Why Giving Up Control is a Good Thingfeatured

I was very sheltered growing up. My parents gave me everything I ever wanted and so much more. This made me very grateful as well as very anxious growing up; I was always on a mission to prove them wrong, to show them that I didn’t really need them.

I am now in my late 20s and I realize that their sheltering cultivated a fierce independence within me. A need to say, “I got this all on my own.” So, naturally, I have become a control freak of sorts:

Copeland says it best: “You lose your mind if you lose control. It makes you feel ashamed for the hearts you stole. And now your own heart’s scared of an attack, ‘Cause you can’t give them back.”

I have built walls to let people know I can handle things alone. I thoroughly enjoy spending time alone. And although this is all great, I sometimes lose sight of the big picture and the fact that it’s okay to give up control and ask for help. In fact, asking for help can be empowering.

My old mentor used to always tell me “don’t drown in a cup of water.” I often did this at work and sometimes still fall back into this all-too-familiar pattern.

The truth is, I have a team and there’s more power in team than in any single individual. I don’t have to be a control freak when people extend a helping hand. I always thought not taking help would make me stronger but it actually made me weaker by enabling anxiety within my heart.

Giving up control is not easy. Trusting in your team is not always the easiest thing to do because doing things yourself guarantees that you will know every part of the process.

Although there will always be unpredictable factors that surround you, I have always found that doing things myself at least gives me the confidence to know where and why things went wrong, while having others do things for you can present a greater sense of uncertainty.

Either way, it’s never a good idea to tackle every project in life on your own. Your journey can become over complicated and that might lead to things like anxiety, depression, resentment, or overall discontent.

I now realize trusting in my team is powerful even if I am not involved in every step of the process. As a writer, I have always loved knowing every detail of the person or this I am telling my story about. While this is true, life is not always this way.

Control, or even a perceived sense of control, is not always a possibility or something to lean on, because in the end life will always be full of unpredictability and uncertainty.

So go ahead and give up some control. I promise it will all work out in the end, even if you were not part of all the details of the process at hand.

Love deeply and forever,

Karen