Stop Trying to Control Everything! It’s Why You Suffer!

Very often in our lives, we seek to control matters externally, internally, and this very control is what leads to a tremendous amount of suffering. This control implies that we have expectations and they are held in the form of belief systems. So we have an expectation that the weather should be nice today, it should be warm and sunny. And so when that isn't the case, there is a mismatch between the expectation and the reality. And so all of a sudden there is an expression of a negative emotion, to some extent. We feel sad or depressed or hurt because reality hasn't matched our expectations. And you can immediately see why that brings about so much suffering. Instead of having reality match our expectation, our expectation should match reality.

We should be okay and accepting of whatever appears in reality all the time, in every moment. And immediately all this suffering is alleviated. Controlling reality in some way, or the ability that we have control over reality is highly illusory. We may be able to move in certain directions and exert our efforts in certain directions, and things may manifest in the way we want them or not. But even if we are projected towards a goal, achieving a particular goal, very often when that goal is achieved, it's never really achieved in the way we would have imagined it would be achieved.

Sometimes the expectations of the achievements and the fruits of reaching a goal are far higher or far exceed what we had in mind, or sometimes slightly less than what we had in mind. We might reach this goal. We climb Mount Everest when we get to the top and we might think, hey, well, it wasn't so great. I've been training for this for years. It wasn't that great. Or on the flip side, you might then climb Mount Everest and you just see the experience of being there and wow, you are astonishing. It far exceeds your expectation. So really, the expectation itself is very rarely matched as is.

Let reality do its thing

If we flip the script and we have our expectations match reality, which in essence doesn't mean that we hold onto expectations anymore, because reality manifests and presents itself to us regardless of what our expectations are. If we go about it in this way, then there is a much higher degree of liberation and freedom and peace that is experienced. Your inner peace can really surface now because it's not tainted by all these covers and layers of belief systems and expectations.

I've spoken so much about embracing reality and accepting reality and the typical counterargument or the pushback on that is how am I supposed to accept something that isn't ultimately not good for me. I guess the better word here is to allow reality to just do its thing. Allow reality to manifest whatever it needs to manifest. To allow reality to have some of these aspects of reality appear the way they do.

Accepting and embracing does not imply that we are in agreement or disagreement with what is appearing. It's just the fundamental or essential allowance of whatever appears. Like I said earlier, whatever reality wants to display and whatever appears within reality is out of our control. It's completely out of our control. We don't know what's going to happen in the next second, the next 2 seconds, the next minute, the next ten minutes.

In that not knowing you have the option to spiral yourself into a whole load of anxiety because you're trying to control what happens. Or there's a sense of surrender in not knowing. So in that mystery and the not knowing of what happens, there can be a tremendous amount of liberation that's felt. It's like oh, because I don't know what will happen, we just allow it to happen as it should or as it will. So this is a more peaceful approach to navigating in some way reality and what appears in reality.

You can have opinions, you can say no, I don't like this, I don't want this, I want this. This should happen, this shouldn't happen. We can accumulate these opinions and judgements so much, but in essence, whatever reality has to offer is what it will offer. If you are okay with that, then what's the problem? There's no more problems. You're in a good place. So really the overarching perspective on this is that act from a place of peace, act from a place of happiness, act from a place of surrender, a place of liberation, a place of fulfilment. And then move. But always realise that whatever reality has to offer is out of our control.

The Takeway:

If there's a particular milestone, if there's a particular direction you'd like to go into, go in that direction. Hopefully, you'll notice that even the YOU that is going in the direction of this thing is also an image or a perspective that reality is presenting itself to you. Reality is bringing about this particular perspective. Once that is realised, that is also extremely liberating to see and to be okay with and to allow, which actually links back to the sense of being or being present.

And it's like oh, I get distracted when I'm present in my meditations. It feels amazing. And then when I go out, I go to work and I feel distracted. But even distraction is something to notice. Even the distraction is part of it. Being distracted is like who's distracted? If there's a notion of the distraction and the very fact you can describe that you are being distracted, who is really distracted then? So there's always a more fundamental place from which reality can be experienced and viewed. And that fundamental place is in essence untouched by what reality displays or what reality has to display.

To summarise, stop trying to control everything. It's perfect, even when it doesn't feel like it. That very feeling that it's not perfect and that it should and shouldn't be in some particular way, that's also what reality has to offer in that moment. That can also be observed and accepted and embraced. So accept trying to control everything.

Thank you for reading the blog! You may click here to access the full video on YouTube.