Issue #19: A Recovering Control Freak’s Guide to Letting Go
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A few days ago I read an article about how airplane turbulence is getting worse.
Apparently, climate patterns are shifting, jet streams are wobbling, and pilots are seeing more unexpected bumps at cruising altitude.
Which is… super awesome!
Because if there’s one thing humans love, it’s realizing the sky itself might occasionally throw elbows.
That got me thinking about something equally turbulent: business planning season.
Forecasts. Budgets. Strategy decks. PowerPoint charts that make it look like we know exactly where the next twelve months are headed… even though most of us are just trying to survive until Friday.
And the bumps don’t stop there.
There’s a seemingly endless stream of things to worry about — economic swings, geopolitical tension, the occasional round of tariff Jenga, and the slowly dawning realization that AI might someday be our boss (or worse yet — that it’s all just hype).
As a (barely) recovering control freak, it can all feel like a bit much.
Even writing this makes me want to refill my Xanax prescription, but unfortunately, it’s Sunday… and my doctor’s office is closed.
Which raises a fair question:
What’s actually in your control?
At work. At home. In this strange little moment in history we’re all living through.
Well, tbh… not very much.
So outside of compulsive nail-biting, strategic head-in-the-sand burying, and an overreliance on pharmaceuticals, what’s a non-digital upright biped supposed to do?
Luckily, there’s a simple, if slightly ironic, acronym that helps.
When things feel unpredictable (which, lately, feels like always), I come back to a simple mental model that keeps me grounded — literally and mentally:
EARTH.
The Real Earth Spins. Your EARTH Doesn’t Have To.
For many years, I told myself, my son, and my teams, this simple mantra:
Every day when you wake up, you only get to control two things...your attitude and your work ethic. Out hustle and out smile the person next to you, and chances are, you’ll end up in a better place.
I still believe this to my core, but over the past decade, my thinking on this idea, like the cotton-spandex band around my waist, has expanded.
EARTH isn't a productivity hack or a wellness framework. It's a redirect. Five things that stay squarely in your hands — no matter what the market, your org chart, or the weather decides to do.
E — Effort
Even though my perspective on control has evolved, I still believe in the power of effort. Growing up, my mom would always say, “Matthew, if you’re gonna do something, do it 110% or don’t do it at all.” Nothing half-assed and totally within my control.
Effort is the extra rep at the gym when you'd rather stop at nine. It's reviewing the deck one more time before the meeting. It's helping your kid with homework even though you absolutely do not remember long division. (Seriously, have you ever needed long-division as an adult?).
And by the way, effort doesn't guarantee results. Nothing does. But it certainly gives you the best shot.
A — Attitude
Attitude is the most misunderstood word in leadership.
It doesn't mean relentless positivity. It doesn't mean pretending the quarter isn't rough, the deal didn't fall apart, or that the airport sandwich you just paid $18 for doesn't taste like sadness wrapped in cellophane. It means choosing how you interpret the thing that just happened to you.
Epictetus, an enslaved Stoic philosopher, gave us this little beauty: It's not what happens to us that disturbs us, but our interpretation of it.
Whether the traffic jam is an injustice or twenty unexpected minutes of quiet. Whether missing out on the promotion is proof you're stuck or data you can actually use. Same situation. Completely different energy walking into the next room.
R — Response
If you haven’t read Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, please stop reading this newsletter and go get his book. It will change your life.
See, Frankl survived Auschwitz. He lost his wife, his parents, his brother, and the manuscript he'd spent years writing. And from that experience, he argued one thing with absolute conviction: The last unconditional human freedom — the one no external force can take — is the freedom to choose your response to any circumstance.
Not to choose the circumstance. Not to avoid the difficulty. To decide what you do with it.
Your response is not your reaction. Reactions are reflexive. They happen in the fraction of a second before your brain catches up. Responses are intentional. They live in the pause after the thing lands and before you decide what to do about it.
At work, that gap is the difference between the email you'll regret and the one that actually moves something forward. At home, it's the ten seconds between your kid saying something truly unhinged and your decision about whether to respond like a leader or a wounded animal.
That pause — small as it is — is where the best version of you operates. And if Frankl could find it in a Nazi concentration camp, the rest of us can probably locate it before the 9am all-hands.
T — Thoughts
The voice in your head is not a neutral observer. It has opinions. Strong ones. Especially about important things like celebrity plastic surgery and whether or not Trader Joe’s is actually a health food store. (Sorry, the voice in my head says it’s not, but the chocolate-covered everythings are still delicious).
Left unchecked, it will confidently narrate your situation in ways that are dramatic, unhelpful, and often just factually wrong. And in classic bad-news-travels-fast fashion, the negative voice in your head is louder than the positive one.
At work it sounds like: This presentation isn't good enough. They're going to see right through me. Why did I agree to this? At home it sounds like: I'm always tired. I'm a terrible father. She’ll never not burn the asparagus even though she knows I hate the burning of the asparagus.
These negative thoughts feel like facts. They are not facts. They are editorial. And you are the editor.
You can be a better editor. And you can start with a positive perspective.
Redirect from the negative, from the fatalistic, from the unknown. Focus on the positive, the upside, the reality in front of you. That’s not about being naïve or not planning for things. It’s about the underlying mindset being one of chaos and concern versus one of confidence and control.
H — Habits
For many years, I relied on self-discipline. I'd start strong, hit an obstacle, tire of the thing, and then feel bad about myself as someone who lacked self-discipline. A nasty little cycle that quietly undermined my effort, attitude, responses, and thoughts.
Then I discovered the power of habits. (Thank you, Charles Duhigg and James Clear.)
Turns out, the issue was never (ok, rarely) my discipline. It was the construction of my habits. And habits are the infrastructure beneath everything else in EARTH.
Your effort? Habit-driven. Your attitude? Shaped by habitual thought patterns. Your response in pressure moments? Built through repeated practice. Your thoughts? Largely a product of what you've trained your brain to default to. They aren't the reward for having willpower. They're the replacement for needing it.
When a habit breaks down, it's almost always a design problem — wrong cue, reward too distant, routine too ambitious. Fix the construction, and the behavior follows.
Now when I fail — and according to my wife and son, I often do — I look at the habit, not at all my other obvious flaws. That's not a cop-out. It's a more useful place to park the blame. And design — unlike tariff policy, jet stream wobble, and the guy who schedules a meeting that could have been an email — is something you actually get to control.
🧠 Why Controlling What You Can Control Works
First, let's consider the alternative.
I like a window seat on an airplane. Why? Because, as a control-freak-in-transition, I want to see what's going on out there so I can, in some vain way, feel like I'm managing the situation.
That is straight-up nuts. (And I'm working on it.)
Not only is trying to control the uncontrollable a symptom of self-delusion — not a great keyword to add to your resume — it's also a colossal waste of energy. Me catastrophizing every bump doesn't reduce the likelihood of the wings falling off (which is sitting at 0%, by the way). Instead of enjoying Magic Mike in Spanish subtitles, I just spent six hours between EWR and LAX in a state of low-grade terror.
So what does focusing on the right things actually do for you? Turns out, quite a lot.
The Locus of Control Effect — Psychologist Julian Rotter’s foundational 1966 research established that people who believe their actions influence outcomes — an internal locus of control — consistently demonstrate higher resilience, stronger performance, and better well-being than those who attribute results primarily to external forces. The rough translation: high-performers focus on what they can control.
The Cognitive Cost of What You Can’t Change — Worrying about uncontrollable variables doesn’t just feel bad. It consumes working memory you actually need for strategic thinking. When the brain is occupied processing things it cannot move — market shifts, leadership changes, competitor moves — it has measurably less capacity for the things that are actionable. Anxiety is expensive. Focused attention is an asset.
The Compound Effect of Small Controllables — James Clear’s Atomic Habits, grounded in decades of behavioral science, makes the compounding math alarming in the best possible way: a 1% improvement in controllable behaviors, repeated daily, compounds to 37x over a year. The leverage in your career isn’t in the big unpredictable swings. It’s in the boring, repeatable inputs you own completely.
🍴 Try a Bite This Week
The bumps aren’t going anywhere. But you don't need a new flight plan, a co-pilot, or an upgrade to first class to start leveraging your EARTH. Just three moves. This week.
🍴 The Two-Column Audit (E + A). Draw a line down the middle of a page. Left: everything stressing you out this week. Right: checkmark everything you actually have influence over. Spend 80% of your energy on the checkmarks. The left column will still be there. You'll just stop letting it drive.
🍴 The Ten-Second Pause (R + T). Next time something goes sideways — and this week, something will — count to ten before responding. Not to suppress the reaction. Just to create enough space to choose a response instead. In that pause, try Jocko Willink's move. When everything goes sideways, the former Navy SEAL drops one word: "Good." Missed the deadline? Good — now you know where the process broke. Key person quit? Good — opportunity to build something better. It's not toxic positivity. It's a trained redirect from reaction to response.
🍴 The Habit Autopsy (H). Pick one habit you've been blaming yourself for breaking. Don't judge it — diagnose it. Wrong cue? Reward too distant? Routine too ambitious? Fix the construction. Then try again. Need more guidance? Check out Atomic Habits by James Clear — not as life-changing as Viktor Frankl, but still worth the $14.99.
💡 A Final Thought
I fly all the time. I don’t love it. But I’ve built better habits to handle the unexpected air pockets… and the totally expected bad food.
For example, I like to break the ice with my fellow row-mates by announcing that I’m a screamer or that I only throw up to my left.
Good times for all involved.
No matter what seat you have on this wild ride called life, there will always be turbulence. And delays. And a passenger two rows back conducting a very important “business call” on speakerphone.
In those moments — when you feel like you’re about to lose it, when that nagging sense creeps in that maybe things are moving too fast, or too slow, or in the wrong direction — take a breath.
Your EARTH is solidly beneath your feet and totally in your control.
🌶️ Add Your Spice
When the air gets rough at work — or at home — which letter of EARTH do you reach for first? And which one do you consistently let slide?
Share it in the comments. Honest answers only.
If this resonated, pass it along to someone who keeps showing up strong no matter how bumpy the ride gets.