Control makes a pretty convincing promise: If I can just get a handle on this, I’ll feel better.
So we make the plan. We have the conversation. We research the options, ask the questions, think three steps ahead, and prepare for what might happen next. Sometimes that’s exactly what a situation requires. Planning is wise. Good information matters. Difficult conversations need to happen.
But sometimes we do all of that and we’re still not okay.
Because what we really wanted wasn’t just a plan or more information. We wanted a guarantee.
We wanted to know the decision would be the right one, the person we love would be okay, the problem would be resolved, or the thing we’re afraid of wouldn’t happen.
And that’s the promise control can never actually keep.
There will always be things we can’t know, outcomes we can’t guarantee, and people whose decisions we don’t get to make. Yet we can spend an enormous amount of time and energy trying to get just a little more control over them.
It makes me wonder what all that effort might actually be costing us.
1. It Costs You Peace
Most of us don’t try to control things because we enjoy being stressed. We do it because we’re trying to reduce stress.
We tell ourselves we’ll feel better once we have a plan, once we’ve talked to the person, once we know more, or once we’ve figured out what to do next. And often those things do help.
The problem comes when peace keeps moving one step ahead of us. We get the answer to one question and immediately think of another. We have the conversation and start analyzing what the other person said. We make a plan and begin considering everything that could interfere with it.
Sometimes the hardest part is recognizing the difference between doing our part and trying to control the outcome.
Control keeps promising peace later while stealing peace now.
Jesus asks a strikingly practical question in Matthew 6:27: Can worrying add even a single hour to our lives?
He’s not minimizing our concerns. But He does challenge the idea that all of our worry is accomplishing what we think it is.
That’s worth asking about control too. Is all this thinking, planning, monitoring, and managing actually giving me peace? Or am I sacrificing today’s peace in an attempt to secure tomorrow’s outcome?
2. It Costs You Mental Space
I’m a researcher. If there’s a problem to solve or a decision to make, I want the facts. I’ll read, ask questions, compare options, and keep digging until I understand what’s actually going on.
That’s a useful skill when the decision belongs to me. It gets a little more complicated when the decision belongs to someone else.
When someone I care about is facing something significant, I can become hyperfocused on finding information and solutions for them. I’ll research the options, send what I’ve found, ask questions, and look for things they may not have considered. None of that is necessarily a problem. Sometimes it’s genuinely helpful.
The problem is that I haven’t always known when to stop.
Maybe there’s something I missed. Maybe I should research this too. They’re probably not going to look for this information themselves, so I better do it.
Now I’m not only spending time researching someone else’s problem; I’m thinking about what else I should research when I’m not researching it. That’s a lot of mental space devoted to a decision that ultimately isn’t mine to make.
I’ve gotten much better about this, particularly when it comes to decisions that belong to other adults. I can do the research if it’s appropriate, share what I’ve learned, answer questions if I’m asked—and then recognize that the decision still belongs to them.
Because there’s no obvious finish line when you’re trying to make sure you’ve considered everything. No amount of research can guarantee what another adult will decide or how things will turn out. At some point, I’m no longer looking for useful information.
I’m looking for certainty.
And that’s something the next Google search can’t give me.
3. It Costs You the Ability to Be Present
Mental space is one cost. What we miss while our minds are occupied is another.
You can be sitting at dinner with people you love while mentally rehearsing tomorrow’s conversation. You can be driving somewhere beautiful while working through a problem in your head. You can be on vacation, playing golf, or having coffee with a friend and realize you haven’t really been there for the last twenty minutes.
Nothing dramatic happened. You just missed twenty minutes of your own life because you were mentally trying to control another part of it.
Jesus says later in Matthew 6, “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself” (Matthew 6:34).
Of course there are things we need to do today to prepare wisely for tomorrow. But we can become so consumed with trying to secure a future outcome that we miss the life God has actually given us today.
The conversation you’re having right now matters. The person sitting across from you matters. The beautiful afternoon you’re barely noticing matters.
Tomorrow will arrive soon enough.
4. It Can Cost You Relationships
Trying to control an outcome doesn’t only affect us. Eventually, the people around us can feel it too.
Sometimes it looks like repeated advice, another reminder, another question, or another attempt to explain why we’re concerned. We may genuinely believe we’re helping, but what feels like involvement to us can begin to feel like pressure to someone else.
Eventually, people may stop telling us things because they don’t want every conversation to become a strategy session. They may stop asking for advice because advice comes with an expectation that they’ll follow it. They may even wait until after they’ve made a decision to tell us.
Healthy relationships need room for honesty, and that includes the freedom for another adult to hear what we have to say and still make a choice we wouldn’t make.
This doesn’t mean we never speak up. There are times when love requires an honest conversation, a boundary, or even repeated action. But there is a difference between communicating what needs to be said and continuing until we get the response we want.
Sometimes protecting a relationship means allowing someone enough room to own their own life.
5. It Costs You Energy for What Actually Is Yours
We only have so much time, attention, and emotional energy. When an enormous portion of mine is going toward someone else’s decisions, an outcome I can’t determine, or a future I can’t predict, that energy isn’t available somewhere else.
There are things that really are mine to manage: my choices, my responses, my responsibilities, my relationships, my work, and whatever God has genuinely placed in front of me today.
One of the hardest things to recognize is when we’ve started carrying responsibility that was never actually ours.
Trying to carry what’s not mine can make me less available for what is.
That doesn’t mean other people’s problems aren’t our concern. Scripture calls us to bear one another’s burdens. Love requires inconvenience, and sometimes another person’s need absolutely should interrupt our plans.
But there’s a difference between giving someone our time because love calls us to and surrendering enormous amounts of energy to something we cannot control.
6. It Costs You the Experience of Trusting God
I don’t mean that struggling with control means you don’t trust God. I trust God, and I still struggle with control.
But there is something we miss when we refuse to release an outcome until we have enough information, reassurance, or evidence to believe everything will be okay.
We miss the opportunity to trust Him before we know.
Every situation eventually has an edge—a point where we’ve gathered the information, made the decision, had the conversation, taken the appropriate action, and done what we reasonably know to do.
Then we arrive at the part we cannot control.
Every time we reach the edge of what we can control, we arrive at an invitation—to keep grasping for certainty we cannot get, or to practice trusting God without it.
That’s where trust becomes real. Not once I know the person I love will make the decision I want them to make, the situation will resolve, or I’ll finally understand what God is doing.
Before that.
Proverbs 3:5–6 tells us to trust in the Lord with all our hearts and not lean on our own understanding. That doesn’t mean understanding is bad. It means our understanding was never meant to become the thing holding us up.
There will always be a limit to what we know.
There is no limit to what God knows.
What Do You Get Back When You Let Go?
We’ve talked about what control costs us, but there’s also something to be gained when we stop demanding that peace wait until everything is resolved.
We get some mental space back. We become more available to the people in front of us, and we have more energy for the responsibilities that actually belong to us.
I’ve experienced more and more of that freedom in my own life.
I’m getting much better at recognizing when another adult’s decision is exactly that—their decision. I can offer advice. I can share information. I can say what I believe needs to be said. And then, more often than I used to, I can let it go.
They’re free to make their choice, and I don’t automatically have to assume personal responsibility for what they decide.
I don’t do this perfectly. There are still situations that are much harder for me to release than others. But I’m getting better and better at it, and the mental freedom has been exhilarating.
I’m free to put my attention back where it belongs. Instead of continuing to research someone else’s problem, I can focus on what I actually need to do. Instead of mentally managing their next move, I can focus on mine. I can care about what happens without carrying the constant internal pressure that I need to somehow make it happen.
And honestly, the internal peace may be the greatest freedom of all.
That doesn’t mean I’ve stopped planning, researching, helping, speaking up, or taking action. Trust isn’t passivity. Sometimes the faithful thing is absolutely to do something.
But eventually we will reach the end of what we can do.
If you’re having trouble figuring out where your responsibility ends in a situation you’re facing, my free interactive tool Is This Mine to Fix? can help you sort through what’s yours to do, what isn’t, and what trusting God might look like next.
We don’t have to know what someone else will decide before we can sleep tonight. We don’t have to solve tomorrow before we’re allowed to enjoy today. And we don’t have to guarantee an outcome before we can trust that God will still be God in the middle of it.
There will always be things we cannot control.
The question is how much of our lives we’re willing to spend trying.
Ready to Put Down Some of What You’ve Been Carrying?
If you’re realizing how much trying to control the outcome is costing you, Letting Go: A Workbook on Trust and Control was created to help you go a little deeper.
It’s a practical, faith-based workbook that will help you identify where control is showing up, understand what’s underneath it, and begin separating what actually belongs to you from what you’re trying to manage for everyone else.