BUILT for Impact Ep. 8: Letting Go of Control

Have you ever noticed how the harder you try to control everything, the more chaotic life starts to feel? I spent so many years gripping tightly to every detail— timelines, outcomes, expectations— believing that if I could just manage everything, life would finally feel stable. But the moment that everything shifted for me, the moment that life became lighter, more peaceful, and strangely more aligned was the moment I stopped trying to force it and I let things flow. What if the peace you're searching for doesn't come from controlling life, but from trusting it? Welcome back to the Built for Impact podcast. I'm Jake Burhans, and this is the podcast where inner peace meets high performance, and where building your dream life starts from the inside out. If you're new here, the BUILD Framework guides everything that we do. Break limiting beliefs, upgrade your operating system, imagine your new life, let go of the past, transcend yourself. All 5 pillars. It's like a loop that you're constantly doing every day, every week, every quarter. And this is the loop that you have to follow to get to the 2.0 version of yourself. Every single— I'm doing this every single day. I am breaking limiting beliefs about things, things that don't serve me any longer, things that don't serve the 2.0 version of myself. I'm upgrading my operating system, meaning my thoughts and the accompanying emotions and the behaviors and the actions, which lead to different results. Part of upgrading your operating system is also upgrading your nervous system to feel safe at these higher energetic states, right, of, of abundance and creativity. I'm imagining my future every single night, every single night and every single morning. I'm playing a movie in my mind of what my life's gonna look like, because the second that I choose it in my mind, it's real in the quantum field. It's just about having the courage to act, the faith to believe that's gonna happen, and the persistence to push until it comes into, it comes into reality and then transcend into that 2.0 self. So that's the loop we gotta do. Today's episode is all about a huge shift you can make in your inner world, letting go of control. Now, we talked about this a couple episodes ago about letting go. I wanted to go in a little deeper. This is more of a story setting, something that I realized, and, and this isn't letting go of control. I think people think like, oh, you know, I'm not gonna be able to have the results I want 'cause I'm letting go. This isn't like a passive checked out way, but this is a deeply trusting, aligned, and powerful way of letting go. So I wanna reframe your idea of what it means to let go of control. The moment peace arrives is really when you stop trying to control everything. That's a huge lesson that I learned. Most of us are living in a, in a constant kind of low-level state of tension, right? We're trying to control outcomes, people, timing, circumstances, and it's really like an exhausting and, might I say, impossible job. Always trying to control everything. You are basically trying to get to some goal or some desired outcome in your life, and you put it up to your mind to try to figure out how to get there. And that's the problem. So when things don't line up exactly as they did in your mind, you know, you're trying to get from A to B and your mind's telling you to take A, B, C, D, E, F, G, all the way to Z. That's how you get to your destination. The universe works at a much more intelligent level, a higher level, right? The universe will get you to your goal, but it's gonna go A, C, F, Q, R, O, M, N, Z, and then it gets you to Z. It gets you to Z in a way that is completely illogical to the brain, but is absolutely perfect in the grand scheme of the universe. So things that look like setbacks or challenges, they're all connected and they're all perfect, delivering you exactly what you need to grow into exactly the type of person you need to become to be able to hold your desire or to hold your goal. Peace doesn't come from trying to master life. It comes from trusting it, trusting that every event that happens to you is absolutely perfect. My new favorite mantra is everything is perfect. Things hit the fan, employee quits, it's a down month. Everything's perfect because there's some lesson out of this situation, circumstance, event that I need to embody to get to where I'm trying to get. It's the most massive realization I ever had. You're always going to be supported, okay? We have all this fear and doubt and worry. You are 100% figuring it out in your life. Think back, think back. You're alive right now, aren't you? You have always figured it out 100% of the time. Undefeated, never lost, right? Never missed. So what's different about now when something comes up, a situation that's challenging, this and that, we drop into fear, anxiety, worry, and okay, those emotions are good because they make us pay attention, but we don't need to cling on to those things, right? It doesn't help us think. When you're in those lower-level energetic states of fear and worry and anxiety and frustration, anger, you can't think clearly. You're cut off from the creative, the creative intelligence of the universe. You can't execute clearly. You're not relaxed. You're so tight. Your energy, it's like stepping on the gas, right, and the brake at the same time, like Joe Dispenza says. You're just— RPMs are on 7. You can't think clearly. You're draining your energy quickly. It is not a way to live life. It's because you're trying to control everything. Your mind told you that, hey, to get to your goal, you need to go A, B, C, D, E, F, G. But the universe says, no, we're gonna go A, B, F, O, Q, L, N, R. Then we're gonna get you to Z, but you gotta trust my way because I'm the intelligence that, that brought you into this world, right? I'm the intelligence that grows the trees and heals the cuts on your arm and beats your heart and digests your food. So why don't you leave it up to me? And when I did that, I just, oh, so much tension off of my shoulders. I want you to understand, like, even looking at today, what in your life are you gripping onto? Where are you trying to force the outcome? And I want you to also understand that everything is connected. Nothing is random. Like I said, when you zoom out, life reveals these patterns. Oh, that, oh, that's why that needed to happen. Oh yeah, employee blew up at me there. That was actually really good cuz I needed to realize something that, you know, I wasn't treating everyone fairly even though I, I, I thought I was, but that was the lesson I needed to learn. Or, oh, I missed this meeting, right? I missed this meeting. I really wanted to get there, but oh, it was a great, great opportunity for two people that hadn't really connected within the company to form a really good relationship, which is gonna be huge for the future of the company. That's what happens. But my mind is telling me, no, I gotta do all these things. But the universe says, hey man, I'm working on a different schedule. All right? So I need you to relax. I need you to surrender to what's happening and just show up and do your best. Okay? Just show up and do your best. Release your focus on the outcome. So think of every challenge that you've ever faced, right? Many of them have pushed you, stretched you, or redirected you in ways that only make sense later. I'm sure you can look back at tough times in your life, situation in the moment, you're like, why is this happening? But it's clear as day why it happened after the fact. So let's use that frame in the present moment. So when something's challenging or difficult, Understand that this is happening for a reason, and you're gonna look back on this moment no matter how difficult it is and realize, ah, yep, that's why I needed that. But you gotta trust that everything is always working out in your favor. The universe is trying to give you abundance. It's trying to put you in the best positions. It wants you to succeed, right? That spark is within all of us, right? It's within all of us. I also want you to think about reframing, like I said, those setbacks that you're experiencing right now as a stepping stone that's preparing you for something bigger. So that's how we can use that in the present moment. Also, stop labeling experiences as good or bad. That's the mind, right? The moment you stop assigning these moral labels to events as good or bad, right or wrong, you're like emotionally free, right? Everything just becomes feedback, information, part of your evolution. Because when you're labeling something as good or bad, it's basically you're trying to get somewhere. Like I said, you're trying to get to your destination, your goal, your desired reality. Your mind is trying to figure out how to get you there. Now, when things unfold in a way that is not in alignment with how your mind believes that you should get there, you label it as bad if it gets you off track, or good if it keeps you on track. But in reality, the second that you decide that you want something, you already have it. That's quantum physics, right? The second that your awareness— you place your awareness on a potential future outcome, it begins to collapse into reality. But that gestation period between placing your awareness on it and it collapsing into reality is when it's going A, B, Q, R, M, N, L, F, G, Z, right? It's going on the universe's schedule. So you have to step back and understand it's all part of it. When it looks like it's not going the right way, it actually is. But that's where the faith comes into play. The trust. You have to trust that things are working out for you and that's going to be good. That's part of breaking your limiting beliefs that everything has to be a struggle and things aren't working out for you. Hey, Let's, let's change those beliefs. Things are working out for me. Think about this this week as well. When something stressful happens this week, asking yourself, what if this is happening for me and not to me? It's a huge thing to reflect on. So when you release control, right, you're, you are accessing more clarity because you're not in this fight or flight state. You're in a calm, creative state. We always want to stay in a creative state of being. What does that mean? You're relaxed. You're at peace. Right? You're not— because when you're in this fight or flight, fear, worry, anxiety, it's like you're— the RPMs of the car on freaking 8 and the transmission's about to blow. You can't think clearly, you can't act clearly. You are, you are zapping the energy so quickly out of your body. Like, 2 hours of fight or flight, you are absolutely wiped out, you know? And people live their whole lives fight or flight, all day long, 8 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year. And we wonder why we have all these diseases. You look at epigenetics. What is epigenetics? It's the study of the influence of genes from outside the cell. So these genes are literally getting influenced by these states of energy, these lower states of energy, of stress, fear, worry, anxiety, influencing disease, disease. And it's creating cancers, it's creating all these diseases, right? Disease, the word literally means dis- ease. You are at dis-ease if you have a disease. So put yourself at ease. Stop trying to control everything. Trust everything's working out your favor. You're gonna be okay. You figure it out 100% of the time. You're— it's gonna be no different this time. You're gonna figure it out. Wrapping it up here, letting go of control doesn't mean letting go of intention. Okay? So you're still focused on what you're doing. You're still taking action, but you're showing up with what life gives you and you're making the most of it, right? You're— nothing is good or bad. We make it so. It means accepting every moment as part of your evolution. It means just relax. So where in your life are you still trying to control the outcomes that you could simply surrender to? This is a core part of the BUILD Framework. Okay? Surrender. It's letting go. Letting go. If you wanna, if you wanna look into a book on this, The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer. Michael Singer's probably, from all the stuff I've read, one of the leading people on this art of letting go. I mean, everyone talks about it, but I think his Articulation, his work on it is really, really excellent. The Untethered Soul. And then he has The Surrender Experiment where he literally surrendered to the flow of life's events for 40 years and he ended up build— building like a billion-dollar company. It's an incredible story. It's called The Surrender Experiment. And then he has a new one called Living Untethered, which is also really, really good. So those 3 books, I crushed 'em all. I was driving to Arizona earlier this year and it was like 40 hours in the car and I just listened to all 3 audiobooks back to back to back. But those are great books if you wanna dive deeper into that. If this episode resonated with you, share it with a friend who needs a reminder to trust the dang process. Make sure you are subscribed. If you haven't left a review, I really, really appreciate it on Spotify or Apple and subscribe. Oh yeah, hit the bell icon too. So, you know, I'm coming out these every Monday at 6:00 AM to get you in the right state of being for the week. So we can continue to build that inner world from the inside out. We'll see you next time. All the peace, all the power.