How to let go of control & trust Life

Q: “How to embody trust better? How to allow instead of control / overthink? Where's the line?”

A: Okay so there's two things that come up for me when I see this question. I'll just go through them.

1.) Trusting life gets easier when you feel more equipped to handle all the possibilities.

Here's an example of what I mean:

The more you understand conflict & how to handle it, the more courageous you feel in the face of it. It doesn't mean it'll be easy, or feel good. But when you understand the territory, and how to move in that space, you feel brave enough to be there. You can trust yourself to handle it.

What normally happens in conflict is people just react to it from base instincts -- whether that's to fight or freeze. People freeze in conflict for many reasons (trauma,) but one reason that is actually immediately actionable to address is not knowing what to do.

How many times have you been in a conflict and felt like you don't know what to do?

This happens to ALMOST EVERYONE!!!!

And here's the good news: there actually ARE things to do! Clear, concrete steps to take! And when you understand those steps, you can move forward into the reality, rather than sit there like a deer in the headlights.

So, this is an example of how trusting life gets easier when you actually know how to respond to life.

This could be relevant to many other things: knowing if you need to break up with someone, knowing if you should start a business, knowing if you should talk to your boss.

Can you TRUST YOURSELF to feel equipped to do all of that, and all of the things that could arise from that?

Work on TRUSTING YOURSELF TO KNOW WHAT TO DO, and life starts to flow differently. Not necessarily easier, but the overthinking will become less prevalent.

2.) Think about how false your sense of control is in the first place. 

Let's be honest. You've rarely been in control, ever, in your life.

And on the few occasions when you have been in control, it's been fleeting, or it's been at the expense of another person's feelings or experience.

There are so many variables at work in the thrust of the law of cause & effect that the thought of being in total control is actually extremely silly.

In addition to this, there's a terrible cost to trying to remain in control.

One of my biggest lessons about meditation was over a decade ago when I went mountain biking for the first time. After our first run down a single-track, I looked over to my friend who took me out and said: "wow, I hands hurt SO bad after doing that."

And she essentially took the stance of sensei and responded:

"Ah, yeah. That's the first thing to learn. Loose grip."

When you're stuck in a cycle of trying to control your life (or more accurately, other people in your life,) you take the stance of GRIPPING.

You're white-knuckling the steering wheel, your body is tense, and you're desperately holding onto a metaphoric boulder in the river of life, trying with great strain to not just go with the flow of what life is wanting to do.

You're afraid of letting go because you don't know what's going to happen if you just trust life. That's fair.

But please understand: There's actually a cost either way.

You can let go, and do the scary thing of opening yourself to the unknown, or you can keep gripping the boulder and stay stuck exactly where you are. 

Two costs: experience the unknown, or stay where you are. 

That's what happens when you try to stay in control. You hold onto that boulder and stay put exactly where you are. It's fine to do that for a while, but think about the span of your entire life.

Do you want to stay stuck, frozen in time, until you're 85 years old?

I know people who have done that with their lives and it's incredibly sad.

Do you want to be a sad story?

Someone who cemented themselves in the past,

because they were too afraid of the unknown?

The unknown of death is coming for you either way.

Trusting life is just about getting better at dying.

Let's go.

So, it's not about experiencing total loss, or total control. That level of black and white thinking is what's keeping you stuck exactly where you are. 

It's more like... "do it scared."

Lack of trust is mostly a lack of an ability to be with the full spectrum of your experience.

Get comfortable with the full spectrum of living. The good and the bad.

You were not born to only feel good. That's what you were doing before you were born, and you got bored of that. So you decided to go on the human ride.

You were born to feel.

And a part of you that's hard to describe is waiting very patiently for you to do life anyway, even if you're scared.

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