”
Then she followed it with another question.
“Are you willing to give up the need to control, the need for approval, and the need to feel safe?”
I sat with that question before answering yes.
At the time, I was still very much a work in progress. What I had begun to recognize was that freedom and control often move in opposite directions.
The more tightly we try to control every outcome, the less freedom we actually experience.
So I’ll leave you with the same question she asked me:
How badly do you want freedom?
And what are you still trying to control that might be standing in the way?
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I Threw Away Every Medal I Ever Earned
Instead Of A Promotion, I Got Fired
I Ran An Experiment With The Universe
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The Cost Of Other People’s Opinions Of You
Some books are discovered after they’re published.
This one can be experienced while it’s still unfolding.
What began with deep self-inquiry became the Courageous Heart Expedition—and now my first book. Stories, films, photographs, reflections and discoveries are coming together as the work continues to unfold. You’re invited to explore what I’m creating and find your way in.
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The Living Lab
Life is a lab. It’s always open.
How much of your life did you actually choose?
Most of us inherit far more than we realize—beliefs, identities, fears, and subconscious programming that control how we see ourselves.
The Living Lab is an ongoing exploration of what we discover when we question what we’ve been taught, challenge the ego, examine our conditioning, and experiment with different ways of being.
Because once you see what you didn’t choose, you get to decide what comes next.
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