top of page
Search

Control of Your Life

Updated: Jan 25

Control is a paradox: The more that you try to control your life, the more out of control it gets, and the more anxious you get. Yet you are in control - not of everything, but of the essential things that really matter for the life you want, but only if what you want is aligned to your life's true purpose.


Total control is an illusion because the Universe has other ideas and plans for you. As Byron Katie wrote “If you want real control, drop the illusion of control; let life have you. It does anyway. You’re just telling yourself the story of how it doesn’t."


Chris Pine wrote "The only thing you sometimes have control over is perspective. You don't have control over your situation. But you have a choice about how you view it."


Control


The 12 Step serenity prayer, which has its origins in stoicism is as follows:

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

The courage to change the things I can,

And the wisdom to know the difference.


Dr Wayne Dyer wrote "It makes no sense to worry about things you have no control over because there's nothing you can do about them, and why worry about things you do control? The activity of worrying keeps you immobilised." Maya Angelou wrote "You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them."


The key to a simple but effective life is identifying what you can influence and forgetting the uncontrollable. Focus on your circle of control. It’s limited control, sure, but these are the things that matter for a calm and less stressful life. Imagine a hula hoop around your waist - everything inside it is your business, and everything outside it is not.


L. Lionel kendrick wrote "We cannot always control everything that happens to us in this life, but we can control how we respond. Many struggles come as problems and pressures that sometimes cause pain. Others come as temptations, trials, and tribulations."


What can you adjust? Your attitude. Your actions. Your reactions - always respond and never react. Your internal narratives. These are the essentials. Master them, and your path will be clear. What task is in front of you right now? Give it your full attention. Always remain fully present.


Ben Zobrist wrote "At the end of the day, you can't control the results; you can only control your effort level and your focus."


Claire Carver-Dias, the olympic athlete said “Set goals for things you can control. In my case, I can’t control the marks from the judges, but I can control how I train every day, and I can control my performance.”


The great stoic philosopher Epictetus wrote “Suffering arises from trying to control what is uncontrollable, or from neglecting what is within our power.”


Trying to control other people’s behaviour is a waste of time, and it's none of your business.


I love the brilliant quote from Professor and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel “Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself.”


The path to serenity and simple living is letting go of reality you can’t influence. It’s the freedom not to be ruled by circumstance, to find calm in the chaos.


Restoration of your life and sanity looks like letting go of control, a full, repeated and deepening surrendering to your Higher Power at all times.


Step 3 of the 12 Steps is “Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him.” This is an essential step to a life of peace, love, and joy.


Practicing Step 3 is like the opening of a door which to all appearances is still closed and locked. All we need is a key, and the decision to swing the door open. There is only one key, and it is called willingness. Once unlocked by willingness, the door opens almost of itself, and looking through it, we shall see a pathway beside which is an inscription. It reads: “This is the way to a Faith that works.” In the first two Steps we were engaged in reflection. We saw that we were essentially powerless, but we also perceived that Faith of some kind is possible to anyone. These conclusions did not require action; they required only acceptance. Realising this is the only way to Real Personal Power. Self-will, which has always blocked the entry of God; a Higher Power - into our lives is self-sabotage.


The effectiveness of the whole of your life will rest upon how well and earnestly we have tried to come to "A decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.”


Once we have placed the key of willingness in the lock and have the door ever so slightly open, we find that we can always open it some more. Though self-will may slam it shut again, as it frequently does, it will always respond the moment we again pick up the key of willingness. Is this also the key of ‘handing it over’? I have always been a ‘control freak’ when it comes to problems as I find it hard to trust anyone else, let alone a deity. I couldn’t trust my parents so how could I trust God, who was for me a stranger? I have tried self-will, grit, hustle, and determination: Yet to no avail. Despite all my efforts of intellectualisation I don’t feel any better and I don’t feel more surrendered.


When I try to describe the Truth of my life right now - I use a 'corridor' metaphor – the door behind me is closed to trauma, failures, fear, and ego. I am only taking the lessons. I have swallowed the key to the door behind me.


I saw in church recently - Revelation 3:8: “I know your works. See, I have set before you an open door, and no one can shut it; for you have a little strength, have kept My word, and have not denied My name.” Ahead lies belief, Faith, seeking God. I don’t have to open the door ahead of me. It is wide open. I just didn’t see that it was. My action is to walk through it. I need to let go or be dragged. I need to hand it over. I need to let go and surrender.


But suppose that instinct still cries out, as it certainly will, “Yes, respecting certain events, I guess I have to be dependent upon my spiritual approach, but in all other matters I must still maintain my independence. If I keep on turning my life and my will over to the care of Something or Somebody else, what will become of me? I'll look like the hole in the doughnut.” This, of course, is the process by which instinct and logic always seek to bolster egotism, and so frustrate spiritual development. The trouble is that this kind of thinking takes no real account of the facts. And the facts seem to be these: The more we become willing to depend upon a Higher Power, the more independent we actually are. Therefore dependence is really a means of gaining true independence of the spirit and to regain control of your life in line with the will of your Higher Power.


Let's examine for a moment this idea of dependence at the level of everyday living. In this area it is startling to discover how dependent we really are, and how unconscious of that dependence. Every modern house has electric wiring carrying power and light to its interior. We are delighted with this dependence; our main hope is that nothing will ever cut off the supply of current. By so accepting our dependence upon this marvel of science, we find ourselves more independent personally. Not only are we more independent, we are even more comfortable and secure. Power flows just where it is needed. Silently and surely, electricity, that strange energy so few people understand, meets our simplest daily needs, and our most desperate ones, too.


But the moment our mental or emotional independence is in question, how differently we behave. How persistently we claim the right to decide all by ourselves just what we shall think and just how we shall act. Oh yes, we'll weigh the pros and cons of every problem. We'll listen politely to those who would advise us, but all the decisions are to be ours alone. Nobody is going to meddle with our personal independence in such matters. Besides, we think, there is no one we can surely trust. We are certain that our intelligence, backed by willpower, can rightly control our inner lives and guarantee us success in the world we live in. This brave philosophy, wherein each man plays God, sounds good in the speaking, but it still has to meet the acid test: How well does it actually work? One good look in the mirror ought to be answer enough for anyone. That’s for sure!


Should his own image in the mirror be too awful to contemplate (and it usually is), he might first take a look at the results normal people are getting from self-sufficiency. Everywhere he sees people filled with anger and fear, society breaking up into warring fragments. Each fragment says to the others, “We are right and you are wrong.” Every such pressure group, if it is strong enough, self-righteously imposes its will upon the rest. And everywhere the same thing is being done on an individual basis. The sum of all this mighty effort is less peace and less brotherhood than before. The philosophy of self-sufficiency is not paying off. Plainly enough, it is a bone-crushing juggernaut whose final achievement is ruin.


Therefore, we can consider ourselves fortunate indeed. Each of us has had his own near-fatal encounter with the juggernaut of self-will, and has suffered enough under its weight to be willing to look for something better. Do you recognise this in your Self yet? So, it is by circumstance rather than by any virtue that we have been driven to spirituality, have admitted defeat, have acquired the rudiments of Faith, and now want to make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to a Higher Power. Religion is for those who are scared of going to Hell: Spirituality is for those who have already been there. Have you reached your rock-bottom yet? Are you ready for your bud to open?


When World War II broke out, this spiritual principle had its first major test. Spiritual soldiers entered the services and were scattered all over the world. Would they be able to take discipline, stand up under fire, and endure the monotony and misery of war? Would the kind of dependence they had learned in spiritual approaches to life carry them through? Well, it did. They had even fewer emotional binges than those safe at home did. They were just as capable of endurance and valour as any other soldiers. Whether in Alaska or on the Salerno beachhead, their dependence upon a Higher Power worked. And far from being a weakness, this dependence was their chief source of strength.


So how, exactly, can the willing person continue to turn his will and his life over to the Higher Power? He made a beginning, we have seen, when he commenced to rely upon spirituality for the solution of his problems. By now, though, the chances are that he has become convinced that he has problems that refuse to be solved by all the sheer personal determination and courage he can muster. They simply will not budge; they make him desperately unhappy and threaten his new-found spirituality. Our friend is still victimised by remorse and guilt when he thinks of yesterday. Bitterness still overpowers him when he broods upon those he still envies or hates. His financial insecurity worries him sick, and panic takes over when he thinks of all the bridges to safety that his previous life burned behind him. And how shall he ever straighten out that awful jam that cost him the affection of his family and separated him from them? His lone courage and unaided will cannot do it. Surely, he must now depend upon somebody or Something else for ALL of my problems.


All by himself, and in the light of his own circumstances, he needs to develop the quality of willingness. When he acquires willingness, he is the only one who can make the decision to exert himself. Trying to do this is an act of his own will. Spirituality requires sustained and personal exertion to conform to its eternal principles and so, we trust, to God's will for us. When it comes to writing the story of your life, quit stealing the pen from your Higher Power.



In all times of emotional disturbance or indecision, we can pause, ask for quiet, and in the stillness simply say: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. Thy will, not mine, be done.” I now want to rely upon an infinite God, rather than my finite Self. He will enable me to match calamity with serenity.


This is pure spiritual surrender. The situation was roughly this: if our addiction to external validation was such a fundamental part of our personality - if it had developed long ago, during our childhoods, and had shaped or deformed many of our other personality traits, our relationships, and our value system - then we had to ask whether all our prior ideas about who and what we were might be incorrect or ill-founded. This is not to say that on a practical level everything we thought we knew about ourselves was wrong. But if we really wanted to change ourselves and lead new and sane lives, ultimately having a spiritual awakening and Enlightenment, we had to at least pose the question, if only on the abstract level. We had to admit to the possibility that anything, if not everything, we believed could be faulty.


To use the Biblical expression from Psalms:23:5 of the “Cup that runneth over,” we were like cups that had run over with obsession - with a need for external validation in the form of 'imitation love' - power, money, substance addictions etc. A spiritual exercise suggested that we could choose to tip our own cup over and let the 'conditioned societal sickness' run out of it. We knew that having done this, we could not refill the cup through our unaided will, because we had become convinced that any solitary attempt to do so would inevitably take on the obsessive/compulsive character of our current day personalities. We could not outwit our own addictive natures. The enemy was us.


I am happy to have a ‘new employer.’ I am powerless without him. He is all powerful and I will do my best to perform his work well. I want to contribute to life rather than living from a place of egocentric fear. Takers are losers in life. I was always a taker, although I wasn’t aware that I was. Contributors are those that win. I want to face life successfully and enjoy peace of mind. I want to become increasingly conscious of God’s presence. I want to be reborn - the renewing of my mind. Romans 12:2 states "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect".


God do with me as you will. Take away my difficulties, so that victory over them may bear witness to those that I would help of your power, your love, and your way of life. May I do your will always.


I have reflected deeply on this step, making sure that I am ready so that at last I could last abandon myself utterly to him. I want to walk on the sunny side of the street. I want my life to change. I want to abandon myself utterly to him. Completely, wholeheartedly all the way, for all of my life God wants all of me. God can direct my thinking in all areas. If my thinking becomes better in all areas then surely my life will become better in all areas too. I think we need to realise this is the real decision that we are making, to turn our entire will and our entire life over to the care and direction of God's will. Martin Luther King wrote "All reality has spiritual control."


Michael Phelps wrote "I can only control my own performance. If I do my best, then I can feel good at the end of the day."


Brian Tracy wrote "You cannot control what happens to you, but you can control your attitude toward what happens to you, and in that, you will be mastering change rather than allowing it to master you."


Viktor Frankl is known for saying, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way”. 


Buddha has the final word on spirituality and control "To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one's family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one's own mind. If a man can control his mind he can find the way to Enlightenment, and all wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him." That is how you control your life.


I see you, I hear you, I see the divine in you.


Speak in such a way that others love to listen to you: Listen in such a way that others love to speak to you.


Namaste.


Sending you love, light, and blessings brothers.


Olly



Email me: 





Hello,

I am delighted and enchanted to meet you. I coach men with 'Deep Coaching', 'Supercoaching', and Transformative Life Coaching (TLC). Thank you for reading this far. I very much look forward to connecting with the highest version of you, to seeing your highest possibility, and to our conversations. Please do contact me via my email for a free connection call and a free experience of coaching on Zoom or in person. 


“Transformative life coaching uniquely creates and holds the space for you to see your self afresh, with clarity, and step into new ways of BEing, which will transform how you perceive and intuitively create your world. My work is to guide you to raise your own conscious awareness to the level that you want to achieve.”







Click here for the books that I know will help you along your journey of recovering your Self:









I have a Bachelor's degree in Natural Sciences from Trinity College, Cambridge; a Master's Degree in Philosophy from Trinity College, Cambridge; a PhD Doctorate in Scientific Research from University College London (UCL); a Medical Degree (MD/MBBS) from The Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine, London and have been a doctor and reconstructive trauma and cancer surgeon in London for 20 years. I have a number of other higher qualifications in science and surgery. I have published over 50 peer reviewed PubMed cited scientific journal articles, have been an associate editor and frequent scientific faculty member, and am the author of several scientific books. I have been awarded my Diploma in Transformative Life Coaching in London, which has International Coaching Federation (ICF) Accreditation, as well as the UK Association for Coaching (AC), and the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC). I have been on my own transformative journey full time for over five years and I am ready to be your guide to you finding out who you really are and how the world works.




Please let me know if you would like to join our 'VOICE for men' VIP community: 'Vulnerability & Openness Is a Choice Ensemble', 'Visibility Is Power', where men can find their strength, courage, and authenticity, by dropping their egocentric fears and instead communicate openly with vulnerability. We are co-creating this space. It will change your life. It will empower you. This community is a safe space for men to connect and discuss philosophy, spirituality, positive psychology, awakening to Self-realisation, wisdom and timeless Truths, to share our experience, strength and hope, and to find solutions to our pain and fears. Our meeting is free to join. There is no script, just sharing.

 
 
 

ความคิดเห็น

bottom of page