Control

Control can be very hard to understand and saying that “letting go of control is taking control” I know is a very hard thing to grasp! It may scare you, because just thinking about it used to scare me too. We think that being in control means we are doing the right thing, that being the one in the driver’s seat is 100% the way that things should and need to be. I thought this way for a very long time. I really didn’t see it as bad until one day My therapist told me that I had to let go of control and my perfectionist ways!

I laughed and said “What are you talking about, I am the furthest thing from a perfectionist! I never do anything thing right! I always mess up and fail at so many things!” I stopped myself and said “Okay, I am ready to listen”.

I learned quickly that a lot of my problems came from wanting and trying to control people and things that I could not control. I always had the right way of doing things, I always had the right way of handling things, I would never look at things in different ways or take advice in ways that were constructive because they weren’t my way of doing things so they were always wrong.

Control to me was always a way of protecting myself, a way of knowing that what I was doing was right because what I said goes and if you didn’t like it then you were wrong! This was such a bad way of living and viewing the world and it set me up for failure at all times. Why? Because control blinds us. It makes us think we are 100% right at all times. It causes us so many problems.

No one is always right and learning this is hard when you think you have to be in control… but the beautiful things in life happen when we least expect it, when we allow ourselves to be human and accept new and exciting things. Letting go of control allows these exciting things to happen.

And when they don’t go as planed there is hell to pay because that is when we get our backs up and our built-in defences get triggered. That is when the ugly comes out! And it comes out in so many ways.

Letting go of control allows personal growth in the people we love, the people we work with and most importantly, in ourselves. When we sit back and allow natural growth without it being forced, we learn to see the world in new ways and we usually get what we’re after in the end, but in a non-aggressive, less forceful and more enjoyable way. But when we try to control everything around us, we belittle ourselves, we belittle our friends, family, and coworkers. We see nothing but failure, we build anger, we build contempt, limiting views about ourselves and others.

We put stress on the people who we love, and we build unhealthy barriers that can not be broken. We put high unreachable expectations on ourselves and others and when they are not met it is a huge disaster! We hold on to the past and use it to mould our future, and we become short sighted. We worry about the future, lose sleep over things that don’t happen and things that might happen! When we crave control we stop growing as human beings!

Control really isn’t that good of thing to have, just look at that list I just gave you and believe me there are more negative things that control brings. Growth always happens, we always thrive when control is relinquished. That is where the fun part of letting go of control comes in! That is where it starts to make sense, where we start to grow, where we see growth in others and where we see our lives blossom and reach new heights like never before!