It Will All Work Out: The Freedom of Letting Go

I still gave in to immediate gratification rather than focusing on lasting happiness.

You want love; they want undying devotion every second of the day and night. They make everything about “Me, me, me.”

you only fear what you don’t know.

Control. I just wanted control. When I had it, I felt like I could breathe. Like everything was going to be okay. And when I didn’t have it, I was filled with anxiety, feeling like every little thing could go wrong.

foundation: What is control? Control is having power over a situation, yourself, or others, and being able to influence what goes down. To be “in control” is to be the one sitting in the driver’s seat, with your hands on the steering wheel. Moving toward or away from things as you see fit.

What is control? Control is having power over a situation, yourself, or others, and being able to influence what goes down. To be “in control” is to be the one sitting in the driver’s seat, with your hands on the steering wheel. Moving toward or away from things as you see fit.

Anytime an outcome matters to them—whether that’s in their parenting, their job, or a school project—they start micromanaging things to make sure they turn out all right.

Let’s say you’re working on a team, and you’re all trying to choose which solution to use to solve a problem. If somebody else starts pushing and arguing for their way, even though you might disagree, you get quiet or let yourself get pushed over, so they can have it their way. That’s because a piece of you is afraid of facing some intensity and having somebody get mad at you. So you end up controlling what everyone thinks of you by not being authentic.

Any form of control is really just protection.

Any form of control is really just protection. And you get protective because you’re afraid. And you’re afraid because you don’t trust.

Any form of control, at the end of the day, is really just protection. And you get protective because you’re afraid of something bad happening. And the reason you’re afraid of something bad happening again is because you don’t trust yourself or others to handle a situation.

if your monster controls more on the inside, and makes you run away or shut down, that can happen when you had a parent who could explode and get real mad without warning.

You were strategically using certain behaviors in hopes that they would affect how another person treated you or how they behaved around you. For all the right reasons, you were trying to make sure the world around you stayed safe and cool at all times. And what started as an attempt to control one or two specific individuals can then become the way you manage everyone your whole life.

If something makes you anxious—it could be asking for a raise or asking for a date—you might just not do it. Because that’s how your monster learned to deal with anxiety.

when you stop trusting other people, and start thinking your way is the only way, you may start acting like you’re the smartest person in the universe.

It makes you feel like every idea you have is the best idea ever. Every project is the best project.

Monster is wrong just as often as it is right. The only problem is that this particular kind of monster doesn’t notice its mistakes, only everyone

Monster is wrong just as often as it is right. The only problem is that this particular kind of monster doesn’t notice its mistakes, only everyone else’s.

By never relying on people to support you, or never delegating to others and empowering them to be in a position to help, you start taking on way too much.

was setting them up to fail, whether it was putting them in a situation they didn’t yet have the experience to handle or not giving them the training and access they needed to succeed or holding them to impossible standards because no one is perfect all the time. So, at the time, it looked like it was their fault. It looked like they were the problem, not me. They let me down. When the truth was that I was to blame.