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Working Towards Our Purpose is a raw, unedited podcast where former mechanical engineer Gino Cordone shares his journey to finding purpose in work and life. Each episode explores an idea that can help you uncover meaning in your career, live more authentically, embrace worthiness, and encourage that voice in your head asking for more.
Welcome to episode 70 of Working towards our
purpose. Thank you for being here. In today's episode we
are going to talk about feeling out of control
and what to do when you feel like that. But before
we get into that, we are gonna take just a second to check
in with ourselves, see where we're at today. And I'm
gonna do the same.
Yeah, so I'm feeling pretty
good right now. I think before I meditate it. I usually try to
meditate for 10 minutes before the episode. I was feeling a little bit
imposter syndromey, I guess, feeling like I want to have an
episode that's good and questioning
my ability to do that, I guess. But I meditated for 10 minutes today
and I felt at some point during the
meditation, I don't know, I just got like this wave of
reassurance and like calmness and feeling of love
which was like really nice and
a little, a little weird, but in a good way.
So I wanted to share that and maybe maybe spread that a little bit
because yeah, feeling, feeling pretty good right now. I'm excited about
this song that I'm working on. I'm really liking the way it comes out that
are really liking the way it's sounding and it will come out at the end
of the month and yeah, just, just feeling, feeling good.
So. So yeah, hopefully, hopefully you got a second to check in with yourself
and yeah, let's get into the episode.
So today we're gonna talk about feeling out
of control. And on past
few episodes I've been kind of noticing in
our check ins that I've had this like higher
level of like normal anxiety which I
don't normally have. And I was kind of wondering like where it came from
and why it was there. Just
like this norm, this higher baseline of anxiety. And
yeah, I think I may have
uncovered at least a contributing factor to it.
And I think part of it is thinking about
growing my YouTube channel and just not having control
over that. And you know, there's things you can
do to input building a YouTube channel. Like you make
videos, you, you know, do the best you can. You try to do the title
and the thumbnail game. But at the end of the day I can't make
people watch and I can't make people subscribe. So
that part is out of my control. And I think like I kind of
had these goals for the end of the year and
you know, working towards trying to get monetized
and those goals specifically have to do with watch hours and
subscribers and I literally can't control that.
So I think, you know, as I'm getting to the end of the year and
this kind of deadline that I've set for myself, I've just been
feeling more and more out of control because I can't control
my YouTube growth. So at some
point I realized that earlier this week, or
maybe it was yesterday or the day before. And I realized that, like, that's
part of why I've been feeling a little bit more anxious baseline,
because of this thing that's out of my control. And
I think that a lot of us can resonate with that. Like, I think
the feeling of feeling out of control is
normal. And I think it happens to a lot of us. Whether it's like
you're in school or you're working a job, or
maybe there's things out of your control that are
stress provoking and maybe you're
building something, maybe you're creative, maybe you're writing an album or,
you know, creating a YouTube channel or, you know, starting a business.
All these things have like so many unknowns and are out of your control.
And if we focus too much on the parts that we
can't control, it makes us feel like we're out of control and we
don't have control over where our lives are going. Um, even
other things, like when things happen to us, you know, a lot of times
things happen to us that are out of our control and it makes us feel
like we have no control over our lives. And I think
although it's like a fine line and a balance, you can't control everything in your
life. But feeling like you have no control
is very unsettling and uneasy. And
I think that it leads to becoming
overwhelmed and shutting down. And
there's something I'm sure you've heard before, but if
not fight, flight or freeze. And there's
also another one fawn, which we won't get into. But
this is what your body sort of does when it
becomes overwhelmed. It's. It's like a
thing that your nervous system does to protect itself when it
senses a, you know, danger or,
you know, it comes from, if I'm not misunderstood, it comes
from like our old brains, like when, you know, we were fighting in the
wild for food and stuff like that. If there's like a line gonna attack
you, you can fight the line. You can freeze and
not move, or you can
flight, which is like leave. So
this sort of same response that our nervous system
has, like, learned over evolution or I'm not sure where it
comes from really, but this happens when we
are, like, overly stressed and we start to get overwhelmed, and
you can kind of fall into one of these categories, fight, flight, or freeze. But
a lot of times when it's something that is, like, inside of
our heads, we can't really fight it and we
can't really, like, leave the situation. I guess
maybe you could, but I think most cases you just fall into the freeze
category where you just freeze up, you don't know what to do, and you do
nothing. And that kind of just makes the situation worse. Because
if there's something that you're stressed about and you're not doing anything about
it, it doesn't go away usually.
So this is kind of put some framework behind
our body's act, actual reaction to stress.
And I think that, you know, I heard
recently that that when your body does go into fight, flight or freeze, that
literal parts of your brain shut down, which is really
interesting to me, because, you know, that means that you
aren't capable of problem solving. You're not capable of,
like, trying to get yourself out of the situation because you're literally using less
of your brain. Um, so I thought that that was really interesting.
And, and yeah, so just getting back to,
like, this idea of control and feeling like you have some control over
what you're doing. I think that's. That's what I want to talk about. I want
to talk about how to get there. Like, how do we. How do we get
that sense of control back? So,
yeah, so moving into, like, the next section, like, what do we do about this?
Like, maybe we're sensing that we're overwhelmed and maybe
we know that we're not doing anything, but how do we get out of
that state? How do we make progress forward and feel like we
have more control? Well, there's two things I think
that I've noticed at least as far as my experience this week.
And the first thing is to try to first
calm yourself and realize that there's not
a threat and that you're safe and
there's no immediate danger to you in this
situation. For me, I'm not actually being threatened
by not having enough YouTube subscribers. But
it leads to the thought process of, okay, I don't have enough subscribers. I'm never
going to get monetized. I'll never be able to make money. This whole thing that
I'm doing is a waste of time, blah, blah, blah. And you go down the
spiral and then you start questioning everything. You start
freezing. You. You don't problem solve. So the first thing is
to, like, Try to calm yourself and to whichever way you
can do that. I mean, for me, things like
meditation, going for a walk, you know,
like being kind to yourself, like trying to do something nice for yourself,
making a cup of coffee and just, like, looking out the window, or
trying to just slow down and. And be a little bit more present.
Breathwork can help with that too. But whatever it is
that you can do to try to, like, calm yourself down a bit
so then you can move into the. To the second step that we'll talk about
in a second. And. And I think another thing to
note too, is that I mentioned earlier is that this is a
normal feeling. Like, we as people
get overwhelmed easily, especially in today's society, when,
I mean, you can go on your phone for five seconds or, okay, maybe a
minute and already be overwhelmed and sent down this
spiral of questioning your own worth and,
you know, all the choices that you've made. It's so easy to
lose that feeling or that sense of control, like, that you have over
your life. So. So the first thing is to realize that it's normal
and then to try to, like, calm yourself and bring it down to
a place where you can try to take an
action. And that's the second step. And the second step is, like, once
you're calm enough, then you can try to take an
action forward. No matter what your situation
is, I think there's always an action that you can take. And so I'll
use my example first. So once I, like, calm
myself from the spiral of thinking my,
you know, whole podcast and YouTube is a failure,
the next thing I did, I was like, okay, that's not true. You know, I'm
feeling like this and that's okay, but what can I do? Like,
and I tried to dig into, like, why it was stressing me out so much
about the YouTube channel. And, you know, to be
transparent, it's because I would like to be able to make a living
doing this at some point. And to me,
that was the path that I saw was like, YouTube monetization.
That way I could just keep making what I want and I'll get
some ad revenue or whatever. I'm not even really totally sure
how it works. I've never been monetized on YouTube. So
to me, that was the way out. That was the way to
make the thing that I'm doing and the thing that I believe in
to make me a living so I can continue to do it and to do
more of it and get better at it and everything. So
it's a Money thing, right? It's, it's me thinking, like,
I need to be able to support myself. How can I do that with
doing this podcast or this, you know, YouTube channel?
And so then I had a thought. I was like, okay, well, that's not the
only way to make money doing this, right? So,
you know, if you're familiar with online business at all,
there's things like digital products and courses and,
you know, you can go down that route and make helpful things for people
that can then be purchased if they really, like, dig what you're doing.
So I was like, okay, I'm not giving anybody right now an opportunity
to purchase something from me. There's something I can do.
So, you know, the whole specifics of
the story aren't important, but what I'm trying to get at is like, I
then was able to think about, like, okay, I don't need
YouTube or people, strangers on YouTube.
I don't need to wait for them to make an action so that I can
support myself with this. I can do that now. I can build things. I
can build helpful
guides or courses,
coaching, whatever it is. I can do that right now within my power
and work towards that. You know, of course,
you know, it's going to take work and all that, but that's kind of the
point, is that like, now I have something to focus on. Now it's like,
okay, if it's this course or PDF or guide
or whatever, I can now invest my energies into this
thing that I want to build out. And
now I'm not worrying or waiting or
letting my mind go into this trap of waiting for people to come to
me. I'm making something now and then I can put it out there and
then I can. I've
done something to move forward. I've taken an action and
that really made me feel a lot better. And because
now I have this thing to focus on, right? Because I think when you don't
have something to focus on, you just let your mind go in these stories that
it makes up. And when you have something to focus
on, it's like, okay, now I can hone in on this thing and I can
go make this thing and I can go put this on my website and I
can set up a payment processor and I can make another avenue
for me to make this thing work and I don't have to just
wait. And that made me feel
a lot better. And, you know, it's only been a few days, but I haven't
had that like, high level base anxiety that I've That I was
experiencing. Um, so I say all that
to say that, like, these two steps can really
help you get more control and feel like you're in more
control of your own life, which can help you stop feeling
overwhelmed by. Um, so. So, again, just helping yourself
to feel calm, however you get there. Just,
you know, trying to realize that this is a normal feeling that
we all experience as humans, and
calming yourself down enough to where you can then think about, like, what's
one thing that I can step forward and, and. And. And
take an action and, and do something that's productive forward.
Because then I have control over doing that step, and I have control over
that action. And it doesn't even have to be big. It could be
something really simple, whatever it is you're working
towards. It could be, you know, sending
an email or making a call or reaching out to a buddy
who's doing something that you want to do. You know, it can look like
something very simple, something that.
One more sort of thing that I want to say to. To sort of
exemplify this is I was on Instagram kind of
scrolling through some videos and, like, I don't like to do, and
I came across this. Came across this video. And it was this guy
who was a web designer, and he.
He walked into this business and he went back a
few times because he was trying to get the manager, and the manager wasn't there.
He finally got the manager, and he went up to the manager and said,
like, hey, I noticed that your restaurant doesn't have a website. Is there a reason
for that? And the guy was like, yeah, I don't know.
It's a good question. I don't know why we don't have one. And then this
guy making the video pulls out an iPad, and he says, like, hey, I designed,
like, a test website for your business. Here's what it looks like.
What do you think? And, you know, of
course it's a video on Instagram, so we'll take it with a grain of salt.
But, you know, the guy was like, oh, I'm interested. That looks
great. Here's my email. You know, let me know. Send, send me.
Send it to me, and I'll take a look at it and we can talk
further. And to me, what that made me
think of, you know, whether it was, like, manufactured or not.
What it made me think of was when I had my pleasant podcast
business and I was trying to get customers. And
again, I had that feeling of, like, it's so out of control.
It's like, oh, Man, I don't know how to get new customers.
It's out of my control. It feels. It's like I can run ads
or I can make content, and all of
it is just sort of hoping that people are interested. And
even booking calls with people, trying to convince them, like, hey,
I can do this job for you. Good. Um, you know, it's a lot of
rejection and it's a lot of no's. So that kind of can feel
out of your control. And even just getting, like, people in leads
in is difficult. But when I saw this video, I was like, okay, this
guy, you know, probably went through that feeling of like, oh, man,
I can't find any clients to build a website for. So what did he
do? He took it under his own
power to work on this website for this
business that didn't have one, and then was persistent
to find the manager to be like, hey, here's a website that I've built. And
what do you think? And that gets you so much closer. You know what I
mean? So instead of waiting around for people to be like, hey, I want a
website. He's going and doing one
to. For practice to see if, you
know, somebody actually wants a website. And it's like, you're already doing the work.
And I don't know, it just reminded me of there's things that you can do
to take action when it feels like things are out
of your control. So when it feels like getting new clients is out
of your control, it's like, well, he took that step and built this website,
even though he wasn't paid for it yet. Just to take an action forward and
to take a step to feel like he's more in control
over getting new customers. And yeah, that's kind of what I
felt like when I saw that video. I was like, that's a great way to
take an action, to do something that feels like it's out of your control
and to make it feel more in control. Um, so.
So yeah, that was, you know, just another example. I think that that
worked well with this. With this episode. So,
you know, hopefully, hopefully this was helpful and. And hopefully it
sort of drove home the point of, you know, what happened to me this week
and, like, how we. This feeling of overwhelm
is so normal and also so debilitating and
what we can do to calm ourselves down
and then to take an action forward, to use
all of our brain when we're not overwhelmed and in freeze mode,
and we can calm ourselves down and
think about problem solving forward and then to take a step of action
and just, you know, from my experience, how. How much better I felt to
just be able to do something in my control to move forward and not
have to wait for someone else. That's something that's
not in my control. Um, so. So, yeah, hopefully this
episode was helpful. Um, thank you so much for listening.
I think that's all I got for you today. Um, I guess
one call to action before. Before we end this episode.
I guess as I'm thinking about things I can do in my control to
increase my YouTube subscribers. If you're out there listening and you. You have a YouTube
account and you haven't subscribed to working towards our purpose, if you could take
a moment to do that, I would really appreciate that. And
if not, that's cool too. I'm not, you know,
that it's not totally necessary, but I figure I
have to ask because that's something I can do. It's in my control to ask.
So, yeah, we'll end there and I will see you
on another episode real soon. Thank you for listening. I
appreciate you.