From what I witness, humans have a strong need for certainty. Generally, we want to know what’s coming, and we want to have control. In order to have control, we need to know that the way we have things mapped out in our minds will result in them coming to fruition. When that happens, we feel delight, satisfaction, mastery over our plan. It feels like we are in control of ourselves and our inner and outer environments, and goodness, that does feel great. Everything is moving predictably and as it should.
When I am in one of those ease-ful times of life, and it seems that everything is going as planned, and I alone get to make my decisions, I feel great reward in just living that flow. However, when something finally breaks the flow, and I am no longer the decision maker, I can get surprisingly, instantaneously frustrated, even to the point that I’ll manufacture a story about why I have lost control and how that is wrong.
Over the past decade, I have become more curious about this need for control in myself and others. I’ve watched the controlling tendencies of those around me, and I have witnessed this same need for control in myself, ebbing and flowing over the years. We become more of what we place our attention on. We become more of that part of ourselves as we age because we continue to reinforce that behavior within ourselves.
The thing is that when we NEED to control in such a (perhaps) compulsive manner, we decrease our potential for new experiences. We will begin to make our world smaller and inaccessible to others. We’ll hold so tightly that we no longer enjoy our day to day life, because opening ourselves up to enjoyment means we need to embrace uncertainty and new experiences. We move forward with caution, so that nothing, or almost nothing, will disrupt our well-organized sense of control. It starts to become confining, and we have less opportunity for any kind intimacy because intimacy requires letting go. We lack ease and openness. We lack the ability to go with the flow.
If we are letting our controlling mind rule our experience, when something happens over which we have we have no control, and we feel surprised by the situation, it becomes an opportunity to exercise even more control. We may do that by removing choices — for response or action — from ourselves or those around us. We may choose to decrease our exposure to unexpected or unpredictable outcomes. We may stop being able to cope altogether, throwing our hands up in rage or disengaging completely to avoid facing the knowledge that we can’t ever actually be in charge of every possible thing in our lives.
If you want to create space for new experiences to occur, you need to lean into the universe and trust something greater than you to have your best interests in mind. Plan and know what you’d like to experience, but allow for your plan to not go as you had hoped. The detours and unexpected new roads and stops along the way are what make your life richer and more colourful. See what happens to your body when you stop holding so tight to the steering wheel of your life. You’ll notice you open up, your jaw softens. your lips become more supple, your eyes open wider, curiosity takes over need. You begin to dance in the duality within, appreciating the difference between the part that wants certainty and the part that is willing to see what magic lays ahead.
My 6-year-old daughter often asks for magic, and I explain to her that magic comes in those moments of the unexpected, when something special happens that you hadn’t planned for. She doesn’t really get it, because she wants to fly, and it’s hard to explain that magic is not flying but allowing for the things you can’t explain:)
There is ease in allowing for the things you can’t explain or haven’t planned. Some call the unexplained magic, some call it the divine, others call it god, while there are those who refer to it as luck. It doesn’t matter what you want to call it. What matters is the space you give yourself from a desire to control, the space that is created when you move forward with a plan and you have a sense of a desired outcome. Deep down inside, the road there will begin to show itself to you as you walk it. You will see it can’t be mapped out, that there is so much to be gained in the experience of the unknown. If you just let the reins go a little, just a little, and allow for a new experience, and unexpected conversations, saying yes to something you never imagined saying yes to, trying something new, dreaming something that you have never thought of before and moving towards it. There is magic to be found there. There are things you are unable to explain in those moments. They just present themselves to you.
It’s in the moments you let go of control, it’s not a blanket decision and all of a sudden you find yourself free of your desired control. It is the moments that you can stop, catch yourself, and release a little tension from your body and exhale deeply enough to not, just in the moment, try to hold tighter.
In that moment you will find something shifts within you that is nothing you could have imagined before.
May we all find the power within to let go just a little today.
With magic,
Noelle