The Inner Wealth Podcast

Ep185. The Illusion of Control: Why Trying to Control the Future is Keeping You Stuck.

• Mike Kitko

Share episode

Send me a Text Message!

In this episode of the Inner Wealth Podcast, we dive deep into control programs—the subconscious mechanisms we develop to avoid pain, stress, and failure. These hidden patterns shape how we think, act, and make decisions, often without us even realizing it. Whether it’s the need for perfection, overthinking every decision, or trying to control how others perceive us, these behaviors create an illusion of safety while keeping us stuck.

Mike explores how unfamiliarity, uncertainty, and unpredictability trigger control programs and how to break free from them. He shares personal experiences, practical insights, and a powerful mindset shift to help you trust life, embrace the unknown, and create real freedom.

Key Takeaways

  • Control programs are rooted in fear. They exist because we haven’t built trust in ourselves, life, or our ability to handle uncertainty.
  • The most common control programs:
    • Perfectionism – Believing that if we get everything right, we can avoid failure or rejection.
    • Overthinking and overanalyzing – Trying to mentally control the future by planning for every possible outcome.
    • Trying to control the future – Seeking certainty before taking action, convinced that perfect planning eliminates risk.
    • Isolation and withdrawal – Avoiding vulnerability by pulling away from others to maintain a false sense of control.
    • Controlling the way others perceive you – Managing how you are seen to avoid judgment, rejection, or disapproval.
  • Control doesn’t create safety—it creates stress. The more we try to control life, the more exhausted and disconnected we become.
  • Freedom comes from surrender. Learning to trust the unpredictable nature of life is the key to peace, joy, and real success.

Notable Quotes

"Control programs don’t make life easier—they just make you feel like you’re avoiding disaster. But in reality, they’re keeping you stuck in a cycle of fear."

"Perfectionism, overthinking, and trying to control how people see you don’t actually protect you. They just keep you playing small."

"If you don’t trust life, you’ll spend all your time rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic instead of actually living."

"You’ve survived every challenge you’ve faced so far. So why are you still afraid of the unknown?"

"Life isn’t fragile. Your lack of trust in life is what makes it feel fragile."


Music Credit: "What's Left of Me" by Wes Hoffman & Friends


Click here to access details about the February 21-22, 2025 in-person Choose Your Destiny Live Intensive just outside of St. Louis, MO.

Click here to visit our website to access free tools and resources, our Meditation Bundle, upcoming events, and our coaching service offerings.

My Social Media:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mikekitko
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mike_kitko
Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mikekitko
Subscribe to my YouTube: / @mikekitko

Mike Kitko is an executive self-mastery coach, speaker and author. He found external success through powerful titles, incomes, and material possessions. He ultimately fell into depression, toxic abuse of alcohol, and the near collapse of his family before he began a journey of internal happiness and success.

Speaker 1:

Do you ever wake up feeling like there's something missing in your life? Do you ever feel the need to escape your business? Are you running your life or is your life running you? I'm Mike Kitko and I'll help you design and create a life so authentic and aligned with who you really are you'll get excited just to wake up. I'll help you create real wealth, success and freedom from the inside out. Welcome to the Inner Wealth Podcast, where we learn and choose to live inspired each and every day.

Speaker 1:

A lot of the work that I do in the Inner Wealth Mastermind, in the Inner Wealth community, with my private coaching clients or in workshops has to do with moving beyond current circumstances to higher level circumstances. So oftentimes I work with a lot of entrepreneurs and oftentimes what I find is sometimes an entrepreneur is ready to level up and ready to 10x, maybe 10x the business, or just level up and upgrade in some area of their business. But there are also times that there are people in my community that maybe have a W-2 job and they're looking to make the leap into entrepreneurism but they're just scared to make the jump. They're just they. They lack the, the, the emotional courage they map. They lack the ability. They lack the, the consciously want to make the jump, but it's like, unconsciously, their mind and their body just puts up stop signs and you know timeouts and and just holds them back and and them back, and there's a pretty profound reason for this. Now, there's a lot of reasons, but a lot of mental pattern issues and things that are thoughts and beliefs that are in the way, but there's also this emotional clutter and this emotional stuff that we carry around. So sometimes emotions get so intense that people, when they're getting ready to make a jump or make a leap into something different, the unfamiliar is going to dredge up a lot of intense emotion and some people struggle to deal with that.

Speaker 1:

So I like to go back to the story of when I went to boot camp at Parris Island, south Carolina. And when you get dropped off to boot camp at Parris Island, it's not like there's a lack of fear. There's not a lack of emotion. So there's no recruit, a Marine recruit or Marine that's graduated boot camp. There's not one single recruit or Marine that doesn't feel fear, that doesn't feel intense fear.

Speaker 1:

The issue is do you know how to? Are you emotionally intelligent enough and are you emotionally courageous enough to feel the fear and continue to move into the mission, towards the mission, instead of run away. And sometimes, when someone is in a W-2 job and they want to make the leap into entrepreneurism or they want to make a leap, or maybe the entrepreneur who wants a 10X but has to start, like building a team, and instead of you know, maybe that person was relying on processes before, but now you need to start building a team to manage the processes that lack of familiarity, that lack of yeah, I'll just say lack of familiarity, is going to be really, really uncomfortable. And when there's that much discomfort, you either get the choice to move towards the mission or away from the mission, and not everybody is willing to move into the discomfort of new circumstances. So oftentimes when someone stays stuck, when they say they want something but they won't move towards it, it's not because they really don't want it. They do, but they don't have the awareness, the mental and emotional awareness and the mental and emotional courage to move into new circumstances.

Speaker 1:

So there's three words that I want to throw up, that I want to anchor to and I want to anchor this episode in to throw up, that I want to anchor to and I want to anchor this episode in. Number one is unfamiliarity, number two is uncertainty. But then there's a third. That's a big word and I'm not talking about the length of it, but I'm talking about the heaviness of it, and that's the unpredictability of life. Now, when you struggle with unfamiliarity, when you struggle with uncertainty, when you struggle with unpredictability, you're going to start to use and develop some tools to offset and compensate your inability or your unhealthy relationship with unfamiliarity, uncertainty and unpredictability. And some people call them coping mechanisms, but really they're control programs, and that's what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about control programs and the reason that we would need to try to control circumstances in our life.

Speaker 1:

Now, for the average human being and if you're listening to the Inner Wealth Podcast, you're not an average human being because we talk about some esoteric stuff, we talk about some spiritual concepts, we talk about some things that typically we can't prove, that typically we can't prove, we can't see, we can't fully, we know instinctively, but we can't point to something and say see, I told you so. All we can do is trust and move forward, built a healthy relationship with our inner knower. We haven't built a healthy relationship with life. We haven't built a trusting relationship with life, and that's okay. It doesn't mean there's anything wrong. It just means that maybe you're not aware of the control. But most people would say of course you're trying to control circumstances. Of course you're trying to accumulate wealth, of course you're trying to. You're trying to, you know, control the perception that people have of you. And we just, you know, we just dismiss these things as just a normal part of being a human being. And to a lot of people that are just completely unconscious, they are a normal part of being a human being. But they're a very fear-based part of being a human being. And we develop these mechanisms because we don't trust life and we don't understand fully the benefit and the power of surrender and going with the flow of life and trusting where life's taking us.

Speaker 1:

Now I want to talk about a couple of the areas that we develop control mechanisms and control programs in our life. Number one it's about our image. It's about us, it's about who we are. We develop these control programs because we try to get the people to see us in a certain way. We try to get them to think about us in a certain way.

Speaker 1:

Oftentimes, when we're living through a control program. We're shrinking ourself and we're shifting ourself and we're bending ourself and we're re-identifying ourself and showing up in a way to get people to view us through a certain lens or to not show people a certain aspect of ourself. We give away our authenticity, we give away our uniqueness, we pretend that we're just like everybody else or we're shutting off parts and turning up parts of ourselves because we want to make sure people see us in a certain way. Guys, I wrote a book back in 2018, I believe 2018, 2019, called the Imposter in Charge, and that's exactly what the imposter syndrome is.

Speaker 1:

It's all about even when you, when you have an unhealthy relationship with your authenticity and your uniqueness and you don't believe you struggle. You have these stories that who you are at your core isn't good enough to succeed, who you are at your core isn't valuable enough to just show up and win. You have to shift yourself, you have to bend yourself. You have to. You have to pretend to be something that you're not. You have to shift yourself, you have to bend yourself, you have to pretend to be something that you're not, or you have to pretend that there's parts of you that don't exist and we literally try to get life and get others to see us through a certain lens.

Speaker 1:

That's a control mechanism that's based on perception. It's based on us instinctual, deep, deep, survival-based perspective or attribute of us that's very tribal-based, that wants to be accepted, because hundreds of thousands of years ago our ancestors, when they were in a tribe, if someone got ostracized or kicked out of the tribe, they were going to die, because the only way you could survive is by your tribal nature. And everybody pitches in. And if somebody was left to their own devices and left on their own, there was no way they were going to succeed and there was no way they were going to survive. So if you were judged harshly and if you weren't seen as strong and if you weren't seen as valuable and if you weren't seen as strong and if you weren't seen as valuable and if you weren't seen as worthy, if you weren't seen in a certain light, then you might lose the approval of the tribe. And if you lost the approval of the tribe, then you found yourself without a tribe and then you next, you found yourself dead not long after that and at a very deep level in our subconscious mind, we're still living with that need for acceptance and need for approval, even though we're so far beyond that and our tribes have gone from hundreds to maybe the family unit or the team or a small group of friends, hoop of friends. We're no longer. We don't no longer need to fit in with the masses of society, but we're still operating like we need to fit in with the masses of society.

Speaker 1:

The need to control the perceptions of others or to bend yourself and shift yourself is for approval and it's so that you can be accepted and for the sake of the control is for the sake of keeping things familiar, keeping things certain, and keeping things certain and keeping things predictable. And when we live with an unhealthy relationship with the unfamiliar, with the uncertain and the unpredictable, then of course we're going to try to control all of these, all of these things in the world, including what's what's happening, like we might even punish ourself in a certain way. And there's a, there's a control program that's based on self-inflicted punishment. When you're used to self-inflicted punishment, at least you can control something. And when you feel like that's the only thing you can control, then you do that because you're just human beings, at the primitive level, at the unconscious level, look for something to control when they don't have, when we don't have a healthy relationship with the uncertain, with the unfamiliar and with the unpredictable. Okay, that's the first piece. So it's perception of ourself.

Speaker 1:

Next is just our circumstances. We try to control life. Through our circumstances, we look to rearrange our life and we look to rearrange things and we try to rearrange our circumstances, we try to control elements of of society so that we can assure our material wellbeing and our material survival. And we we look to accumulate massive amounts of things and and we're always like, we're always trying to just make sure that that we were living from a foundation of having enough. We don't trust the future, we can't trust tomorrow, we can't trust something that's in the future because it's unfamiliar, it's uncertain and it's unpredictable. So we try to control the levels of things in our lives, the levels of materials, and we try to accumulate more materials, more wealth we try to accumulate. You know there are, there are preppers in the world that have massive stores of food in their basement or you know, they have all of these things, all these mechanisms to try to assure their, their survival, their humanity. And the reason is is because they don't have a healthy relationship with the uncertain and the unpredictable, and with the unfamiliar, which the future.

Speaker 1:

When you don't have a healthy relationship with the future, you're not going to have a healthy relationship with any of those. So you're going to look to always anticipate the other shoe dropping. You're always going to anticipate things going wrong. You're going to be trying to plan for some future event that might or might not happen. You're trying to anticipate everything that could go wrong because you don't trust the future, you don't trust yourself in the future. If something changes, you don't know if you're going to be okay.

Speaker 1:

So we develop these control programs, these control mechanisms, to try to account and try to to offset our inability to feel safe in the unknown and the unfamiliar, the unpredictable, uncertain times in the future, even though I bet you, if you're watching this episode or if you're listening to this episode, you've had 100,000 challenges in your life and you're not dead yet, you haven't died. Programs that's trying to avoid stress and struggle and pressure and pain and trying to avoid all of these internal conflicts. They're trying to control things outside of them in the chance of controlling things inside of them. Now, when we need to exert and demonstrate this level of control, we have a couple choices team. We have a couple choices these defense mechanisms, these control programs and continue to try to rearrange the future, to try to avoid pain and stress and struggle and uncertainty and unfamiliarity and unpredictability. We can hold on to them and continue to live our lives like that and just be like normal, like everybody else, or we can start to decode these control programs.

Speaker 1:

We can start to see where am I trying to get other people to see me in a certain way? Where do I have perfectionist tendencies? Where am I trying to stockpile everything in an infinite amount so that I can always be okay? Where am I being inauthentic to people, please, no. When am I people pleasing? When am I trying to get other people's needs taken care of at my own expense so I don't get rejected? Where am I planning for every worst case scenario? Where am I planning for every worst case scenario? Where am I self-inflicting punishment inside of me in an attempt to have some kind of control over something? We get to get familiar and start to dive into these things. Where am I always trying to control the future? There's a good one, there's a pretty broad one. Where am I always trying to control the future? Because I don't trust the future. We can hold on to all these things or we can start to decode them, identify them and start to move through them and beyond them.

Speaker 1:

95% of society and humanity is going to continue operating at the unconscious level and continue to just keep rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic and maybe they accumulate massive amounts of wealth, which is a reality in my life, where I'm working with people that have accumulated massive amounts of wealth and success in their life, where I'm working with people that have accumulated massive amounts of wealth and success in their life. Then they call me because they wake up in cold sweats in the middle of the night, because their anxiety is still there, their fear of the future, their fear of uncertainty and their fear of the unfamiliar and their fear of the unpredictable future. It's still there. The materials haven't taken it away.

Speaker 1:

These people that are burned out because they're overthinking and they're overanalyzing and they're overplanning. They may be massively successful and massively wealthy, but they're exhausted because of their penchant for continuing to run from stress and run from chaos and run from the unfamiliar, run from uncertainty, run from the unpredictable, and they haven't taken time, downshift and started to dive into the stories and the programs and the beliefs inside of them is to why don't I control the future? Or why don't I trust the future? Why don't I trust myself? Why don't I trust life? If I've survived up to this point, every single challenge and obstacle that's been put in front of me, why am I anticipating that I'm going to fail in the future? Why am I trying to be perfect? Why am I trying to be seen a certain way to the masses of society and 8 billion people on the planet?

Speaker 1:

People are so worried about themselves. They're not worried about you, but if you're worried about how you're perceived in life, then all you're doing is living through a place of like self-obsession and this heightened state of importance that everybody's paying attention to you. In reality, nobody is paying attention to you. Nobody knows what shirt you wore, nobody is that concerned about your new haircut, because they're too busy worried about their future. They're too busy worried about that unpredictable thing that's going to come up next week that they're anticipating next week. They're too busy worried about their circumstances. They're not paying that much of attention to you. So, instead of trying to control everyone and get them to see you in a certain way, instead of shrinking yourself and trying to get everybody to see you through a certain image and certain lens.

Speaker 1:

Just surrender to life for a while. Just start to see these stories, start to see these beliefs, start to see this noise inside of you and start to try to understand it. Where is it coming from? Where did it come from? What am I scared of? What's the worst thing that could happen if I let down my guard? And when we start to develop a healthier relationship with the future, we start to develop a healthier relationship with life're gonna see that you had your your shield and you had your sword up all of these years for nothing, because life is not that fragile and life is not that unpredictable. And when you begin to trust life, life becomes very, very supportive. Life is not difficult. It's lack of trust in life that makes life so difficult. And, guys, you've heard it a billion times on the Interwealth podcast Our beliefs create our reality.

Speaker 1:

Our reality does not create our beliefs. Our beliefs determine what shows up in our life. Our beliefs, our beliefs determine what shows up in our life. So, if you believe that life is fragile, if you believe that the other shoe is getting ready to drop, if you believe that other people are viewing you through a certain lens and judging you. If you believe that if you fail you're doomed, if you believe that you can't trust yourself, then you are setting a course to make that shit true, because your beliefs create your reality. Your reality do not create your beliefs.

Speaker 1:

A lot of the folks that I work with have very, very feel emotions very, very intensely. I work with a bunch of people that feel a lot and feel life and feel life intensely, and sometimes we struggle Me too. We struggle to feel the intensity of life and we struggle to feel the other people's fear and other people's panic. And when our spouse gets freaking, unhappy, we're unhappy. When our spouse gets scared, we're scared. And when our kids are feeling sad, we start to feel sad. We feel emotions intensely and sometimes we don't know what to do with these emotions because we're not emotionally courageous enough, which is the willingness and the ability to feel any and all emotions and still be okay. We're not emotionally all the time. We're not emotionally intelligent enough to know how to handle and stand in these emotions. So this is when we develop control programs to try to control the world and to try to control things so that we don't have to feel things that we'd rather not feel. And escapism is another control program.

Speaker 1:

Addiction, gambling, distraction with binge watching, television overeating these are all control programs that I've talked about up to this point are all meant for one thing it's to try to get you and your emotional state and your emotional well-being to a place of certainty, and there's no way to control your emotions in a life that, frankly, is unpredictable, in a life that, frankly, is unpredictable, that, frankly, is uncertain, where unfamiliar circumstances are always going to be showing up. So, instead of trying to control it, what if you started falling in love with the uncertainty, falling in love with the unpredictability and falling in love with the unfamiliar things? That could be an adventure in your life that could grow you, that could sharpen you, instead of always perceiving that new things that you're unfamiliar with are going to hurt you and harm you. Two approaches One creates a life that continues you on a journey of trying to avoid stress, pain and struggle, and another will set you free, because you'll see that all new circumstances can lift you and grow you instead of crush you. Guys, I hope this has been helpful. I love you.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for listening to the Inner Wealth Podcast. Thank you for watching the Inner Wealth Podcast. I love journeying with you. If you have intense emotions, just like me, and you don't know what to do with them, you haven't developed any skills or techniques to be able to handle them and you haven't understood how to handle the intensity of life and the uncertainty, the unpredictability and the unfamiliarity of new circumstances. If you haven't developed any mechanisms to be able to, or tools to be able to surrender to these things instead of try to avoid them, reach out. I'd love to have a conversation with you. In the show notes it says text me or on the YouTube. In the YouTube show notes it has my contact information. Get in contact. I would love to journey with you Until next week. See you soon. If you enjoyed what you heard and you want to learn more, go to wwwinnerwealthglobalcom for more tools and resources.