Along my journey it has been liberating to discover that I do not always have to be in control and that in the process of letting go, I can be free.....

Letting Go

I used to be excellent at being in control - at least the kind of control that I thought I had, the kind that would wake me up in the middle of the night with thoughts of what needed to be done, what relationships I needed to tend to, and what my future might look like, should look like, or probably would look like. It wasn't as if I woke up due to some unknown force and those thoughts slowly crept into my awareness. The thoughts were already fully constructed entities soaring through my mind before my eyes even had a chance to open. I started my days in total control craziness!

The truth, I discovered, was that I was never really in control. I didn't have control over the people in my life that I thought were my mainstays and I didn't have control over whether situations in my life remained firmly in tact or fell apart at the seams, so when the winds of change blew in, I was knocked flat on my face.

Unfortunately, it doesn't take hurricane force winds to knock a control freak over, it only takes a small breeze. I had so much invested in the outcome that anything different from what I expected became a massive blow. Controlling anything takes a ridiculous amount of energy, for little reward. In fact, the reward is even more of a sham because it wasn't me that made the situation the way it was - it was likely what would have happened anyway, minus all the meddling on my part.  

In reality, all the moments in my life that I would call my 'worst' have one thing in common: they all turned out okay in the end. No matter the anxiety involved, in some way or another life's happenings have worked themselves through. Maybe not perfectly, and some events somewhat life shattering to certain degrees, but I survived, picked up the pieces, and moved 

on.  And, in the end, what did I have to show for all the energy I had put into wondering how things could possibly fall into place. Nothing. Not a thing.

So, I am working on giving up the reigns. I am still an active participant in my  life, I've just learned to be more laid-back, and now exist with the 'go with the flow' kind of way. I have made that much of a change as the paths I have travelled on my life journey have taught me that it is much easier to let everything just be and then figure out the logistics later.