Let go of control! Discover a better way to live

Discover transformative power in surrendering control, finding peace & joy in life's unfolding journey by letting go & embracing the unknown.

*This is the written version of 'its not you' podcast episode #45

We never know where life is going to take us, and we never will if we keep trying to control it.

And you control it through making presumptions and assumptions about how you think things should be.

Which is to say, the meaning you give to things.

Things aren't good or bad they are the meaning you give to them.

And those meanings are a creation of your beliefs. And most of your beliefs are passed down. In other words, they are someone else's beliefs that you believe are yours.

Let's look at things that we judge good and bad. And see that everything has an equal opposite, depending on who's deciding - or who's giving the meaning.

It's your wedding day, and your wedding is outside. It starts to rain. You say that's bad. You say your plans are ruined. And the dreams that you've had for this magical day since you were five years old has just been shattered.

Do you see all the meaning that's gone into that just from some rain? Something that we cannot possibly control?

Now, on the other side of that, we've got a farmer in the same town who is celebrating in his fields because he finally has rain. Since you've been in a drought for so long. Because rain for the farmer means food.

Now, if you put yourself in the shoes of that bride, I can. And I can wholly imagine what that would feel like, to feel like all of your plans are destroyed. But we can't control it.

There's nothing we can do except learn to go with the flow. The same as there was nothing the farmer could do about not having rain. He had to make it work as well.
One event, the rain, two diametrically opposite meanings given to that rain.

Let's go to another example. Someone who loves camping, loves the smell of campfire. Yet someone whose house burned down despises that smell. For both people, it's a nostalgic smell.

For one, it's a pleasurable, warm, comforting smell. For the other, it's a heartbreaking, hopeless, and a deep sorrow smell.

Now, I know what you might be thinking, and I'm going to address it, but I don't want to get too lost in the weeds here like I usually do. Yes, anybody who loses their house is going to attach that meaning to it, no question.

But actually, no, not everybody does. Not everybody does. Some people I have heard say, okay, well, they accepted what is.

It happened.They had no control over it, and they thought, all right, everything in the house is my past. Now, let's start over and move forward. It's all in the manner that you look at something.

It's all in the meaning you give to things.

Yes, a house burning down would be or could be devastating. But it doesn't have to be. It's all in the eyes of the perceiver.

I'll give one more example. This one's a breakup.

One person will revel in their newfound freedom and the lessons they will take from the relationship before they move on. And they'll be thankful that no more time was wasted in that relationship.

Another will spend all their time in a spiral of despair and unhappiness and brand themselves a failure. As you know, or at least as you could probably see, giving meaning to things creates an emotion, right? The bride is sad. The farmer is happy.

Our emotion then creates our state of mind. And taken to the extreme, can lead to depression, anxiety, anger, you know, even things like jealousy.

If you judged or made a negative assumption about most things in your life, there is a likelihood you're going to feel depressive or have anxiety or be angry all the time.

What if instead, you gave no meaning to things?

What if you just accepted what's happening in front of you as the way it's supposed to be?
You can't if you feel you need to control everything. And I get it.

That too is a belief that we've heard over and over. "If you don't control your life, life will control you".
But your life can't control you if you walk with it. If you just go with the flow and allow whatever happens to happen without meaning or judgment.

Like the farmer did in this parable, I'm going to read to you.

Once upon a time there was a wise old farmer. One day, his prized horse bolted and ran away. That evening, many of his neighbors came to him sympathetically and said, were were so sorry to hear that your horse ran off.

How unfortunate.

But the old farmer just smiled and simply said, "maybe".

The very next day, to everyone's surprise, the horse returned. And not just that, it brought many young stallions along with it. Now the farmer seemed better off than he had been before.

The old farmers neighbors came again and said, this is wonderful news!

You are so fortunate.

But again the farmer simply said, "maybe".

The following day, the farmer's young son tried to break one of the wild stallions in. Unfortunately, it bucked violently and threw him to the ground. His leg and arm were both broken.

Now the neighbor said, oh, no. How unfortunate.
But once again, the farmer simply replied, maybe.

Soon a dreadful war began. All the young local men were conscripted to go and fight.
But the farmer's son was rejected from having to serve because of his broken limbs.
In that way, he was saved.

As you can see, without trying to control anything or giving meaning, life worked out miraculously.

And if you're really honest with yourself, I bet you could look back on your own life and see different threads in different situations. Where one thing led to the next, which led to the next, which led to something even better.

And as happens to me quite frequently as I'm recording these episodes, something, a memory came to me of something that happened that I gave extremely negative, angry meaning to.

And not only that, but I tried to control the whole thing. It didn't work and I got completely and utterly stressed to the max.

But so here's what happened. The Maytag man. Do you remember the Maytag man?
The Maytag commercials? Anyway, the washing machine repair guy, appliance guy. He came over and fixed my washer.

The first load I had put in the washer after he fixed it flooded my basement. My laundry room is on the bottom floor and I have three other floors.

So I didn't go back down to the laundry room for another...(And I actually didn't go for the laundry).
I went for something in the freezer. So it had been running for hours.

I was working with the insurance. I was trying to work with the workers that were here in my house. And it was an absolute nightmare.

I'd like to be more dramatic and tell you every little roadblock, screw up, interference, the insurance trying to intimidate me. And I was working full time out of the house. I lost track of how many times they called me at work to come home and tend to something. It was an absolute nightmare.

How's that for giving meaning to things?

So they're in the final phases of finishing up and they're hooking up the washer and the dryer. Now they get to the dryer and they said, "we're not hooking this up". And I said, well, "why not"?
And they said, because in the ceiling where the vent goes, when they looked up in the hole, it was full of dryer lint.

And they said, "we're not going to be responsible if your house catches on fire".

I'm sure I don't need to tell you how shocked I was and not only shocked, but relieved that my basement flooded.

There is no way I would have ever known that was an issue had that not happened. And then, I got to thinking, yeah, but what about all that other drama that didn't need to happen. And no, it didn't need to happen.

And it wouldn't have happened if I just backed off and stopped trying to control everything.

If I just went with the flow of things. Certainly there's things I had to take care of. Like I said, the insurance was trying to screw me over and intimidate me. But you just deal with it and then you let it go and you move on.

But I made such a big deal out of everything in my head that it turned into this drama. So all of that wasted time and stress for no reason.

Basement flooded, nothing I could do about it. It was out of my control.
So what?
Somebody's coming to fix it. Let them fix it.
So what?

There we go, a new little phrase. When something happens, from now on we're just going to say, so what? And then we'll just go with the flow.

But seriously, how much better would your life be if you saw everything that happened and just said, so what?

Or what if you took on the belief that everything is working out as planned and nothing that happens is about you? Because ultimately, whenever something happens, no matter what it is, our inner dialog, will turn it and spin it and somehow make it about us.

Somebody's out to get me.
What did I do to deserve this?
What's wrong with me that this keeps happening?

I'm sure you're pretty aware of all the things that we say to ourselves. And no, you're not alone. But going back to the point of just letting things go and going with life instead of fighting against it and following the thread.

Like going, reflecting back on your past and following a thread when things appeared to be bad, but they actually turned out good. With the acknowledgement that it was all out of your control.

If you're willing, I'd like to ask you to reflect on times where there was a thread where you thought things were going to shit and they actually turned out better than you could have imagined.

And maybe it would have happened faster had you stayed out of it and stopped trying to control things.
And maybe even write them down. I don't know if you journal, but maybe write them down so you can have something to look at and go and remind you that, you know, life just flows and is much more joyful when we just sit back and relax.

And let it happen without judgment or giving meaning to anything.

When, you gather enough of these stories from your life, and you will, because everybody has them...

...You'll be able to challenge your old programming and your old inner dialog that says "nothing works out for me, something must be wrong with me. People always treat me badly, nothing good ever happens to me".

Now you have proof. Now you have proof that all of those beliefs are a lie. And watch how your perspective shifts. And watch how your life changes.

Now, it doesn't just stop with the negative things, you know, the bad things in your life, trying to find the thread that led to something good, but it's a good thing in your life as well.

And it's also times when you went with the flow and things happened. Times when it seemed like everything that you wanted just fell in your lap. Which might be indicative to just going with the flow.

Most often, when things like that happen, it's because we're happy and joyful and pleasant.
At the very least, we're neutral and non-attached to the outcomes of things. But usually, it's in those states is when we're going with the flow.

We're working with life, not against life. We're letting things go, we're surrendering. We're just again going with the flow. That's when all the juicy stuff happens. And you get to take delivery of all the delicious goodness that's out there waiting for us.

If we weren't trying to control everything. And giving negative meanings to everything. And making assumptions and presupposing things that lend to us, spiraling out of control, which lends to no goodness. We're cutting off our supply of goodness.

Now why would we do that if not for it being a pattern of behavior? And that's why I ask you to go back and to journal your own experiences.

So you can challenge those programs and beliefs and then create new ones, positive ones. And you can do that with people too.

Remember, people don't do things to you, they do things for themselves.

So whatever they do is never about you.

And now you can just, when something happens, say, so what? No more giving meaning to anything they say or do. No making assumptions about what they might have meant.

But what you can do is see how maybe there's a positive in it, how maybe something they did might have benefited you. So, for example, sometimes people have gotten fired from their jobs, a job they hated, by the way, only to find their dream career or start their own business.

And yet, had it not been for being fired, that wouldn't have happened. They would have still stayed stuck and miserable. And all these years later, they're still ticked off at the boss that fired them.

But why? Or imagine somebody who dislikes you, keyed your car, and you had to get a whole new paint job. But the reality is you got a whole new paint job, right?

This is good. So you should be thanking them rather than being annoyed at them.

These are the kind of threads I want you to look for so you can take some of the sting off of this shit you've been hanging on to.

So, to summarize:

• stop giving meaning to things.
• Walk with life.
• Don't fight against it.
• And start saying, so what?

Oh, and remember to reflect on your memories so you can start combating some of your old patterns and beliefs.