Today I want to talk about control.
Control is something that had so many different forms during my life,
And I think we all recognize that we want to have a certain amount of control about the things that happen in our lives.
But control,
Is that actually,
Does it exist?
Have you ever been reflecting about that?
Or is it always a false sense of control?
It's an interesting concept,
Because let's assume I have this image now of loose sand.
If you grab a scoop,
Or if you scoop loose sand with your hand,
And you start to bring your fingers closer together,
Trying to hold on,
Then you lose the sand,
Because it's going through your fingers.
As long as you keep your hand open,
And the sand is just laying on your hand,
And you don't move too much,
The sand will stay in your hand.
So there's this balance.
I always see this as a balance.
Be aware of how you behave,
What you do,
So squeezing the hand or not,
Controlling it from contraction,
Then you lose it.
Can you just relax and be okay with the sand on your hand?
And that is there.
There's probably different angles to look at it,
But it's a nice metaphor.
What is it that wants to keep control?
That is basically,
For me,
It's my mind.
And I used to be a very tight controller.
In so many aspects of my life,
I tried to plan everything.
And with the planning,
It gave me a sense of control.
And I'm not saying there's something wrong with planning now.
But it depends on the energy and the angle you start with,
The being you are,
From which you are doing things.
Because I do believe in things like healthy control,
Healthy control about what you respond to in words,
What you put in your mouth,
The vision of your day,
Your life,
The intentions you have.
That's all parts of control.
The way you interact with other people,
The decisions you make.
These are all types of control,
But I would call these healthy control.
The unhealthy control,
For me,
How I see it now,
And I never did that like this in the past,
When I was in this fully rational way of living,
In an environment where everything was really tightly controlled.
And I think my own approach was coming from a survival strategy,
Because I thought that having control,
Taking control myself at least gave me a grip on life.
How wrong could I be?
But that's only now that I see that.
This sense of grip on life is making you feel safe,
At least,
I only tell from my experience.
It makes you feel safe because you think you can control things.
You think you can control things by overthinking,
By thinking about 10 or 20 different scenarios of how a certain situation might unfold.
This control already,
When I feel now my body,
I feel already the contraction of thinking about that.
And then my mind wants to go back in controlling this story as well.
But I just want to show up now from a different person,
From being and letting everything unfold with having a healthy control.
What is healthy control?
Healthy control is taking good care of yourself,
Of other people,
Of situations,
Without overanalyzing.
It's more trust.
Trust that the right things will unfold.
Healthy control is going with the flow.
If you look at nature,
For example,
There are so many observations you can make there that some things you cannot control,
Like a tree budding in spring,
Full in its leaves,
Green,
Fresh leaves growing from spring to summer,
In its full glory in summer,
And in autumn it starts to lose its leaves.
And there is a cycle where in winter there are no leaves on the tree.
So everything is constantly changing.
This nature you cannot control.
And we all accept that the tree loses its leaves and that new leaves are growing next year.
You have to take care of the tree.
Of course it needs sunlight,
It needs water.
But you cannot control the growing of the leaves in overthinking that it will prevent then losing its leaves.
So again,
We are part of nature.
If we go with the flow and we take good care of situations and we grow our awareness,
We bring in a healthy type of control.
That is what you can bring in your life with more and more awareness.
