Last year, I started a simple practice that has done more for my daily anxiety than anything else I’ve tried. Every morning, before I do much else, I open my journal and draw a line down the center of the page, like a T-chart. On the left side, I write: Things I Can’t Control. On the right: Things I Can Control. Then I look at my day, what’s on the calendar, who I’m meeting with, what conversations are coming, and for each one, I ask a simple question: what can I control, and what can’t I?
This morning, for example, I had a staff meeting. On the left side, I wrote: I can’t control how the meeting goes, whether people show up prepared, or whether the team is in a good mood. On the right: I can control whether I show up prepared, whether I contribute well, and whether I’m fully present.
Later, I had a hard conversation. Left side: how they respond, whether they receive my feedback well, whether it changes anything. Right side: whether I’m clear, kind, and honest.
I have a wife. Left: her mood when she gets home, her problems with co-workers, and her decisions. Right: whether I listen, empathize, and love her well.
And I was about to read my Bible. Left: whether I feel something, whether the moment feels powerful, whether I walk away encouraged. Right: whether I pay attention, whether I read prayerfully, and whether I obey.
And then there’s everything else: a normal workday full of emails, logistics, and small decisions. For each one, the same question remains: what can I control, and what can’t I?
The whole exercise takes maybe five minutes. But what it does to my head and heart is hard to overstate. I sit down with a full plate and a low-grade hum of anxiety, and I stand up with something closer to clarity. Because most of what I was anxious about wasn’t actually my responsibility at all.
See, most of us are carrying daily stresses that were never ours to carry. And the shift happens quietly. We take something that really is our responsibility and attach something else to it, something that isn’t our responsibility, often without noticing. A manageable task starts to feel overwhelming because it is now tied to something we were never meant to control.
If you grew up watching Power Rangers, you know how this works. Each ranger was strong on their own, but when things got intense, they’d call in their Zords, these massive robot machines, and combine into one giant machine: a Megazord.
We do the same thing with our problems. We take something small and manageable, a “me problem,” and combine it with things outside our control. Suddenly, we’re facing a mega-problem.
Take something simple: I need to write this blog post. What can I control? I can study, prepare, block out time to write, and edit it thoroughly. These are me-problems. And honestly, that sounds pretty manageable.
But the moment I add, “I need to write this blog post so that people like me,” everything changes. Now my preparation is tied to approval. Whether people like me is not something I can control. My preparation is now tied to an outcome I don’t own, and what felt simple is starting to feel heavy. Cue the racing mind and anxious pacing.
But the T-chart exposes this. It shows where responsibilities and outcomes have been blended together. It helps you separate what you can do from what you can’t control. And once you see that, you can put things back in their proper place. When you separate your daily tasks using the chart, what felt overwhelming starts to shrink back down to what is actually yours.
This is where the Bible’s language about self-control becomes surprisingly powerful. Paul writes, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Galatians 5:22–23). We tend to treat self-control as the boring one. The fruit of saying no to junk food or keeping your temper in check. Necessary, but not particularly exciting. But self-control is deeply connected to growth in the Christian life.
As Tim Keller has pointed out, the fruit of the Spirit grows together. You don’t increase in love while decreasing in patience. It all moves in one direction. Which means that growth in self-control is connected to growth in love, joy, and peace.
And when you think about it, that makes sense. It’s hard to love someone when you’re trying to control them. It’s hard to have joy when your happiness is tied to outcomes you can’t determine. It’s nearly impossible to feel peace when you’re carrying anxiety over things that were never in your hands to begin with. Self-control helps you stay grounded in what is actually yours.
Henry Cloud describes this well. He talks about self-control as a design principle, a truth built into the way God made the world. And that truth is simple: the only thing you have control over is you. Not your circumstances. Not other people. Not how the meeting goes or how the conversation lands or whether people respond the way you hope. Just you. Your choices, your responses, your attention, your faithfulness.
God didn’t design you to be in control of everything. He designed you to be responsible for yourself. When you reach beyond that, you step outside the grain of how reality works, and that’s where anxiety grows.
And here’s the best part of the T-chart. As soon as you list out the things in your day you can’t control, you now have a list of things to pray for. Even though you can’t control these things, God can. You can trust that your heavenly father is working all things for your good.
So each morning, I draw a line down the page. On one side: what I can control. On the other: what I can’t. And in doing that, I’m reminded of something simple and freeing: I am responsible for faithfulness. For obedience. For showing up. And that’s where peace begins to grow.
Looking for more ways to fight anxiety in your everyday life? Listen to Christian Meditation for A Bigger Life, a podcast designed to help you slow down and meditate on the truth of God's word and the reality of his presence.
