Your beliefs and assumptions form the totality of your mindset, and your mindset shows up in the world in your behavior.
Are there any aspects of your behavior that you find limiting?
Do you perceive scarcity? By this I mean do you feel the need to push back or up against things (behavior, situations, people) to get what you want?
When you don't get what you want with this perception, how do you feel? Frustrated, anxious, stressed?
How do we escape a rut so we can show up more authentically, feel better about ourselves, and get what we want?
One idea would be to let go of the need to control. How often do we try control situations, other people, even ourselves to get what we want?
Let me ask you: when you board a 747 aeroplane to whatever destination, and the plane takes off, who is in control of that plane? The logical, rational answer would be the pilot of course.
But what if there was a man on this plane wearing a black leather jacket. Clipped on the inside pocket of his jacket is what looks like a Mont Blanc pen. However, this is no ordinary Mont Blanc pen. This is the most sophisticated and technologically advanced bomb ever made capable of escaping detection. The detonation mechanism on this bomb is simply one twist of the pen, as if you were getting it ready to write.
So my question now is: who is in control of the plane?
See, we are never truly in control, yet we try to exert control for a healthy percentage of time. At best, I would say we have a degree of influence.
When we let go of our need to control, we feel a lot more free, we show up more authentically, and we can work with relevance to get what we want.
Excellent post. The belief in and desire for 'control' runs deep. The challenge is, it's difficult to assess whether any particular action is motivated by the need for control or an authentic expression of participation, just by looking at the action itself. In other words, it difficult to assess motive from the act [not impossible but one would normally need a sequence of actions and have developed some skill at reading them]. Motive is a feeling, the feeling that drives the action.
ReplyDeleteLetting go of the desire for control is scary and doubly difficult because it's so hard to acknowledge that so much of our participation is motivated by the need for control.
Thanks for your comment Paul! Yes I think that we have been bought up with this desire, because the traditional mindset that we become accustomed to using develops in the sense that it perceives limit in the world, and therefore control becomes the way for it to participate. It is not authentic in nature, and that is why we find it difficult to let go of the desire to control. Yes, it is scary and liberating at the same time, but it is so difficult because we are so often motivated by fear. We don't know anything else and that's why it can be so difficult to let go of the need to control.
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