Control, Influence, or Let Go: A Framework for Controlling the Controllables

There’s a line from the Serenity Prayer that has carried across generations: “Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Simple words, but when put into practice, they reveal a lot about where stress and frustration come from—especially at work and in life.

Why We Struggle with Controlling the Controllables

In many of my coaching conversations, clients who feel stuck or overwhelmed eventually discover that the root cause is not their ability or effort. It’s that they’re trying to control what sits firmly outside their reach.

How others react. The hidden motivations of a boss. The deeply rooted mindsets of peers or stakeholders. Market swings. A competitor’s marketing campaign. The harder they try to push against these forces, the more powerless they feel.

This creates stress because energy is being spent in the wrong place.

What You Can Control

When we shift the focus to what is within your control, the list looks different:

• How you prepare for a big meeting

• How you react under pressure

• Setting expectations for yourself

• Identifying your values and motivators

• Establishing goals

These controllables may feel small compared to organizational politics or market forces, but they are what build resilience and long-term success.

The Often Overlooked Middle Ground: Influence

It is not just a black-and-white choice between control and no control. There is also influence.

I’m reminded of a phrase my Greek friends like to use: “The man is the head, but the woman is the neck. And the neck can turn the head any way it wants.” It’s a playful way to capture an important truth. Influence is not control, but it is power in its own right.

The challenge is that influence often goes unrecognized. It requires self-awareness. It requires strategy. And it requires discernment to know when influence is possible and when it is wasted energy. Without those, people default to the extremes—overreaching for control, or giving up entirely.

The Three Buckets Framework

So when you’re faced with frustration, try reframing the situation through three lenses:

Control: What belongs entirely to you. Your preparation for a big meeting. The way you frame your ideas. The boundaries you set with your time. Your daily habits and how you show up.

Influence: Where you cannot dictate outcomes, but you can steer them. Framing a conversation so others see a new perspective. Building alliances across teams. Modeling a behavior you’d like to see repeated. Choosing the timing of when to push an idea forward.

Uncontrollable: The rest. A reorganization. A competitor’s product launch. A boss’s personal biases. The global economy. These are the forces that drain us when we grip too tightly.

Letting Go and Moving Forward

The wisdom lies in knowing which bucket each situation belongs to, and then acting accordingly. More often than not, the frustration that keeps us stuck is simply misplaced energy.

Control what is yours. Release what is not. And do not overlook the middle ground, because influence is often the most powerful and least understood of the three.

That will be the focus of my next post—how to recognize, build, and use influence effectively.