Do You Direct Your Energy Toward Peace or Control?

A desire need for control is completely healthy and functional. Unfortunately, it’s easy to get overwhelmed and confused by what you’re responsible for and what you’re not responsible for. In reality, there are huge areas of life that we simply can’t control, and yet we can spend immense energy and mental resources trying to do just that.

Like trying to hold off a tidal wave, we sacrifice time, presence, and mental headspace working on taming the tameless. This way of being is exhausting and often deprives us of the experience of living our lives to the fullest.

When we don’t accept the world at large as it is, the good and the bad, we tirelessly work for more and more pleasure and are angry or irritable when it eludes us. When confronted with difficult experiences, emotions, relationships, you may strain to undo the experience or to find a way to deny that it is really as upsetting as it is.

Take a moment now to slow down and ask yourself if all the energy you are expending to feel OK is directed toward the avenues that will actually lead to somewhere positive.

Examples of false control

• Co-dependency. Living through another person, doing whatever necessary to keep that relationship going, even if it is to your detriment.
• Emotional avoidance. When difficult emotion strikes, you turn away, repress, and keep pushing forward.
• Acting out. Using drugs or maladaptive behaviors to cope.
• Controlling the small stuff. Having a set way that things must and should go, from the mundane of keeping your house organized to how others should act.
• Fantasy expectations. Gearing up for events to go exactly as you wish and imagining their occurrence as if you can control them through your thoughts. Then, when the event doesn’t deliver, you’re angry and mad that things never go your way.
• Worry. Overthinking the details of your life, anticipating worst-case scenarios, and trying to prevent any misstep or issue before it even occurs.

True, healthy control is quite different, and its hallmarks are the recognition and acceptance that we cannot control the fact that suffering and setbacks are inevitable in life. We can only control how we react.

Examples of true control

• Taking care of yourself. Diet, exercise, meditation, filling yourself with healthy outlets when possible.
• Nurturing your relationships. When others are present, you show them caring and treat them with respect.
• How you spend your time. Do that which engages and energizes you.
• Who you spend your time with. Spend time with people who are kind, respectful, and fair.
• Honoring yourself. Speak up for yourself and others, allowing your opinions to be heard and known, not sacrificing yourself to the whims of others or forcing others to do or think what you do or think.
• Growing as a person. Recognizing you are a work in progress, and it’s OK to continually have things that you need to develop. Healthy control is identifying what you need to work on and then committing to that work.
• Acceptance. Practice deep acceptance that happiness is not about preventing suffering (a losing battle), but about developing internal peace.

For more suggestions, check out my book, Building Self-Esteem.