How To Take Your Power Back

In this outward control world, it may seem like your up against a giant when you try to change your own life.  I’m hoping this blog can serve the purpose of educating people that there is another way.  But as I said in the beginning, all you can give to another person is information.  What they choose to do with it is up to them.  And that’s the whole point anyway.  I’m not in this to control you and I don’t want you to try to control others.  And you don’t have to violently oppose control measures directed from others to you.  For now, just notice how things go.  Notice when you are feeling out of control in a situation and how you behave when that happens.  Notice how you speak to others and how they speak to you.

Then ask yourself this question:  Will what I am about to do or say bring me closer to the people I want to be close to or farther away?  Will my behavior get me closer to my goals or farther from them?  

These questions are important because our goals are the very things we are trying to get accomplished using external control.  We’re essentially manipulating our way through life whether we recognize we are doing it or not.  And we are doing it under the guise that it is the common sense thing to do.  And when it doesn’t work, we just try harder to continue using the same control measures that got us to this point in the first place.  And isn’t that the definition of insanity?  Doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results?

This is why I feel this subject is such an important one.  It’s a running theme in my office with the clients I serve.  It’s why powerlessness is step one in all 12-step traditions.  Our attempts at gaining control over every single event of our lives leads us to pain, depression, illness and sometimes substance abuse.  I think it’s time to give it up - don’t you?

So think about your recent behaviors.  The things you’ve done or said to others.  Then answer the questions I posed:  Did what you said or did bring you closer to your goals and to the people in your life?