Episode 26: Releasing Control Without Becoming a Doormat

Catch this episode on Apple, Spotify, or Android. 

If you’ve ever caught yourself silently grading a partner, colleague, or co-parent on how well they follow your unwritten rules, you’re not alone. We call it “the manual”—that invisible rulebook that promises safety but delivers resentment and exhaustion. In this episode, we unpack why high-achievers default to managing other people’s behavior, how that erodes trust (and your energy), and what it looks like to lead with clean boundaries instead. You’ll practice shifting from policing to self-ownership, so you can say less, do less, and mean more—without abandoning your standards or your self-respect.

What You'll Learn

• How to spot your hidden “manual” and the telltale signs it’s running the show
• A simple boundary formula that centers your behavior, not their compliance
• The difference between care, control, and coercion—and why it matters for intimacy and leadership
• A quick self-coaching loop to interrupt people-pleasing and over-explaining in real time
• One tiny experiment to trade perfection for consistency this week

Episode Transcript

If you lead anything—a business, a team, a household, you might be leading all three of these things—you probably carry an invisible control panel in your head. I do. I’m scanning the week, anticipating challenges, and trying to keep things from slipping. That vigilance built a lot of my success. It’s also exhausting.

This week’s skill is Releasing Control, and we’re going to use two simple tools that I love to teach about in combination: Manuals + Boundaries. And my hope is that as you listen, you think of these mindset skills as little mental games you can play for a 10% calmer day, which you can trust will add up to better leadership at work and more peace at home.

So one of my first coaches taught me to think about our need for control as having these little subconscious instruction manuals that our brains write. This conceptual analogy really helped me visualize and understand my inner world. I’ve talked about manuals before on the podcast, and it’s one of those concepts I’ll keep coming back to because I find that applying mindset strategies at different grain sizes to different situations is how I have started to master them. 

So a manual is the invisible rulebook we hand people in our heads—including ourselves. Manuals sound like:

- “People shouldn’t message me at night.”

- “We should have the update by 10 a.m.”

- “The kids should remember the routine.”

- And my recent favorite: “I should be perfectly productive every single day,” even while our family is adjusting and my body is going through some challenging health stuff.

When I buy into a manual, I attach my calm to compliance. If they follow my rules, I relax. If they don’t, I spin. That’s me outsourcing my peace.

A boundary, on the other hand, manages me: “If X happens, I will Y.”

- “If messages arrive after 6 p.m., I’ll reply at 8 a.m.”

- “If the update isn’t in by 10, I’ll move the decision to the next sprint—no scramble.”

- “If teeth aren’t brushed by 7:45, stories are shorter.”

- “If I’m under ~70% capacity today, I’ll cut scope and communicate timelines by 3 p.m.—no heroics.”

No one else has to change for me to feel steadier.

For me, right now in my life, I’m really looking at all of the manuals I have for myself. I recently took several days off and gave myself permission to do nothing “useful”—no optimizing, no self-assignments—and the relief came from seeing the manual I’d been running (“I should be productive every day, even on ‘off’ days”) and dropping it, because trying to earn calm with control just doesn’t work. And I can’t overstate that there are layers to this work. When I first learned this concept, I really applied it to everyone in my life I realized I was trying to subtly control so that I could feel better. I’ve cleaned so much of that up, but the deepest work is always on yourself. 

For high-achieving women and working moms, the math is simple: life admin is infinite, leadership is open-ended. If your peace depends on all of that lining up, peace will be rare. So today, we’re bringing your calm back to your side of the net with one sentence you can use today at work and at home.

So let’s do some coaching!

WHY THIS FEELS SO HARD

Let’s start by naming why releasing control is hard, so that you can stop fighting yourself about it.

First, the brain prefers certainty over rest. When outcomes matter, uncertainty sets off a quiet alarm. Our little instruction manuals promise to silence the alarm—“If they do X by Y, I can relax.” If external circumstances line up for us, it works briefly, and our brains latch onto that as evidence that these shoulds are working for us.

Second, many of us were trained to earn safety by over-delivering. We learned that filling gaps gets praise. If you carry identities like “dependable” or “fixer,” stepping back can feel like failing at being you. Add the working-mom reality—life admin is infinite; your work is open-ended—and your brain concludes that control is the responsible choice.

There’s also optics. At work, visible effort gets noticed; quiet clarity doesn’t. Late-night heroics read as commitment. Clear boundaries read as…nothing. So control gets reinforced.

Finally, capacity shifts. New routines, health changes, sleep inconsistency—all real. If your self-manual says “110% every day,” you’ll feel anxious even when you’re doing enough. You’re not broken; the rulebook is broken.

Now let me visualize our two tools today for you.

Imagine two small booklets in your hands:

- First we have a manual, which follows this formula: “They should X so I can feel Y,” or “I should always X so I can feel Y.” A manual gives away your emotional control to something outside of you, to someone else or to you showing up perfectly.

- A boundary, on the other hand, follows a different formula. A boundary says: “If X happens, I will Y.” A boundary gives you options. A boundary is focused on  your actions only. It brings your calm back inside your control.

You can hear the difference in the chain your brain runs all day. Remember our self-coaching model that we can analyze anything going on and sort it into five cascading concepts: circumstances trigger our thoughts, which create our feelings, which fuel our actions, which create our results.

When a message lands at 9:12 p.m., notice the two paths. On the manual path, my thought is, “They shouldn’t message me at night,” which makes me irritated and on high alert. I crack the laptop “just to check,” half-watch my inbox, and ruminate. By responding, I quietly teach the system to expect me at night, which gives me even more to control tomorrow.

On the boundary path, the circumstance is the same, but my thought is, “If messages arrive after 6 p.m., I’ll reply at 8 a.m.” That thought feels steadier. I close the laptop and actually reply in the morning. Evenings calm down, and expectations reset.

On a low-energy day—say I’m at sixty to seventy percent—the manual sounds like, “I should be at one hundred and ten percent today.” That thought creates pressure and a little shame, so I overcommit, push through, and delay communicating. The result is feeling behind and reinforcing the myth that I must always be at full power.

The boundary version starts with the same body reality and a different thought: “If I’m under about seventy percent capacity, I’ll cut scope and communicate timelines by 3 p.m.” That thought brings relief and clarity. I trim the workload and send one clean update, which builds trust and keeps the pace sustainable.

At home, it’s 7:45 p.m. and the kids aren’t ready for bed. The manual thought—“They should remember the routine”—makes me tense and annoyed, so I start nagging and micromanaging, and bedtime stretches out for everyone.

The boundary thought is simple: “If teeth aren’t brushed by 7:45, stories are shorter.” That feels neutral and resolved. I follow through once, calmly. Over time, the cause-and-effect becomes clear, there’s less arguing, and there’s less for me to control.

That’s the whole move: spot the manual, write the boundary, place it where it lives.

In the next part, I’ll coach you through doing this once, in real time, so you have a sentence you can use today.

COACHING

Grab a pen if you can. If not, just think it through and jot it later.

Pick one “should” that’s been buzzing. Keep it small and real.

And just a note here that sometimes even naming your manuals can feel hard at first. Because they are subconscious. So you can’t see this right away, just pick a problem in your life. A situation or a person and then ask yourself what you’re making it mean that feels bad to you. You will find your expectation there if you’re willing to look at your shoulds.

And one more note, the whole point here is to help you feel 10 percent better. So if you are noticing shoulds that feel GOOD to you, pick a different situation. We want the shoulds and should nots that feel icky, frustrating, or stressful.

For example:

“People shouldn’t message me at night.”

“We should have had the update by 10 a.m.”

“I should be perfectly productive today.”

Say your one line once in a normal voice.

Now state the facts without adjectives.

“A message came at 9:12 p.m.”

“There was no update in Monday’s meeting.”

“I finished four of nine tasks.”

Facts lower the temperature.

Name the feeling that rides with your manual for how things should have happened—irritated, pressured, anxious, inadequate—and locate it in your body. Chest tight? Jaw clenched? Stomach fluttery? One slow exhale like you’re breathing through a straw. You don’t have to fix the feeling to lead.

Say this out loud: “Right now, my calm is hitched to compliance.”

If they follow my rule, I relax. If they don’t, I spin. That’s me outsourcing my peace.

Here’s the pivot: “I can’t control them; I can structure me.”

Write one boundary using this exact frame: “If X happens, I will Y.”

Choose the version that matches your situation:

- Work: “If messages arrive after 6 p.m., I will reply at 8 a.m.”

- Work (planning): “If the update isn’t in by 10 a.m., I will move the decision to the next sprint—no scramble.”

- Self: “If I’m under about seventy percent capacity, I will cut scope and communicate timelines by 3 p.m.”

Say your sentence once, calmly. Notice how your body responds. Unfamiliar is fine.

Decide where this boundary lives so you don’t have to remember it:

Maybe on a sticky note right by your computer.

If others are involved, write one neutral line you’ll say or paste when needed:

“To avoid the scramble, if the update isn’t in by 10, I’ll move decisions to next sprint.”

“If messages come after 6, I’ll reply at 8 a.m.”

Picture the part of your day when you might use the boundary. You might feel a tug to explain, apologize, or jump in and fix. Place a hand on your desk and quietly remind yourself: “My calm is mine.” Say the sentence once. Move on.

Pick one tiny signal to notice by tonight: fewer after-hours pings, one less scramble, laptop closed when you said, or your body a notch softer at 6 p.m.

That’s it: one “should,” one boundary, one use today.

CONCLUSION

So let’s summarize what we’ve learned today.

Releasing control isn’t about becoming unbothered or pretending you don’t care. It’s about bringing your calm back to your side of the net. Manuals outsource your peace. Boundaries bring it back.

I’m practicing this right alongside you. When I took those days off and dropped the “be useful” rule, I could suddenly see my self-manual: be perfectly productive every day. That rule didn’t make me productive; it made me tense. The moment I wrote a clean boundary—If I’m under about seventy percent capacity, I will change my plans and figure out how to rest—my body exhaled. Same life, different leadership.

Even right now I’m practicing this because I wanted to have this podcast recorded today, and I’m just finishing drafting it at 4:43 pm. I oscillated between tense and calm all day as I floated between my manual, which said that I should have been able to finish this draft by noon and my boundary, which says if I don’t record today, I’ll do it at 9:30 am tomorrow morning.

And remember that if you’re a working mom, there’s always more you could do—more forms, more laundry, more “quick things,” more “one last edit.” If your peace depends on all of that lining up, peace will be rare. Today we did something different. We made calm a decision, not a reward. So pick one “should,” write one boundary, put it where it lives, and use it once before the day ends—then notice the 10% lift.