Let Go of What You Can’t Control and Win Back Your Peace

It’s 11:47pm.

You’re not even tired in the normal way. Your body feels heavy, but your mind is wide awake, replaying conversations, unfinished emails, and decisions you didn’t make but somehow still feel responsible for.

You have a current financial burden. You’re the caregiver and decision maker of your parents… and let’s not discuss the unspoken tension at work.

You close your laptop, then open it again. Not because there’s something urgent, but because your nervous system doesn’t know how to stand down.

Here’s the part we don’t say out loud enough: a lot of this exhaustion doesn’t come from doing too much. It comes from carrying things that were never meant to be yours alone.

Other people’s choices.
Leadership decisions you weren’t in the room for.
Systems you didn’t design but are expected to survive inside of.

That’s not weakness. That’s over-responsibility. And many of us were trained into it early.

The three circles of control, in real-life language

Most of us have seen Stephen Covey’s Circles of Concern, Influence, and Control before. But when you use them in your real life, they stop being conceptual and start helping you protect your energy.

**Spheres of Control**

**Concern**
Everything that keeps you up at night. The layoffs you’re hearing whispers about. Your team member who’s struggling. The state of the world. The way the culture feels heavier than it used to.
**Influence**
The places where your voice, presence, or actions can shift something, even a little. The conversation you can initiate. The feedback you can give. The boundary you can name. The way you lead in the room you’re already in.
**Control**
The smallest circle, but the most sacred. This is fully yours. Your boundaries. Your self-talk. How you rest. What you agree to carry and what you put down. How you show up to your own life.

Here’s the quiet truth for a lot of black women: we were taught to live almost entirely in Concern for others. To anticipate, hold it together and to manage the emotional temperature of rooms we didn’t create.

And we were rarely given permission to honor Control ourselves.

What happens when you live in the wrong circle

When most of your energy lives in Concern, a few patterns start to show up.

You overfunction.
You try to manage other people’s performance, emotions, or healing because if you don’t, everything feels like it might fall apart.

You stay hyper-vigilant at work.
Always scanning for the next reorg, the next conflict, the next microaggression. Even on “good” days, your body doesn’t fully relax.

You absorb emotional whiplash.
Decisions get made above you. Around you. Without you. And somehow you’re still expected to absorb the impact calmly and keep moving.

Over time, this turns into anxiety.
Resentment.
Numbness.
That quiet thought of quitting without a clear plan, just a deep desire to escape.
You’ve been carrying too much for too long.

A gentle way back to yourself (a 10-minute practice)

This is the exact practice I use, and I turned it into a simple worksheet you can download and use whenever everything feels loud. It’s meant to be something you come back to, not to rush through.

Step 1: Brain dump
Write down everything that’s bothering you. One messy list. No filtering. No fixing.

Step 2: Sort into circles
Next to each item, mark:

Cc for Concern
Ci for Influence
Ct for Control

Be honest. Some things matter deeply and still aren’t yours to control.

Step 3: Choose your Power 3
From Influence or Control, pick three tiny moves for the next 48–72 hours.

Send the email
Ask the question
Cancel the extra meeting
Go to bed earlier

Small is not insignificant. Small is sustainable.

Step 4: Name what you’re releasing
Choose one or two Concern items and write or say:

“I care about this, and I’m choosing not to carry it alone.”

OR

“I care about this but it is not mine to carry”

Say it slowly. Affirm this often.

This is not about shrinking your care

For Black women, being told to “just focus on what you can control” can feel like gaslighting when systemic issues are real. Choose how you move within the system.

Preserve your energy so you can be strategic instead of depleted. Creative instead of reactive. Loud where it actually counts.

When you honor your Circle of Control, it steadies you.

And steadiness changes how you advocate, how you lead, and how you protect yourself.

xoxo, 💕
Antonia, Your Biggest Cheerleader

If this resonates with you,

Download the circles worksheet and use it weekly, especially during heavy seasons.
Share one thing you’re leaving in Concern or focusing on in Influence or Control this week.
Join the BGA list to be the first to know when I’m hosting a live group session where we walk through this practice together.

You don’t need to carry everything to prove your strength. As the Glenda the Good says in The Wizard of Oz "You've always had the power, my dear, you just had to learn it for yourself.”

Own Your Power!