You’re focused on what you can’t control — and neglecting what you can

You’re trying to manage outcomes that aren’t really within your control.

You anticipate, compensate, smooth over, and second-guess. You replay conversations. You try to head off outcomes that won’t reliably move. When they don’t change, the effort just turns into strain.

At the same time, other things quietly go unattended. Choices you could make. Boundaries you could set. Decisions that are actually yours to take get deferred, because so much attention is tied up elsewhere.

This creates a particular kind of fatigue. Not just from responsibility, but from effort being applied in the wrong places. You’re active and engaged, yet agency doesn’t increase. It often shrinks.

Over time, the pattern reinforces itself. The more you try to control what you can’t, the less capacity you have to act where you can.

Coaching here creates distance to see that boundary again. To distinguish what isn’t yours to control from what is.

The aim isn’t to control more.
It’s to control more accurately.