By Eric Sudler, Psy.D.
So it’s occurred to me that we love to be in control. I mean, like, total control. We crave it and often times, ironically enough, lose control in our futile attempts to gain total control. Well, if increasing our efforts to obtain it causes us to lose it, perhaps giving some up will help us to maintain it. It seems quite paradoxical, I know… but, how successful have your efforts to gain control been for you?
Obviously, control is not a bad thing. We need some control. However, it’s the thoughts and/or beliefs that arise when one does not obtain the control they desire that can be problematic. How we respond when our expectations are not met distinguishes healthy and unhealthy lifestyles. We can try to gain total control as much as we want, but it is an illusion. Much like a magic trick, it is not real. Trying to control everything makes us nothing more than magicians. It’s this temporary illusion of control that leads us to seek more. If we were really in control, we wouldn’t need to constantly seek more.
As usual, it is never my intention to come across as preachy. Lord knows I’m guilty of everything that I write about. In fact, as you have probably guessed, everything I write comes from my own personal experiences. Point in case: the past 6 months of my life. The last 180 days have been, without exaggeration or hyperbole, the most challenging of my life. I have experienced hardship in just about every statistical category: Spiritually, physically, financially, emotionally, socially, etc. It was surreal at one point. It was almost laughable how unfortunate and sometimes devastatingly silly events would pop up in my life. If I didn’t understand complex irony before, I could write a book about it now.
It finally dawned on me, albeit very recently, that the more I tried to force my way out of this funk that I was in, the worse it got. I would wake up on some days and say, “I’m glad that this part of my life is over. Things will [magically] be back to normal tomorrow and I can begin enjoying life again.”
Now, a little optimism is great. I’m not criticizing a positive attitude. However, misguided, rigid optimism can be a problem. Instead of saying that things (should, have to be, must) be better tomorrow, it may have been healthier to say that,
“I don’t know what is in store for me tomorrow. It could be bad. It could be good. Whatever happens, I have demonstrated that I have the strength to withstand and endure it.”
Unfortunately, I wasn’t thinking the second way for most of my recent trials and tribulations. I became a magician and created this illusion of control by becoming overly controlling in any area of my life that I could. I cannot control which challenges are going to show up each day. So, the more challenges that popped up, the more helpless I felt. It was then that I understood that “less is more” in the sense that sometimes you have to just go with it, knowing that you are strong enough to prevail.
As I write this, my luck still hasn’t changed. However, the record that plays in my head has changed significantly and brought about a dramatic change in my day to day functioning. This illusion of control was not doing anything for me. No more abracadabra. No more controlling the uncontrollable. I have no plans of moving to Vegas and doing a nightly show, so it is time to give up the Magician act.