Feeling comfortable not being in control
Hello Medium. Sorry that I have had to go MIA shortly after promising weekly content. I am working on structuring things so that I can be regular come next year. Who says new year resolutions should wait till the New Year? ;-)
I hope my last post on “Resurrection Saturdays” was useful in providing ideas and/or changing mindsets a little. This week I want to share my thoughts on feeling comfortable when life throws you curve balls while the catcher holds your bat so you can’t even swing :-P !!! Remind you of any cartoons?
Before I start, I just want to reiterate that these are thoughts I share in the hope that people can relate and change their mindset of life or perspective of the world around them accordingly. I am not promising advice for you may not want guidance from someone whose life might be in a lot more disarray than yours (for all you know). That being said, I don’t agree with the notion that you need to fix your own problems before you can help others. The “help” in such a case is just being open so that people can be perceptive to learning from the mistakes and experiences of others (me in this case).
I could be speaking for others as well when I say that I feel awfully frustrated when I am not in control of things in my life and where it is headed. It can also be a micro reaction to hopelessness about how and why your day just fell apart and didn’t give you the things you wanted to do or achieve. This compounds four to five times a week often for me to lead me to believe that I am hapless in my situation.
Anger, frustration or sorrow — pick your poison — but do so in a way you know you cannot and will not ruin what you have built or achieved thus far. If your days becoming disjointed show a pattern why can’t your response to such vagaries be adjusted to become predictable for your sake? Let us also recognise why some of this occurs more often in society than we like.
Growing up — What is your plan?
We often get asked what is our plan for life? Whether you are a child or a grown up, there is no great answer to this. Yet, we are attuned to building notions in our head on what amount of control we have for our future. We have control of our future — yes — but only in the micro. If I am a great basketball player within 100kms of my residence, who is to say I am not rank 100 or more within a 200kms radius. Globalization has increased competition and you planning your future will lead to more and more frutration if you don’t achieve the heights you proposed to yourself initially in your mind.
Does that mean we should not plan or not have targets? Absolutely not. And that is why I love the thought — “Aim high. Aim for the ceiling and you will remain where you are. Aim for the sky and you will hit the ceiling.” I am just saying where our frustrations stem from. It is an over-indexing of things in our mind as to what all is in our control. And this gets ingrained from childhood. It really isn’t the fault of the one who asks the question. A generation gap means we just have to come up with new ways to break the ice.
Being obsessed with your best work
People take it for granted how much society has progressed and how good individuals are. Kindness is taken for granted. At the core we have animal instincts and kindness is learned and inherited from very early on — even when children are still in the womb. So you should laud your kindness and give yourself a pat on the back from time to time without letting elitist tendencies or ego plague you. This kindness gives rise to values and thus progress and innovation which we see in how far society has come. It is no trivial feat and has taken a lot of work from inidividuals across the globe. At the same time — you cannot be obsessed about your good days where you get a lot of work done as you had planned.
Humans have a spectrum just as any athlete for example. You can’t have sports personalities have their best games or even good games every game. It takes a lot of effort just to be playing at that level. Similarly, it takes a lot of you to live your everyday life. Thus, it is ok if you don’t have a good one. There is always a next one to look forward to and change a little every day. You just have to ensure that most of that spectrum is near the 70–80 percentile of your potential. If you are great every day — how will you know how great you really are? The difference in the contrasts is what professes the growth and change over time.
Letting self awareness not become self obsession
Life is a constant growing journey where you can look forward to a lot of change. Thus, one should never reach a point where they feel that they know themselves inside out. A lot of what you react to or feel like can’t be explained by science let alone your mind. Thus, it is ok to not understand your emotions at certain points in your life but being comfortable surrendering you to them in the hope and faith that your body and mind knows what is best for you.
That being said, you should take every opportunity to learn a little more about yourself but not become obsessed about it. Life’s journey itself will tell you more about you than you trying to peel the onion in isolation. You are in the most complex lab where practical experiences are teaching you every minute whether you like it or not.
The World is not yours to fix
Resurrection Saturdays (which will soon become Fridays — and I will tell you soon in another post why) are all about reducing suicide and unhealthy tendencies that make you not want to live any more. Thus, why should I beat around the bush: a number of suicides are committed where people tend to lose hope of “fixing” something and that something has become untenable or unfixable.
The more we feel that we are in control of our lives — the more we feel frustrated when things don’t go right. And the extreme notion of control means that you begin to encumber yourself with wanting to do for others with every success that you attain. Before you know it — you have the burden of a whole community in your head without them having asked you to do anything. It is just how one grows up seeing the kindness in society that we want to do more and be an epitome. Unfortunately, the realization does not dawn upon us that this is more harmful for the individual. It is about tempering expectations but sometimes your relative achievements get to your head as they innocently lead you to believe more of the “control” that you can exhibit within the world.
Bottomline is —literally in this case ;-) … “the World is not yours to Fix!!!”.
