When Forcing Doesn’t Work, Try Flowing
Do you feel like life is a marathon, you’re only focused to get to that important finish line and then your life will incur a magical makeover, you’ll turn into a movie star, princess or whatever your image for brilliant success is? Have you ever wondered if there is another way of experiencing life, which is more pleasurable and fun?
The general opinion and media imply that we have to ‘work hard’ and make things happen, or ‘force yourself to your upper limit and don’t stop until you get what you want’.
This can be summarized in one word – control. And I have to admit – I have issues with control.
I’ve always known it and as much as it works for me on many occasions, it also deters me from experiencing more freedom, carelessness and joy. As we know, acknowledging a problem is the first step to resolving it.
Are you one of us who believe that the outcome of a situation depends entirely on whether you performed well or not? Do you often catch yourself thinking if you don’t do a task in a certain time, the world would collapse? Do you often limit yourself, are you harsh on yourself and do you beat yourself up to the limit on every occasion? If you recognized some traits of your character, you might as well have a negative relationship with control.
Why it’s not nice to be controlling? Because it places a huge responsibility on our shoulders – that our life is entirely up to what we do.
In fact, we have control over not that many things. We can’t control when a baby is born, a flower blossoms or withers or if tomorrow we might have an accident or unexpected gift by destiny.
Control is not fun at all. It steals all the joy, rest, laughter and entertainment, and it’s the opposite of spontaneity.
When we’re controlling all the aspects of our life, nothing spontaneous or unplanned can enter our life as we have that firm vision what our life should be and there’s no space for anything else.
The positive qualities deriving from the need to control are discipline, hard work, planning, contemplation, persistence and perseverance.
That’s all wonderful and I don’t mean to undermine any of those qualities. However, as it often happens in life, we tend to go to extremities and lose balance. What’s the antidote? How can we bring more joy and freedom in our life without leaving everything we struggled for in the mud?
By going with the flow.
Or doing our best at the moment, whatever feels natural, close to our heart and rather effortless. By listening to our heart and trusting that the right things will happen to us at the right time and in the right consequence. By trusting God knows better than us.
Detach from the outcome – we’re much more than a number, position or even the most glittering mind-blowing goal.
We’re humans – incredibly powerful and yet restricted to a certain point. Let’s accept that and stop fighting against the circumstances but accept things as they are and go with the flow when things don’t work the way we wanted. Trust yourself and life will be there to support you.
We can’t control other people’s feelings, actions or reactions either.
Sadly for many, we can’t control others. We’re not here to control others, we’re here to heal our own life.
Please share in the comments two areas where you would like to give up control of. I declare mine are rest and love. I look forward to reading your comments.
