This week’s Workshop conversation began with leadership, trust, and the realities of control, but it quickly expanded into something much larger.
The deeper discussion wasn’t really about controlling people.
It was about understanding what belongs to us and what doesn’t.
Because most of the stress people carry comes from trying to control things that were never theirs to control in the first place.
This Week’s Panel:
– Rebecca Fitzsimmons: Former NCIS Special Agent, leadership speaker, founder of Tactical Harmony, and host of the Tactical Harmony Podcast.
– Seb Lavoie: Retired RCMP Sergeant Major, former Emergency Response Team leader, BJJ black belt, performance coach, and strategic advisor.
Key Insights from Our “The Cost of Control” Discussion:
1. Control Has Boundaries
Rebecca opened the conversation by challenging the assumption that control is something we can simply expand through effort.
We can prepare. We can train. We can influence.
But outcomes frequently remain outside our reach.
Seb built on this idea by emphasizing the importance of focusing on what belongs to us rather than obsessing over what doesn’t.
The mistake is believing preparation guarantees results.
Preparation improves our response to reality.
Reality still gets a vote.
2. Perception Shapes Experience
Rebecca used the example of weather to illustrate how two people can experience the exact same circumstance and walk away with completely different realities.
One person sees rain and frustration.
Another sees rain and opportunity.
The weather never changed.
The relationship to the weather did.
We too often spend enormous amounts of energy trying to change circumstances when the more powerful shift may be changing our interpretation of them.
3. Control Often Begins As Survival
One of the more interesting observations came when Shaun suggested that many forms of control begin as survival skills.
At some point, controlling our environment helped us create safety, avoid pain, or navigate uncertainty.
Seb expanded on this by discussing how useful adaptations can become limitations when we continue applying them long after the original threat has disappeared.
What once protected us can eventually become the thing that confines us.
4. Acceptance Is Not Resignation
Rebecca repeatedly returned to the idea of surrender.
Not surrender as giving up.
Not surrender as passivity.
But surrender as trust.
The willingness to engage reality as it exists rather than exhausting ourselves fighting reality for being what it is.
Acceptance does not mean approval.
It means seeing clearly enough to work with what is actually present.
5. Influence Travels Further Than Force
Seb highlighted the difference between compliance and commitment.
People may comply because they are controlled.
They commit because they trust.
Rebecca reinforced this idea through her leadership experiences, pointing out that influence tends to create longer-lasting results than force ever can.
The strongest leaders often appear less controlling, not more.
Because trust accomplishes what force cannot.
Final Thought
Life becomes heavy when we insist on carrying things that were never ours to hold.
The more clearly we understand what belongs to us, our choices, our actions, our responses, the less energy gets wasted fighting reality.
Control feels powerful.
Understanding is often more powerful.
Watch the full discussion here: The Cost of Control
Keep focusing on what belongs to you,
Chance & The Collective Crew
