The three relationships to control
How much control do you feel you have in your life? This is really speaking to the idea of a sense of agency – a sense of having the ability to create change – and it is very strongly correlated with your ability to get results.
I'm going to explain the three possible relationships you might have to control and which one actually gives you the best outcome. Each of these relationships correlates to a different paradigm or a different view of how the world works.
The first possible relationship is from what I call the physical paradigm. In the physical paradigm, a relationship to control is very external. You will feel that many of the things going on in your life are because of external reasons – it's the economy, it's the coworker, it's the boss, it's the spouse, it's politics, etc. In this relationship with control, you feel that your results are very highly driven by the situations and people outside of you. This will inform how you respond to the challenges in your life – you'll tend to wait for the outside things to change. In some cases, there might be actions you take. However, if you're thinking from this paradigm, you are usually forcing the changes. You might change your actions, but the spirit behind those actions don't change. It's more of a white-knuckling situation where you're doing something different, but it's for the express reason to get the other thing/person to change. This is not a very powerful relationship with control, and you're not going to see the best results.
The second way you could be relating to control is through what I call the quantum paradigm. In in this paradigm, you do feel some internal ability to influence or control things outside of you. You feel that you have an impact on the world to some degree. Usually, if you're relating to control through the quantum paradigm, you feel a bit of ‘hit and miss’ when it comes to control of or influence on things outside of you. In this case, you likely are changing some things internally. You’re looking at not just how you act, but also the spirit behind the actions. You also might employ different techniques that go beyond the physical habits. You might consider questions like – How do I see these other people? How do I see the situation? How can I change my attitude, my point of view, or my expectations, to create change? This leads to ‘hit and miss’ results for a couple of reasons. First, we tend to just look at specific things (situations or relationships) versus taking a holistic view. Second, we tend to have one eye on the results. We might realize “if I change my attitude or my view of something, maybe it'll affect the outcome.” But instead of fully immersing into that shift, we change a little and think “I'm going to keep one eye on the result over there and see if it see if it works.” So it is variable in its results but definitely an improvement over the first paradigm.
The third one is what I call the coherent paradigm. When we relate to control in this way, we have the most internal sense of control, the highest sense of agency in our lives. We tend to see things much more holistically and coherently (hence the name). Instead of looking at individual situations, we look at the bigger picture – “How am I interacting with the world? How am I showing up in my life?” Rather than looking at how we’re showing up specifically while we’re trying to sell this house or trying to get the job or trying to change the relationship – but how we’re showing up in our lives. The way that we are at that level of our deepest being is what shows up. So, instead of being piecemeal in our approach, we can act at this deeper level of who we are and create change in many situations. This larger impact is why it's called the coherent paradigm.
These three paradigms relate to the different paradigms of science, which I go into more in my courses and my other my other videos. If you are interested in looking at where you might be on this paradigm scale, I have an assessment on my website.
Your paradigm describes how you're interacting with the world. The way that you interact defines what rules you engage to create change. The deeper you go, the more efficient the rules are, and the better your results are.