When Everything Feels Out of Control, This Is Where You Start

Here's what I know after 37 years of working with leaders, teams, and organizations: the times that feel the most out of control are exactly when this principle matters most.

Control your controllables.

It sounds simple. It is simple. But simple doesn't mean easy, especially when fear is in the air and uncertainty is everywhere you look. What I've seen over and over again, in recessions, in layoffs, in company-wide crises, is that the people and organizations who come out stronger are not the ones who had the best conditions. They're the ones who stopped focusing on what they couldn't control and started pouring everything into what they could.

I've got two stories that prove this. Both are real. Both changed the way I think about leadership under pressure.

What Fear Actually Does to a Team

Before the stories, let's be honest about what's happening in a lot of organizations right now.

Layoffs are hitting hard. Companies that used to run on thirty people are trying to hit the same numbers with twenty or fifteen. People are showing up with one foot already out the door, not because they don't care, but because they don't know if they're next. And when that kind of fear takes hold, something really predictable happens.

People go into overwhelm. They think of all the things that are going wrong, all the things that might go wrong, all the things they can't fix, and they freeze. They're like someone running on a treadmill and not going anywhere. Lots of mis-directed energy. Zero movement. No momentum.

That's what fear does. It doesn't just make people less productive, it traps them in their own heads at the exact moment their team needs them most.

Organizations make it worse without realizing it. They pull back. They stop having in-person gatherings. They cut meetings. They go remote. All of it makes sense from a cost perspective. But all of it is feeding the fear and draining the connection that keeps people engaged. There's no synergy. There's no energy transfer. There's no sense that we're in this together.

When you control your controllables, you break that cycle. You generate your first step. And that first step creates momentum. And momentum builds confidence. And confidence creates an upward spiral at the exact same moment that external conditions are trying to pull you into a downward one.

That's not a pep talk. That's physics.

The Pharmaceutical Company That Sold Everything They Stood For

A pharmaceutical company booked me back in September to speak at their big November event. This was supposed to be the annual celebration, a high-energy, upbeat, motivational day. They were fiercely independent, had been in business for 25 years, and built their entire identity around never selling to the big guys.

On October 21st, they sold to Abbott Labs.

After 25 years of independence, it was over. And more than 80% of their employees were going to lose their jobs. Nobody knew who was safe and who wasn't.

So in I walk, the guy who was booked to be the upbeat motivational speaker, stepping into a room that felt like the most serious funeral I've ever attended. Arms crossed. Eyes down. Fear sitting in the room like humidity. This was not exactly the environment you imagine when you book a motivational speaker.

But we didn't pretend everything was fine. We didn't ignore what was happening. We focused on controlling our controllables. What could each person in that room do today, and tomorrow, and every day between now and January, regardless of what was coming? What actions were within their reach? What skills could they sharpen? What relationships could they invest in? What could they do right now, in this moment, that no one could take away from them?

The day was phenomenal. And months later, the emails started coming in. From people who had been let go in January. And what they said stuck with me.

They said the shift in mindset, from fear about what was going to happen to their family and how they'd make ends meet, to focusing on what they could do for as long as they were still there, turned those final months into something unexpected. It was like preseason training. Everything they did right during that stretch was transferable. Their skills sharpened. Their performance was visible. And when they landed somewhere new, they didn't show up as casualties. They showed up ready.

That is what controlling your controllables does. It doesn't change the outcome you can't control. It changes everything you can.

The Alaska Company That Quadrupled in Six Months

Before I was a speaker, I was a senior executive at a billion-dollar transportation company. We were the biggest operator to and from Alaska, barge lines, truck lines, air freight. In Alaska, everything moves by air because there are no roads, and there are hundreds of little outposts spread across the state. We had been in business for 75 years.

Then the oil pipeline construction ended and oil prices plummeted and the bottom dropped out. Overnight, we went from dominant to desperate. The people around me were saying we were doomed. Conditions were terrible and getting worse.

I said something different. I said it's not the conditions. It's us.

I convinced the president to let me take our team through a series of teambuilding training sessions across every location. And we stopped blaming the economy and started asking a completely different question: What else could we do?

We started looking hard at the market. We noticed that the Alaska market and the Hawaii market had almost identical logistical profiles. Nobody from our company had ever thought to go to Hawaii. So we went.

We asked ourselves what kind of cargo had the highest value and the fewest carriers willing to handle it. The answer was fine art. Nobody wanted the liability. We built that niche from scratch and we owned it.

Then we realized something nobody had ever pointed out about UPS. UPS advertised that they delivered to every address in North America. But in Alaska, there are no roads to half the addresses on the map. So we built a network of 125 small airlines and made that claim ourselves, because we could actually back it up.

In six months, we quadrupled in size.

Not because the conditions got better. They didn't. Because we stopped being victims of conditions and started being leaders within them. We stopped asking "what's happening to us?" and started asking "what can we do?" That question changed everything.

The Difference Between Treadmill Thinking and Momentum

I use the treadmill image a lot because it captures something important about how overwhelm actually works.

When you're in fear, your brain naturally goes to all the things you can't control. The economy. The market. What your company decides. Whether you'll still have a job next month. You think about all of it, you go in circles around all of it, and you don't do any of it. You're expending enormous energy and making zero progress. That's the treadmill.

Controlling your controllables is how you step off it.

It's not about ignoring the hard things. It's not about pretending the storm isn't happening. It's about deliberately, intentionally redirecting your focus to what is actually within your reach, right now, today.

Your attitude. Your effort. Your preparation. The quality of the work you do in this hour. The relationships you invest in. The skills you sharpen. The conversations you have. The way you show up for your team.

None of those things require the conditions to improve first. You can do all of them right now.

And here's what happens when you do. You take one step. And that step creates a little momentum. And momentum generates confidence. And confidence leads to another step, and another, and before long you've created an upward spiral in the middle of a situation that was trying to push you into a downward one.

That's not magic. That's just what happens when people decide to lead instead of waiting. It’s what happens when you transform from victims to breakthrough leaders.

Two Questions That Change Everything

When you catch yourself stuck in overwhelm, I want you to stop and ask two questions.

The first: what am I focused on right now? If the honest answer is "everything that could go wrong and everything I can't control," you already know what to do. Redirect. What is one thing, just one, within your reach right now?

The second: what's the most important next right step? Not the whole plan. Not the solution to every problem. Just the next step. Because momentum doesn't require a perfect strategy. It just requires movement.

The pharmaceutical company employees couldn't control whether they'd keep their jobs. But they could control how they spent every day between October and January. The Alaska team couldn't control oil prices or the end of the pipeline boom. But they could control where they looked for opportunity and what they built.

In both cases, the external conditions were brutal. In both cases, the people who chose to focus on their controllables came out better than anyone expected.

The Choice Is Yours

Right now, in whatever industry you're in, whatever challenge is sitting on your plate, you have the same choice those people had.

You can focus on what you can't control and run the treadmill. Or you can focus on what you can control and start building momentum.

The conditions don't get a vote on which one you choose. That's yours.

Control your controllables. Take the first step. Build the momentum. The upward spiral is waiting on the other side of that choice.

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Brian Biro is one of America's top speakers on breakthrough leadership, team building, and human performance. Over 37 years he has worked with thousands of organizations helping leaders and teams shift from fear to forward motion. Learn more at brianbiro.com.