Have you ever felt frustrated that things in your business and life just don’t go the way you want them to?

Today I want to discuss the illusion of control in our life and business.

When we want to control things in our lives and certain aspects that we want to influence in order for us to get a specific result. What most entrepreneurs fail to see and understand clearly is that…

We really don’t have as much control we think over what happens to us in our life and business. Even if we are able to control how we react to it.

Everything that we are doing is just increasing the probability of success or the desired result and reducing the probability of failure.

The illusion of control that I’ve seen in myself and other entrepreneurs is that we have a natural tendency to overestimate our own abilities, skills, and knowledge to control or even influence the markets, events, and industries; for example, it occurs when someone feels a sense of control over outcomes that they demonstrably do not influence.

Now if you stop to think about it… What I mean by that is that we take the actions that we know we need to take and we trust that.

However, we are only 10-15 and maybe 20% of the influence of the life that happens all around us.

As you know, the majority of the 80% outside of our life and business are things that are out of our control and affect us the most whether we want them to or not.

Personally, I like the saying that “You might be the best driver in the world, but what about all the other drivers on the road beside you that might be terrible drivers and that you can’t control?”

Think of a time when you made a mistake, faced a challenge and failed. Before took on that challenge you were probably optimistic about the desired end result however actual results ended up in failure.

The point is that you might be the best but we need to keep in mind that there are a lot of variable in our life that affects us in various different ways.

The hard part and illusion of control come into play when you start holding onto that and the result of it.

Some good examples of this is a client drops off for whatever reason or you order inventory for a product and it gets delayed because something happened in between the time where you ordered the product to be shipped from and it affects your businesses bottom line and hits your cash flow all of a sudden.

This is all interlinked.

There are always many variables and factors that could change at any time outside of your control. You will only be 15-20% of the influence over that situation when it’s in another person’s hands.

Understanding the above is key when it comes to business and life because a lot of things can happen that go against what we intended to happen.

“A lot of forces and influences outside of us affect our business and our life. Understanding that you really only influence 15-20% of the things in your life is key in business.”

– Benson Sung

Mistakes happen and people make mistakes that affect you. You make mistakes that affect others as well. We aren’t perfect, we are human beings.

Of course most people have the bias thinking that everything is under their control which is why it’s the “illusion of control” and only certain parts of what we do and the actions that we take are under our control, but that action on something can also be affected by other people as well and that alters the result that we are looking to achieve.

The best way to get out of the illusion of control and believing that we control everything in our lives because we really don’t is to accept the situation and just let it go.

Now I don’t mean to give up on influence but to let go of what happened and adapt/pivot.

If you’ve got a client complaint then you resolve it and you let it go.

If a shipment delayed? Then you accept that and change the shipping company if this company fails to deliver on time again or just change it now.

A business deal that you’ve been looking forward to doesn’t follow through for whatever reason and you’ve tried your best to find a solution moving forward and it still doesn’t work? Then just let it go.

If you can’t resolve whatever situation or decision you are in. Then you let it go. Whatever “that” is.

Don’t hold onto things. Life is very short and the same is true in our business and our life.

I want to share with you three core principles that have helped me with the illusion of control…

Being Humble

In life and business, we are only really good at a few core things and we should feel confident in our strengths but the reality is we have many weaknesses. Whatever we failed in achieving, it’s important to realize that there are people that have succeeded and we should be learning from them.

We should learn from other entrepreneurs experiences the success but more so learn about their failures and why they failed. I think that most people focus too much on learning about how to be successful but not on how to reduce failure and hedge their risks. These two are very different ways of thinking and learning. Start asking yourself how you can reduce your risks of failure as you’re growing your business.

Internalizing Change

We should understand that change is one of the core constants of life and business. You should find peace in change and realize that change is the nature of everything, whether good or bad. Start by remembering yourself mentally whenever bad things or unintended results or mistakes and failures happen that this will change and also the good things.

Eventually, this will become unconscious competence and then go into your core being deep down

This way whenever something changes in our life we are emotionally, mentally, and even spiritually ready to embrace the change that has presented itself and then adapt, pivot and change the direction that we are doing.

Three Stages Of Knowing

First, we know what we know. This is our skills, knowledge, competency, relationships etc. What we know is what’s gotten us to this point in our life and business to a certain degree. The second is what we know we don’t know. This is the skills, knowledge, competency, relationships and anything else that we want to acquire in order to further develop ourselves. The third is we don’t know, what we don’t know. This is the biggest one of all and it’s tied to the illusion of control. Out of everything that we know and don’t know there is a huge gap that we just don’t know about the business world.

This is the skills, knowledge, competency, relationships and anything else that we want to acquire in order to further develop ourselves. The third is we don’t know, what we don’t know. This is the biggest one of all and it’s tied to the illusion of control. Out of everything that we know and don’t know there is a huge gap that we just don’t know about the business world.

Those three core principles that will help you with dealing with the illusion of control.

The last point I want you to remember is that there are more opportunities in this world than you can ever imagine. There are more deals that can be done. There are more clients that you can have and more abundance in this world so don’t hold onto a lot of things that you “think” are the last straw.

You can take the actions that you need to take and that will influence what you decided to do but it’s up to you once you make that decision whatever happens outside of that is out of your control.

The key point again is to understand we don’t control as much as we think we do in our lives and a lot of external influences affect us and our business day to day.

Understanding this will help you grow as an entrepreneur and you’ll notice that when you let go you’ll have less stress and also be able to grow and handle your business more effectively.

I’ve had to learn the above the hard way but through those experiences, it’s become a part of who I am today and that’s why I want to share with you my thoughts during this private reflection in hindsight how I deal with the illusion of control.

Let me know how the illusion of control has affected you and your business and what you’ve found to be true for yourself. I’d like to hear about it in the comments below.

Thanks for reading this and I’ll see you in the next one.

To Your Success,

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