Why This is NOT the Time to Let Your (Control) Freak Flag Fly

You tell yourself you want something more. You tell yourself, at times, that you’re ready.
And then you don’t act. Or, maybe you sabotage. Or, maybe you fail to see opportunities that are right under your nose. Why?

You’re too worried about “the how.”

When you worry too much about how something is going to happen, you begin to micromanage your life, your business and career, your relationships. You think that if you have every little detail in order, every hair in place, you won’t fail this time.

These are all fear behaviors that lull you into thinking that the security of the known is better than the risk of stepping into the unknown in order to live your dream life. The known is really the enemy of the dreamer. Remember, if you keep doing the same thing you’re going to get more of the same. You have to leave your comfort zone if you want that shift.

Here’s the truth: that inner control freak has got to go if you want to take the exciting leaps that are waiting for you.

Here’s what happens. When you try to tightly control everything, the flow of money in and out, how someone will react, what someone is thinking about you, the exact and detailed outline of next steps –what ends up happening is that you stay so worried about how it will happen that you lose your faith that it will happen. That loss of faith, meanwhile, is what blocks the universe’s ability to bring you what you want. It’s like you’re standing on the garden hose, and all the water is backing up behind it. Sooner or later, either it will develop a crack, a slow leak, or the hose will burst.

That leak means you start bleeding energy in ways you don’t notice at first. You start to feel weary, nervous, or anxious. You begin to lose the trust needed to make the leap into the unknown. You stop taking risks at all for fear of making a mistake. You tell yourself, “See, I can’t do this!” and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Or, you hold so tightly that your over-controlling, micromanaging fear (and lack) based thinking get the best of you and you give up or crack. (Let’s be honest – we’ve all been there.) It is exhausting!

So what’s an earnest, well-intended, goal-oriented person to do?

Get off the hose.

In other words, take a few risks. Trust. Do something you’ve never done before. Trust that if you have the desire, you have the means. Stop worrying so much about the how or the risk because –guess what? No matter what, you’re always risking something. Even by not acting, you are taking a risk. You’re risking getting so frustrated with your status quo that you’ll never crawl out of your pain. Or, if you want to look at it in a less dramatic way, you’ll never get what you really want.

You simply have to decide which risk you want to take: the risk of staying the same and things never changing, or trying and it not working out the first, second or even third time. You have to risk not knowing how it’s all going to come forward.

Why do smart, savvy people get stuck like this? Because the urgency to change is not there. The pain of not changing is too far in the future. The fear of failure obliterates the reality that if you don’t change something, you will stay where you are. The frustration of not living the life you want to live feels so distant that you keep hoping a miracle will occur without your needing to change anything. In other words, that enhanced, deep pain of not having what you want seems so far away that you can’t feel it yet. It’s sort of like why people abuse their bodies – it doesn’t show up right away. When you’re having a few too many drinks, you’re not thinking of the hangover that’s coming the next day.

A miracle is actually waiting to occur and you’re blocking it by not allowing the flow. When you stop worrying about the how, the opportunities become visible, the doors fly open, the miracles begin to happen.

So, I encourage you to take a risk and do something different. Your failure to act is not only just as risky, it’s actually passively aggressive to your dreams. By not acting, you are making a choice.

Perhaps the best way to stop worrying about the how, and just do it, is to remind yourself that staying the same is a risk –you risk feeling a bigger frustration and pain in the future. You risk never having what you want, never living your dreams.

What does that feel like? Now that you’re feeling it, what are you going to do about it?

Affirmation of the week:

Today is the beginning of letting go of fears. Today is the day I make the decision to accept my desire as valid and good. Today is the day I release my need to know how, and know that if I have the desire, I have the means to achieve what I desire.