In the business world, control is very confusing and more like a switchback than anything else. Or maybe it’s the perfect Catch-22.
The only way to make any progress is to exercise control over your mind, yourself, and your time.
(Hello, years 1-3 of building a freelance business. It’s basically one long pep talk to keep yourself from slinking away to a full-time job or rolling back on the couch and reading a novel.)
But the only way to maintain for the long term, or grow in any real way, is to let go of trying to control everything.
If you want to make it out of those first three years alive, you need help: co-workers (AKA Twitter), mentors, courses, masterminds, maybe even employees for most of us.
You need to create pathways that enable your work (control), but then sit back and let your work happen without forcing it (no control).
You need to learn that you are the master of your destiny (control), but you can’t accomplish anything real or long-lasting by white knuckling your way to the top (no control).
Hold on to either one for too long, and you end up building your own roadblocks to success.