Life truly starts when you let go of control…

But we like control, don’t we?

It makes us feel, not safe exactly, but like we’re sure of what’s happening so we can manage it. Manage our response.

Survive.

And that’s what the problem is.

Control is a function of fear. Fear is all about survival. Nothing more than that. Fear doesn’t care what you want, how you want to feel and be. It just wants to ensure your survival.

So we stay in control and for those of us who had a chaotic upbringing, whatever form that took, we really like control and we try to control everything.

Staying so busy we have no time to think.

No slowing down, no pausing on the do, do, doing, we’re all go, go, go.

Every day the same.

That’s the essence of it. Keeping every day the same so we survive another day.

Hardly living, is it?

Letting go of control. Now that’s an art. One I’m only starting to master, and its taken me years to get to this point.

Because I never wanted to let go.

Now, avoidance, resistance, denial – I’m a past master at that. And that is another form of control.

I’m not going to step out and do this new thing, nope, I’m going to retreat and hide in old habits that keep me stuck.

I’m guilty as fuck of that. Still do it every day. Luckily, I catch myself before too long and pull myself back to making the conscious choice of doing what needs to be done to live the life I want to live.

And that means giving up control.

Because by definition, something new cannot be controlled because you don’t know what’s going to happen, how it may turn out.

This is where you use both science and faith.

Science tells us that an observer changes the outcome of an experiment. Indeed, the observer’s expectations actually influence the experiment outcomes.

https://psychology.wikia.org/wiki/Observer_effect

Faith tells us to take the next step and trust the path will be shown to us.

Letting go of control actually means giving yourself the ultimate back up… the creative force of the Universe, if you learn how to use it.

Instead of allowing your mind to wander wherever all those random thoughts push it, focus on what you want and allow the next step to be nudged into your mind.

The best way to do this is to start a daily practice that consists of several different things that together turbocharge your progress.

The first is meditation.

Meditation is the single best way to destress mind, body and spirit. And there’s some really good reasons for doing this.

• First: Stress makes you act stupid. You stop thinking creatively, logically, rationally and act from fear and instinct alone.
• Second: Stress makes you sick, a toxic stew of negativity chemicals including cortisol and adrenaline are released when we’re stressed and the longer they flow in our veins, the more damage they do.
• Third: Stress stops you living the life you want and you live to simply survive.

Meditate. Start with 30 seconds or a minute a few times a day. Anyone can give themselves a minute three or four times a day to sit and breathe and observe their thoughts and slow down. You can do this!

Build it up til you reach your optimum level. I have one teacher who recommends five minutes every hour and when I learned Transcendental Meditation I was taught to give myself 20 minutes morning and evening.

Today I do twenty minutes every morning and occasional 2-3 minute breaks throughout the day or just when I remember.

The second practice you need is mental rehearsal of the life you want to live. I talked about this recently, you can read about it here.

You already know what you need to do, don’t you?

 

This is fun and it sows the seeds of a new subconscious program that takes you where you want to be, better than going round and round in circles right?

Third is journaling.

I love journaling and am evangelical about its ability to transform your mindset and thus your life. Write your daily thoughts, affirmations, goals, ambitions. Also write out a CRAP list regularly and ask your good questions. And of course answer them!

This is not a fail safe, never get stuck again thing. Because we are human, we are programmed that way, to get stuck, to stay in the same place, to not move forward.

Let me share with you that last night I watched 3 episodes of The Crown and had to give myself a good talking to for me to switch off the tv and go to bed and not watch another one. Which would have left me tired and irritable and not able to be my best today.

And I still want to watch that last episode now.

But, here’s the thing. Despite wanting nothing more than dropping everything and sitting for an hour lost in the story of Charles and Diana, and Dear God but this has brought up all my old feelings of anger at Charles and The Royal Family for treating their sacrificial virgin so badly, but despite that, here I am, writing my blog.

Why?

Because I thought about how I would feel later on tonight if I sacked off my responsibilities and just watched tv all day.

I’d feel horrible, yes it would make me feel better right now, but almost immediately I sat my ass on the couch, guilt and remorse and a sense of disappointment in myself would set in.

So I disciplined myself to get to work and the words start flowing and I’ll get this done and then on to the next thing until my work is done.

Now that might sound a lot like control but its not. Because control would be mapping out what I’m going to write, having a plan for the business and getting busy executing it.

But what I do is hand it over to my Superconscious, my Higher Power. I simply ask, what do I need to share with the people today? And the words flow.

And if my Higher Self had said watch Netflix all day, that’s what I would do. It didn’t, it said write this blog and gave me the title for it before I meditated.

And throughout the day, I ask what should I do next. That’s it. I never look farther than the next thing I need to do.

Sometimes its doing the tech work I love to put off, to get it done and move forward, sometimes its to take Amelia for a walk and clear my head. Sometimes I am directed to take a nap.

I release control and do as guided.

Now, yes that’s easier for me as I work from home and am able to arrange my day to suit myself.

But its possible to release control in every aspect of life, from what to eat to how to do your job.

And what you find is that when you stop trying to control everything, you relax more and when you relax more you make better decisions and when you make better decisions life gets better and better.

Let go of control. Stop trying to force yourself to do something, to be someone. Instead hand it over to your Higher Self and just ask, ‘What do I need to do right now?’

Let go. Allow the answer to come and even when it seems totally counter intuitive, especially then, do as guided.

That’s often the hardest bit, because you might be directed to do something you don’t want to do, like exercise or write a blog! And you just frickin’ discipline yourself to get it done.

You get better at life when you trust yourself. Micro managing yourself shows a total absence of trust. Let go of control. Let go of expected outcomes and worry over what might happen, what people might say. Let it all go.

And trust. Trust yourself. Trust that Higher Self that knows you better than you do and is connected to everything and everyone.

All you have to do is the next right thing.

Do that.

Love,

Cynthia xx

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