Less Control, More Flow: Learning to Trust the Next Step

How much of your energy goes into trying to figure everything out before life unfolds?

In this deeply personal episode, I explore something I’ve been noticing in my own healing journey: the desire for certainty. The need to know. The urge to understand, predict, and control what comes next before it arrives.

For many of us, control isn’t a character flaw. It’s a survival strategy. It’s something we learned in response to uncertainty, trauma, unpredictable relationships, or environments where being prepared felt necessary for safety.

But what happens when the very thing that once protected us begins to keep us stuck?

In this episode, I share reflections from my work as a therapist, my own experiences with intuition and self-trust, and the ways control can quietly show up in relationships, parenting, spirituality, and everyday life.

Together we’ll explore:

• Why uncertainty feels so uncomfortable

• How control and safety become intertwined

• The difference between forcing and allowing

• What true trust actually looks like

• Why curiosity can be more powerful than certainty

• How to recognize when you’re gripping too tightly

• What it means to trust yourself even when you don’t know the outcome

This isn’t about becoming passive or pretending everything will work out exactly as planned. It’s about learning to trust that whatever comes, you have the capacity to meet it.

Because maybe healing isn’t about having all the answers.

Maybe it’s about becoming comfortable enough with yourself that you can take the next step without needing to see the entire path.

Less control.

More flow.

Learning to trust the next step.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to my podcast. I'm just really grateful that you're here today and to have this space. And I've been reflecting a lot lately on some things in my life, control being one of them. You know, it's been something that has saved me a lot in my life, right? You know, or I thought it did, right? And recently I've just been really analyzing that, I guess, you know, and trying to release some big things that have been holding me back. So it's it's really this topic has been sitting with me for a while because I really didn't know what or how to identify it necessarily. I it, you know, it's just another deeper layer for myself that I'm going through. So this is what I've been noticing. I've been noticing how often I actually want certainty in my life, how often I want to just know something, right? How often I want to understand something before it's fully revealed. And now, mind you, these aren't things that I was very conscious about for a really long time. I would notice them here and there, you know, but it's almost like I wasn't ready, right? So what what I do know about healing is that, or, you know, navigating our lives is that we won't really be able to identify something, like truly, truly identify it until we are ready to identify it, right? So many, maybe many things have to happen first before that happens in order to help us get to that point. It's just like going to school, you know, you have grades for a reason. You don't just, you don't just go from kindergarten to 12th grade, you know, you go through kindergarten, first grade, second grade, et cetera, right? So I I noticed also that I wanted to figure things out before they unfolded naturally, right? And the funny funny thing is that I don't think that I'm the only one on this planet that does that, you know. I think many of us are walking around carrying this invisible burden that sounds like maybe something like, I need to know what's going to happen. I need to understand what this means, I need to make the right decision, I need to get this right, I need clarity before I move forward, I need a certainty before trust. And, you know, what I hear so much from my clients is the uncertainty of it, right? Like, what is it that scares you the most? The uncertainty. What scares us the most about human beings as human beings? The uncertainty, not knowing, right? Not knowing. That's why trust is such a big deal. That's why they have to call it the leap of faith, you know, because to have faith, you gotta have guts, you know, you gotta be brave and take that step without knowing exactly how it's going to unfold, right? And to be honest, maybe most of us don't even realize how much energy we spend trying to control things that were never ours to control in the first place. And this isn't due to being bad or being controlling. It's really because somewhere along the way, control became maybe synonymous with safety, right? For many of us, control was born in places that were left that where life was uncertainty, right? Or uncertain. Let me say that again. I got all jammed up in that sentence. For many of us, control was born in places where life felt uncertain. Maybe it was a chaotic childhood, maybe it was trauma, maybe it was a relationship where you never knew what version of someone you were gonna get. Maybe it was growing up in an environment where mistakes carried consequences that just felt so overwhelming. Maybe it had to do with being the responsible one or the caretaker or peacemaker, the one who had to read the room, the one who had to figure things out, maybe the one who had to participate or anticipate, not participate. Anticipate. Today my words are a little jumbled, huh? The one who had to anticipate what everyone else needed, right? Maybe over time your nervous system learned something. It learned to pay attention. And that when you pay attention, that that helps. Maybe that predicting helped, that planning helped, that managing helped, maybe controlling, right? That controlling really helped. Or at least maybe it seemed to. And to be fair, I mean, sometimes it did. Sometimes those skills protected you. Sometimes they helped you survive, sometimes they helped you build a life. Sometimes they helped you become successful. Sometimes they helped you become incredibly insightful. In my own life, I honestly can see how those skills have served me. As a therapist, attunement does matter. Paying attention matters. Noticing patterns matters. Listening deeply matters. There are moments when I sit with a client and something just clicks. I can feel what they're trying to say, even before they have words for it. I can sense themes, patterns, connections. And it is a really beautiful thing. But recently I've been, excuse me, recently I've been reflecting on something that sometimes I get it wrong. Sometimes what I think I'm seeing isn't actually what's there. Sometimes the client says, no, that's not it. And sometimes months later they come back and say, actually, that's exactly what was happening. And sometimes they don't. And I've realized how uncomfortable uncertainty can be. Because somewhere inside of me was this subtle belief that if I was truly attuned, I should know. Now, this a lot of this has to do with my upbringing, you know, having leaders and authority in my life that said that they were right no matter what, right? I didn't, I didn't really honestly recognize that that part of me was still there, that I still, there was still something that believed that. And now, mind you, I didn't follow it because I know better, you know, but subconsciously there was like this, you know, this feeling emerged. And every time that I would get it wrong, I felt this little nudge inside of me. And I had to, you know, have it take a step back because I just didn't understand what it was, right? And recently I figured it out. I found out that that's what it is, right? That somehow if I, you know, if I was good at what I do, I should know. If I was intuitive, I should know, you know. And maybe some of you can relate to that. Maybe not as therapists, maybe as parents or partners, friends, leaders, human beings. That feeling is somehow you're you're supposed that feeling that somehow you're supposed to have the answer, that somehow you're supposed to know, right? That somehow uncertainty means you're doing something wrong. But what if that's not true? What if attunement isn't uncertainty? What if wisdom isn't uncertainty? What if intuition is not uncertainty? What if healing isn't uncertainty? What if life itself was never designed to provide certainty? Now I know that can feel uncomfortable because certainty feels good. It feels solid, it feels safe. It feels like standing on concrete. But certainty can also become a trap. Because when we're attached to certainty, we stop being curious, we stop being listening, we stop being listening, we stop listening, right? We stop discovering, we stop allowing. Instead, we actually start forcing. We start searching for evidence that we're right. We start trying to make life fit the story we've already decided is true. And often we end up missing what's actually happening. I think about relationships. How often do we spend energy trying to get people to become who we need them to be? And how often do we spend years hoping someone will finally understand, finally change, finally grow, finally show up differently. And while there's nothing wrong with hope, there's something exhausting about trying to force reality to become something other than what it is. One of the most freeing lessons that I've learned is this. My job is not to make people reveal themselves. My job is to pay attention when they do. That's different. Control says, I need to change you. Flow says, show me who you are. Control says, I need to convince you. Flow says, I need to observe you. Control says, I need to manage the outcome. Flow says, I need to respond to reality. That shift just changes everything, right? Because suddenly all the energy that was going into controlling someone else becomes available for something much more important. Your own choices, your own boundaries, your own truth, your own peace. And, you know, I think this shows up in parenting too. You know, if you're a parent, you know the struggle. We love our children so much. We want them to be okay. We want them to avoid pain. We want them to make good decisions. We want them to succeed. And sometimes we can become so focused on controlling outcomes that we forget something important. Children are not projects, they are people. People who are unfolding, people who need experiences, people who need opportunities to discover themselves, people who need guidance, yes. Protection, yes, structure, yes. But ultimately, they also need space to become who they are, and that requires trust. Not trust that they'll never struggle, trust that they can grow through struggle, not trust that they'll never make mistakes, but trust that mistakes can become teachers. Not trust that everything will go perfectly. But that trust has that trust that life has a way of teaching what needs to be learned. That's hard. Especially for those of us who know how much pain exists in the world. But growth requires room, and room requires letting go. Even spirituality can get tangled up in control. Excuse me. I've seen this happen so many times. People become convinced they should always know, always have the answers, always understand signs, always interpret things correctly, always receive perfect guidance. And when they don't, they feel like they've failed. I understand that because I've felt it too. But lately I've started wondering if intuition is less like receiving instructions and more like participating in a conversation, a conversation with life, a conversation with yourself, a conversation with something bigger than yourself, a conversation that requires listening just as much as speaking. It requires pausing before speaking. Conversations don't always provide immediate answers. Sometimes they provide questions. Sometimes they provide invitations, sometimes they provide breadcrumbs, sometimes silence. And maybe silence isn't absence, maybe silence is a space, space for something to show up, space for us to notice, right? Space for us to grow, to become. Sorry, not to become careless, right? Not to become passive, and not to stop caring, but to loosen your grip just a little bit. To notice where you're forcing things, to notice where you're trying to control things that are still unfolding, to notice where you're demanding certainty from situations that can only be understood with time. And maybe you can ask yourself, what would happen if I trusted myself a little more? What would happen if I stopped trying to force clarity? What would happen if I became curious instead of certain? What would happen if I allowed life to reveal itself? Because perhaps the deepest wisdom isn't found in knowing. Maybe it's found in being present enough to discover less control, more flow, less certainty, more curiosity, less gripping, more allowing, less proving, more presence. And maybe just maybe that's where life has been waiting for us all along. Thank you so much for being here with me today. Take a deep breath. Loosen your shoulders, unclench your jaw, notice the chair beneath you, notice the ground beneath your feet. You don't have to figure everything out today. You don't have to know the ending. You only have to take the next step. And for now, that's enough. Until next time, be gentle with yourselves. Have a wonderful week. Bye.