What if management is only a story we inform ourselves to really feel secure?
Most of us know we will’t management all the pieces—life is unpredictable, in any case—however we belief that if we plan rigorously, strive exhausting, and act responsibly, we’ll create a significant future. This perception is very vital in {our relationships}: who we love, how we construct households, and the methods we think about our lives unfolding.
It’s one factor to simply accept uncertainty in concept. However when a relationship ends unexpectedly, when the trail to parenthood is longer or extra painful than we ever imagined, or when the life we envisioned falls out of attain, we’re pressured to think about how little management we even have.
Our tradition tends to prioritize company and self-determination. We’re informed to be proactive. Make imaginative and prescient boards. Manifest success.
And to a level, that mindset will be empowering. Psychological analysis helps the concept the notion of management is linked to larger well-being and resilience. Julian Rotter’s locus of management concept (Nowicki et al., 2021) suggests that individuals fare higher emotionally after they consider their actions have an effect, notably after they have an inside locus of management.
However there’s one other aspect to that coin: When outcomes don’t replicate effort—when doing all the pieces “proper” nonetheless ends in heartbreak—it could actually shake our sense of self. Ellen Langer’s basic analysis on the phantasm of management (1975) highlights how we regularly overestimate our capacity to affect unsure outcomes. Within the context of relationships or fertility, this phantasm will be particularly painful. We might consider that if we strive exhausting sufficient, love deeply sufficient, or select properly sufficient, we will forestall loss. And when that seems to not be true, it could actually really feel like failure, when, in actuality, we’ve merely encountered life’s unyielding nature.
So what can we do then?
One tenet is that this: Do your finest. Then let go.
It sounds easy. However, in follow, it asks a variety of us.
“Doing all of your finest” would possibly imply years of attempting—emotionally, bodily, financially. It could possibly imply sitting with uncertainty, having exhausting conversations, or holding onto hope longer than you thought you can. And “letting go” is never a single second. Extra typically, it’s a course of—a sluggish launch of what might need been. It’s not about giving up. It’s about making peace with what we can’t drive.
In therapeutic phrases, this mirrors the idea of radical acceptance (Segal, Kivity, & Bernstein, 2025), which invitations us to cease combating actuality in order that therapeutic can start. In relationships or reproductive journeys, this would possibly imply accepting an ending we didn’t select, grieving a model of ourselves we imagined, or acknowledging that the result isn’t ours to regulate.
Letting go isn’t passive or an act of defeat. As an alternative, there may be knowledge that comes with eradicating our hand from a doorknob that gained’t open and leaving ourselves uncovered to different potential doorways. Not as a result of we’re retreating into loss, however as a result of the combat isn’t serving us anymore.
After all, letting go will be devastating, like the bottom has been pulled out from below us. That grief is actual and legitimate. However as we start to stay inside that absence, different elements of life might begin to emerge—unplanned paths, relationships, strengths, and views that will not have been seen earlier than. It’s not about pursuing silver linings or forcing poisonous positivity, however staying open to what comes subsequent.
We are able to care deeply.
We are able to strive wholeheartedly.
We are able to love fiercely, grieve actually, and nonetheless, when the time comes –
We are able to let go.
