Keeping Well at Christmas - Control, Influence, Accept

Last week The Craft Guild of Chefs held their final Wellness event of 2025 at Evolve group where they teamed up with Kellys Cause to share meaningful support for the festive season.

We wanted to share a tool from the workshop that’s been especially helpful for managing stress during this time of year: the CIA model : Control, Influence, Accept.

Everything that stresses or overwhelms us falls into one of three categories:
• Things we can control
• Things we can influence
• Things we cannot control (and therefore need to accept or adapt to)

For example, we may not be able to control how many guests walk through the door during a busy shift. But we can control how prepared we are for service, the quality of our pre-shift briefing, and the attitude we bring to the day.

When we fixate on the things outside our control we often end up feeling frustrated, helpless, or drained. Shifting our focus to what we can control or influence helps us feel calmer, more grounded, and less overwhelmed.

It can be useful to grab a piece of paper and write down what’s filling your “stress container” right now. Sort each item into one of the three CIA categories. Then, gently practice letting go of what you can’t control and directing your energy toward what you can control or influence. You might even discover you have more agency than you thought. 

This doesn’t miraculously solve all our problems or remove our stressors but it gives us a better chance of coping with them in a healthy way, and helps us build resilience, which we all know we need bucket loads of at this time of year.

Thank you to @aston_andrew and as well as Mark for the capturing the spirit of the workshop!