INTRODUCTION
YOU HAVE LESS CONTROL THAN YOU THINK. GET OVER IT!
At the heart of so much of our stress and anxiety about feeling stuck in uncertainty lies a feeling that we have no control. Whether we are thinking about our jobs, our kids, our relationships, our colleagues and the people around us, the economy, or our politics, we have a deep desire to have some level of control over our lives. We need to be in control. We worry and get caught up in overthinking and overanalyzing what lies ahead because we so badly want our future to turn out the way we want, within our realm of control.
Somewhere along our journey in life, however, things don’t work out as we expect them to, no matter how hard we try to control things. This is especially true in our new global, hyperconnected, superfast world, where things are so complicated and random events and changes occur seemingly out of nowhere. As a result, we get overwhelmed and consumed by the chaos, unable to move forward.
We attempt to control but we cannot. We may control the neighborhood where we choose to live but we can’t control our neighbors. We may choose the place where we work but we can’t control our bosses, colleagues, or customers. We have some control over the seat we want on the plane but we can’t control who’s seated next to us or whether the flight will be late. We choose our friends but we cannot control what they say or think. We can barely control our own children, so how can we possibly control the essence of life itself?
We think we have control but we don’t. And this scares us. This loss of control is the root of much of our stress and overthinking.
In the beginning, it was difficult for me to accept that we may never have had control over life in the first place, because it’s contrary to everything I was taught while growing up. We plan our education, map out our career, decide on our relationships, and make important life decisions or choices based on this very notion that we have some kind of order, some control, a plan.
For a long time I fought this idea of letting go of control—as any reasonable person would when trying to let go of something that is so attached to the very fiber of his or her being. But the stress and overthinking was hurting me from the inside out. Luckily, through some unexpected, fun, and interesting experiences in the country, which destroyed any notions of order and control, I was forced to let go, and I realized that we can never really conquer the chaos. We can only embrace it.
And after we embrace it, we can start reveling in it.
Letting go of control is a wonderfully freeing experience that opens us up to new, fresh possibilities. It leads us down paths we never would have walked, introducing us to new people, new opportunities, and some of the best experiences in our lives. It brings out strengths we never knew existed inside of us. It brings forward ideas hidden inside, which helps us to create, develop, and flourish. It allows us to live freely because we’re no longer feeling as though we’re carrying the burden of the world on our shoulders.
“Do you want me to just give up and wait for things to happen?” you might ask.
Not exactly. What I’m suggesting is not that we sit back and give up on life but that we in fact work harder on the things that we can control: our own words, thoughts, and actions. By making a choice to redirect our frequently wasted effort to control others or the conditions around us, by refocusing that intense passion on our own actions, living in each precious moment, we can begin to move forward into a life we want. This is really the only certainty we have: ourselves.
It isn’t easy to redirect that control to ourselves, but there are three principles I developed while learning to embrace the chaos in a confusing place like India. I’ve organized the main parts of this book around these three principles.
First, accept. By accepting the unpredictable, uncertain, imperfect, and complicated nature of life, we can begin to let go of the past, let go of plans gone wrong, let go of our narrative of the way life ought to be and begin focusing on the way it is. We must accept that the only control we have is over ourselves.
Second, don’t overthink. Let’s stop overanalyzing, overplanning, or trying to predict what will happen tomorrow. We spend so much time thinking about the future, which we cannot control anyway, that we miss some of the best times of our lives, happening around us right now.
Third, move forward. Take action. Taking charge of ourselves, our goals, our purpose, our thoughts, our words, our actions, and the way we navigate the chaos—these are the things are that are completely within our control. When we are armed with knowledge of our own resilience, taking action can create more certainty than waiting around for perfection.
This book covers a series of trips I took to India over the past twenty years that helped me rediscover the joy of living by letting go of my illusions of control, order, and perfection. I realize that telling stressed-out readers to let go and stop trying to control everything is about as helpful as telling someone in a rainstorm to not get wet. So my approach in this book is less to share advice and principles—although I can’t help doing that from time to time—than to invite you to join me on these trips and see these Embrace the Chaos moments in action.
Even the details of the trips are secondary to the people, the ordinary Indians, described in these chapters. In this remarkable country of confusion, chaos, and celebration, more than a billion people are trying, working, loving, exploring, living, and moving forward, often with a quiet joy that cannot be stopped. They are my teachers and my inspiration, and not a day goes by when I don’t use something that I learned from them.
I don’t expect many readers will ever travel to India, but I find stories from India can be useful in anyone’s daily life because India is a country bursting with what I believe to be the four forces of chaos that cause so many of us stress and worry: uncertainty, unpredictability, complexity, and speed. Go on a journey anywhere—to a tourist destination or to a business meeting—and things have a way of going wrong. You get lost, find yourself stuck in the middle of complicated situations, and always run into some sort of roadblock. There are rituals being performed in numerous places of worship; constant power outages; dilapidated infrastructure; and frequent political infighting, strikes, and rallies, from the villages to the modern steel metropolises.
The inequalities also are stark. A child no older than three, wearing a torn, dirty, oversized shirt and no underpants, sits by the side of the road, barely paying attention to the horns of the little white cars buzzing by. Meanwhile, a stone’s throw away, the Burberry boutique beckons New Delhi’s elite.
In addition, Indians face the complexity of dozens of languages, endless regulations, and the unpredictability of companies being shut down or shifting business models.
In India, one doesn’t know what’s going to happen next or when it’s going to happen, and when it does happen, it seems scary and comes out of nowhere, fast! The place has a way of completely destroying any notions of control that we think we have. As a visitor, you get frustrated, exhausted, sick in the stomach (not always from the food), overwhelmed, anxious, stressed, and plain old angry, finding yourself with no control over anything. You don’t know what’s going to happen next and you don’t know which way to go.
It’s when things seem the most hopeless and tense, however, that you find yourself letting go and going with the flow. Something happens out of nowhere and things change, and suddenly you realize that it’s starting to turn around. Somehow, through a great deal of churning, things work out in the end—not as you expected, but sometimes even better.
And you realize it wasn’t so bad after all. In fact, you’re a transformed person, finding joy and fulfillment in the smallest things. Liberated from the shackles of an orderly framework that your mind no longer needs to control, you begin to stop analyzing life and start living it.
India is a place of extremes, contradictions, and inequities, but there’s something about it that wakes you up to the realities of life. For me, India’s allure was not in the perspective it provided me, the understanding that they have so little while we have so much more back home and I ought to be grateful for that. It wasn’t about “Eat your broccoli, kid, because kids in India are starving.” Instead, the allure of India as a training ground was that, despite crumbling infrastructure, a complex society of many different castes, cultures, and languages, and extreme poverty and awful conditions, people continue to be happy. They forge ahead in their lives and their work, sometimes with joy in their eyes, kindness in their hearts, and passionate effort. Despite the unpredictability, Indians continue to move forward.
As I looked back over twenty years of experience in India, I started to learn and grow. Observations led to insight. Insight led me to a better understanding of how people in India move forward in life and work without having grandiose plans, expectations, or forecasts.
Once I began to notice the invisible fabric that helps tie Indians together in their day-to-day lives, I began to feel less stressed and anxious about my own life. I started to catch myself overanalyzing and overthinking, and I began reminding myself to let go of my past notions and to keep moving forward.
After reflecting on what I had learned and putting these valuable lessons into practice, I became less worried about the future and started to become more engaged in life. At work, I began creating again, developing new ideas and solutions and, with the support of my boss, implementing those ideas to good effect. At home, I became more relaxed, reveling in the daily adventures with the kids, in helping them with their homework, in teaching them to play sports, and taking advantage of every moment. I also started trying new things and explored writing again, sharing my thoughts and learning to help others as well as I could. Little by little, my writing gained momentum, eventually leading me to write this book.
Although the uncertainties and unpredictable nature of life didn’t go away, I learned to cope with it better. Ultimately, I realized that learning to embrace the chaos was not about fixing my career or quitting my job to live on some faraway island devoid of any chaos (although that does sound appealing). For me, it is more about learning to take action and to participate in life, accepting that the chaos of modern life will continue to exist—with or without my approval—and choosing to move forward anyway.