Control, Part ThreeWhy you feel frantic

Why You Feel Frantic, Helpless or Incompetent

As we covered in “Control, Part Two,” you can control anything if you start it, change it or stop it. But what if starting, changing or stopping things is difficult for you?

“Franticness, helplessness, incompetence, inefficiency and other undesirable factors in a job are all traceable to inabilities to start, change and stop things.” — L. Ron Hubbard

For example, you need to sell your accounting services, but you are an incompetent marketing person. You can prepare great income statements, but you cannot get new clients. So instead of making a great income in your own accounting firm, you get an accounting job at a company for less income. If you could market your accounting services, life would be a lot better for you.

In fact, the same feelings of franticness, helplessness, incompetence and inefficiency can hit you when you are trying to succeed in other parts of your life.

For example, you feel frantic about money, you feel helpless when your spouse refuses to talk to you, or you are unable to control your smoking habit.

Fortunately, you can become more successful in any area of life if you improve YOURSELF. You fix the one part of control you cannot do well.

For example, if START is your weakest part of your control, you have problems in several areas of life. You cannot start an income plan, you cannot start communicating with your spouse and you cannot start to kick your smoking habit.

Which part of control is the most difficult for you?

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Five Signs You Have Difficulties Starting ThingsGet Started

  1. When it comes to starting a new project, you feel afraid it might go badly, so you make up excuses to not start it.
  2. You have a lot of business ideas that you never implement. You make notes and even write down plans, but you never actually start a business.
  3. You buy the material you need to do a job, but do not start it. For example, you buy the tools and materials to build a porch, but never actually start to build the porch.
  4. Your boss keeps asking you to organize a storage room, but you can never find the time to get started.
  5. You really want to get married, invent an incredible phone app or save a million dollars, but have no idea where to start.

 

Five Signs You Have Difficulties Changing Things Time to Change

  1. You make big New Year resolutions and do well for the first week or two in January, but you never really make the change.
  2. Your house is full of incomplete improvements. For example, you paint a wall with the first coat, but never get around to putting on the second coat.
  3. Even though you know better ways to make money, you keep doing the same work with the same income.
  4. You cannot change your mind about certain people. For example, you know age has nothing to do with a worker’s productivity, but you cannot help thinking all young people are lazy.
  5. You have relationship problems. For example, you cannot change a bad attitude toward your spouse. You act like a jerk every day, refuse to change and end up divorced.

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Five Signs You Have Difficulties Stopping Things

  1. You have bad habits that you cannot break. You might say, “I just can’t stop myself.”
  2. You never quite finish projects. You can start a project, no problem. You can continue the project almost to the end, no problem. But you cannot quite complete the project. For example, you to leave your tools and work garbage lying around, or you do not finish the paperwork.
  3. You know you need to stop a bad relationship, but you can’t quite face telling the person, “I’m sorry, but it’s over.”
  4. You have a hard time finishing movies or books. Your Netflix list is filled with movies you never finish. Or your home has stacks of books lying around waiting to be finished.
  5. You know that if you stop working at one place, you can earn much more money at a second place. But you just can’t quite make yourself stop working at the first place.

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Signs You Are Fixated or Obsessed with Start or Change or StopObsessed and Confused

Control is also difficult if you are fixated or obsessed with starting, changing or stopping things.

For example, you are constantly starting new programs or projects. Every week you start a new project or two. Unfortunately, they do you no good as you or your group cannot complete all the things you start.

Or you are constantly changing things. You do not like the way things are. You can never finish writing a report or article. You are never satisfied with your projects. As a boss, you find faults with everything your employees do. Unfortunately, your obsession with change means you end up changing things that should be left alone.

Or maybe you like to stop things a little too much. Your first reaction to any new idea is to stop it or end it. You throw things away you later need. Or maybe you feel like a police officer and constantly try to stop bad things from happening. Unfortunately, you end up stopping good things, as well.

Recommendations

1. Based on the signs above, determine which of these elements of control you need to improve the most

___ Inability to START
___ Fixated with START
___ Inability to CHANGE
___ Fixated with CHANGE
___ Inability to STOP
___ Fixated with STOP

2. Write down 1-3 Action Steps of how you can improve that one part of control you picked above.

3. Do these Action Steps this week.

4. As you make these improvements, notice how your overall control improves.

Action Step Examples

Start
“I will push past my fear of starting projects and just dive in.”
“I will not start anything new this week.”
“I will start my exercise routine today at 1 PM with NO excuses.”

Change
“Today, I will change my mind about all young workers being lazy. I will go watch them work and talk to them about their productivity. I will do the same with older workers. I will keep an open mind and not assume anything for all young workers.”
“I will finish cleaning up my office. I’ve started it several times, but never continued the job.”
“As I’m obsessed with changing everything with my website, I’m going to just do nothing for a few weeks to get the statistics before any more changes.”

Stop
“This is the week I will stop drinking each night after work. I have almost done so, but not quite.”
“Today, I will stop my assistant from complaining about his job. I’ve had enough.”
“Before I start reading any more books, I’m going to finish reading ONE book.”

What are your Action Steps?

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Next, read “Control, Part Four: Boost Your Power by Not Controlling Certain Things.”