Get Out of Control

“There is chaos under the heavens, and the situation is excellent.”

            -Chinese Proverb- 

In my work as a transformative coach, one of the most common concerns that my clients bring up is a feeling of being out of control with their lives.  Now we could make up a bunch of reasons why that is, such as we are born into the world and we actually have very little control; we can't feed ourselves, dress ourselves, or even go to the bathroom on our own. It would then be the most natural thing in the world that we would start our quest for more control way back in the high chair.  We could attribute our life long pursuit of control to a basic desire for safety, where we equate more control with our ability to be safe in the world.  Or, I could just as easily make up a story about how people really just want to be happy, and they have it made up in their heads that if they could just control other people and the universe, then they could finally be happy for good.

As one of my mentors Michael Neill would say, "The universal truth is way above my pay grade."  The good news is that knowing why control is such a hot button issue for so many people, isn't actually relevant to allowing a sense of peace and freedom back into you life and mind.

However, before we explore creating more of what you want in your life, let's look at what happens for most people who are coming from a place of feeling out of control. People will attempt to gain a sense of control by redirecting their physical and mental energies. They try and take control of their personal development, finances, and relationships.  From this place one of two things generally occur.  Either, they fail, which leads to even more stress because now their feeling helpless and victimized about the whole thing. Or they actually start to get more control. Things start to go their way.  But the problem is that once you start to get more control, it's very tenuous.  Suddenly, something unexpected happens, you lose your partner, your job, or your house, and suddenly it feels as though you have lost control again.  So then we fluctuate between feeling out of control and feeling in control.  Life lived from this place becomes extremely unstable and boy is it stressful.

There's another game in town though, and it's called freedom.  In the freedom game, the goal is just to be able to navigate the world and your life with a relative sense of ease and grace.  The reason more people don't play the freedom game is because from inside the control game, freedom looks a whole lot like being out of  control.  If you're reading this article, that might just mean that you are ready to play a new game now, are you not?

There is a couple different levels to address this from and I'm going to start shallow and then go deep.  And if you find yourself going deeper and deeper as you read this now, you're probably on the right track, to freedom that is.

Let's start with why people feel out of control in the first place.  The reality is, there is actually a whole lot of things we have little to no control over.  We don't have control over the stars or the planets, seasons or the weather, and we don't control other people.  But contrary to popular belief, that stressful, frantic, out of control feeling doesn't come from not having control, it actually comes from thinking we do have control over something that we don't.  In other words when we attempt to take control of the uncontrollable, otherwise known as control freaking, we get to suffer.

This has a debilitating effect on people's lives.  When you can't see that the bulk of your energy is going toward pushing an immovable object or person, you get to be really really tired, physically and mentally, and very little actually happens in the world as a result.  So you get all the stress with no results.  And have you noticed that when you push against things, they almost always push back?

This is actually a biological response.  There was some research done where some scientists noticed a phenomenon between male gorillas where they would push each other, and they discovered that there was never an instance where a fight didn't occur after 5 pushes.  They then wanted to see if this was observable in humans, so they found the most logical grounded people they could think of, Nobel Prize winning scientists.  They had the scientists push each other hard in the chest, and they discovered that the scientists had slightly less control over their urge to fight then the gorillas.

Take a look in your own lives, where have you been pushing up against people and trying to force them to change?  How's that working for you?  I'm going to guess that it's not.

It turns out that there is actually a pretty simple solution to all of this.  When you're feeling out of control or not able to control what you'd like to, just get really clear about what it is you actually have control over.  It turns out that there is 3 things we have a fairly high degree of control over, and that is seeing, being, and doing.

Now, let's break these down one at a time.  We have some control over how we see the world.  An example would be that you could see your current circumstances as either a problem, a challenge, or an opportunity.  You can choose to see other people as cruel, hateful and mean-spirited, or you could choose to see them as essentially doing the best they know how to do.  You could see your job as a hindrance dragging you down, or you could see it as a source of cash flow, funding your dream.  And if you're wondering how do I decide which way to see, simply ask yourself: is this a useful and empowering way of seeing?

Our next element of control is Being.  I sometimes talk about this as how we show up in the world.  Are you showing up as being fun, loving, playful and curious; or are you being resentful, angry, and afraid.  On a more superficial level, you can access different states by simply thinking of a time when you were in a particular state, and stepping back into that in your mind, therefore re-creating it in your body now.

On a slightly deeper  level our way of being is created by how we are seeing the world.  So if you see your circumstances as scary, you'll feel afraid, if you see your circumstances as joyful, then you'll feel joy.  You can also create an intention for how you'd like to be.  For me this is like pointing myself in a direction.  You may not be able to cultivate a sense of love and play and curiosity at all times, but if you continually point yourself in that direction with an intention, you'll find yourself showing up there more and more of the time.

Finally on the deepest level, your very nature is well-Being. A quick glance into a babies eyes tells me that we were born happy, and all you really have to do is slow down and allow your natural well-being to bubble up to the surface. To learn more about cultivating this check out my past coaching article, Spiritual Self Care.

Now we get to the doing part.  Where people get mixed up here is they take a bunch of action without considering how they are seeing and being.  And the funny thing is, once you are seeing clearly, and nestled into your well-being, if there is still something left to do or say, it will be clear, and often pretty straight forward.

So if the first half of the equation, get clear about what you do and don't control, and take control over what you can.  The second half, and in my opinion the key to the whole freedom game, is actually making peace with those things that you have no control over.  I don't know about you, but I find incredible freedom in the notion that I don't have to control the universe or other people.  Quite frankly that sounds exhausting.  When you make peace with the fact that most of the time, you don't drive the train, it allows you to sit back, and enjoy the journey of life.  And if you're not careful, that sense of freedom just might turn into connection, creativity and passion for life.

That's it!  That's all that I'm aware we really have control over.  And if you're thinking, that's it!?  You might find comfort in this idea: The beauty of the freedom game is that the second you let go of trying so hard to change circumstances and other people, very often they change all by themselves.

Love and Light,
Tyler