You Don’t Control What Shows Up

For a long time, I thought control was mostly about discipline.

If I wasn’t thinking clearly, feeling right, or acting the way I wanted, the assumption was simple: I just hadn’t trained myself well enough.

Over time, that model started to break.

One shift came from learning more about how biology actually works. Genes aren’t fixed instructions that run on a static schedule. They’re expressed differently depending on context—things like stress, diet, environment, and internal state. The body is less like a command hierarchy and more like a set of interacting systems.

One of those systems is the gut–brain axis. The microbes in your body don’t control you, but they do shape the chemical environment your brain operates in—affecting things like inflammation, neurotransmitters, and stress signaling. Add in the nervous system and stress response, and a lot of what we experience starts to look less like something we directly control and more like something that emerges.

That realization changed how I relate to myself.

Instead of treating every unwanted thought or feeling as a failure of discipline, I started seeing them as outputs. Signals. Sometimes noise. Often the result of inputs I hadn’t paid attention to—sleep, diet, stress, attention.

The most surprising part was what happened next.

Letting go of the idea that I should be able to directly control everything didn’t make things worse. It made things easier.

When I stopped fighting every thought or feeling, they lost some of their force. When I focused on shaping the system—getting the basics right, reinforcing what I actually wanted to be doing—things became more stable without as much effort.

It’s counterintuitive.

Trying to force control made things tighter and more reactive. Accepting that most things are outside direct control created enough space to influence them indirectly.

At this point, I think of it less as controlling outcomes and more as managing conditions.

You don’t control what shows up.

You have a lot of influence over what stays.