An Alternative To Fighting For Control

Mapping your fears is how you build mental wealth.

[Unobstructed Issue No. 060]

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Being prepared isn’t about being able to control what happens. Being prepared is about being able to respond when it does.

It took me a long time to realize that.

You don’t become safer by anticipating what could go wrong.

Oh…uh…sorry to burst your bubble. That wasn’t really directed at you. I mean, if it’s helpful then keep it. But, mostly, that’s what I wish I could go back and tell myself.

Maybe then I’d have realized it sooner. But I was spending so much time trying to learn how to control stuff, I’m sure I’d have missed it anyway. That’s what trying to be prepared looks like when you don’t have the right tools.

Fighting for control.

Trying to prevent stuff from happening that you aren’t prepared to handle.

Hey. hi. hello.

Welcome back or welcome to Unobstructed.

“Luck favors the prepared” is one of those phrases you tell yourself but can’t exactly remember where you heard it. But it’s in there. And you just assume you believe it.

So you prepare for things to go right and hope that luck will make it so. Well, shit happens whether you’re prepared for it or not.

That’s for damn sure.

You might hope it doesn’t.

And you might wish it didn’t.

But it will.

So the only thing you can ever really control is yourself. And accepting that is what made me decide to become someone who focuses on competence instead of certainty.

I wanted to believe I could respond when shit happens.

Instead of hoping i’d get lucky.

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Your weekly spotlight.

“Plan for the worst, hope for the best.”

I like that better. It’s what I was reminded of early and often back when I was guiding backcountry trips.

“wowwwww…ok, pessimist”, you might say.

In fact, some of you have. I won’t name names, but let me just say: you’re welcome! Because that’s how I saved your asses all those times.

Right, so…anyway. That’s why I love this 2017 TED Talk from Tim Ferriss. You might know that name from his podcast or maybe the book that launched his career, The 4 Hour Workweek. He was an angel investor in companies that include Facebook, Twitter, and Uber.

When Tim opened this talk by describing his planned suicide before his college graduation, I was more than caught off guard.

I was dumbfounded—completely and utterly frozen. Because the story he was telling on the TED stage was mine.

Not the um…wildly successful angel investments. But the one of episodic depression leading to his lowest point. Where he was searching for a solution, because he no longer had control and didn’t have the correct tools to respond.

That part made the most happy-sad for feeling seen.

But the real takeaway was how someone helped him find the right tools. And they started with an exercise based on an unexpected premise:

“We suffer more in our imagination than in reality.

So define your fears instead of your goals.”

-Tim Ferriss

Most people think planning is about ambition.

But what Tim points out is that the ability to map what you’re afraid of is the fastest way to get unstuck.

1. You name it.

2. You claim it.

3. You tame it.

And weirdly? That shit works.

Confidence isn’t about being fearless. It’s about being capable.

That’s a huge difference.

Tim walks through a practice called “fear-setting” that flips the whole concept of goal-setting around. And it’s the very root of how I build my own systems today.

Mapping your fears is how you build mental wealth. The real kind. The kind that makes you a calm responder instead of an anxious controller when shit happens.

Here’s what i remember most from the first time I heard this talk:

“Easy choices, hard life. Hard choices, easy life.”

Watch him explain it for yourself (13 min)

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Luck favors the prepared.

I didn’t feel prepared when I heard one very loud, ear-splitting rip of fabric in the middle of the night. And then a big “WHUMPHHHH”

At first I thought the crushing weight on my chest was anxiety. And maybe I was still asleep? Because instantly it was quiet again. Actually a lot quieter than before. Eerily so—like black hole quiet.

Now, I’ve never been the last person on earth, but I imagined this is what it would sound like.

So, was I dreaming? Hard to tell with the darkness swallowing me whole.

Opening and closing my eyes made no difference.

And i seemed to be falling deeper and deeper, as if into a galaxy far far away. Then, just as suddenly, I was jolted back to earth by the sound of frantic rustling.

That’s also when my body finally registered how cold it really was. I thought I could hear muffled tones. Then a hand groped the scruff of my neck, the way one does when trying to plug a phone charger into an outlet without looking.

But after finding its mark, it clamped shut on my shirt like a dog refusing to release its favorite toy.

And that’s when I knew I was awake.

Turns out, my tent had collapsed under a storm’s worth of new snow.

We were in the Absaroka mountains of Wyoming.

No cell service. No roads nearby. Just a satellite phone and a whole lot of time between calling and help arriving, if at all.

We were camping in the middle of nowhere.

Completely SOL (shit outta luck).

Garrett had actually been awake when it happened. Surprised, definitely—but even so, he was able to comprehend what was going on far faster than me, who’d been asleep. Turns out, while everything was collapsing in, Garrett had swam through the ripped ceiling of the tent.

When I emerged, I saw concerned faces and shovels moving rapidly. The pace finally slowed and a collective exhale lingered when Andrew, too, returned to the surface from below.

All of us accounted for.

Lucky. Thanks to the prepared.

It was actually a very depressive low, like the one Tim talked about, that led me to go on that backcountry trip. In search of facing my own competence and gaining the right tools.

Because being prepared isn’t about being able to control what happens. Being prepared is about being able to respond when it does. And becoming the kind of person who can handle it when shit happens.

And that’s what I’ve tried to do ever since.

Not just in the backcountry—

…but in my relationships. In my sobriety. In my work.

Even in rebuilding my business from scratch.

That trip is where I learned the skill of calm responding instead of control freaking.

When you feel like you’re carrying too much, or if you’ve been feeling like things are about ready to collapse if, say, a big gust of wind blows through…

Start with defining your fears. Then, look for what armor you don’t need anymore. And put it down.

The map you want to have in a situation like that? That’s what I’m building Unobstructed for.

It’s not productivity hacks and it’s not a self-help soapbox. It’s a place to reflect and get reoriented. So you can build a life you don’t need to escape from with a system that doesn’t collapse when you stop holding it together.

We’re all alright.

onward.

-dmac

P.S. Trying to make sense of your Substack site settings? Use this free checklist to try the 5 Ps framework.

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