When you try to control everything, you enjoy nothing. Sometimes you just need to relax, breathe, let go and live in the moment.
When you try to control everything, you enjoy nothing. Sometimes you just need to relax, breathe, let go and live in the moment.
We are always wanting to be completely in control. That is the nature of most of humanity. But is that always wise?
Many times, circumstances are far outside of our control. They come at us with a frequency that cannot be determined, nor always predicted. They deliver ramifications that we are not always pleased about, nor always capable of dealing with.
In such a cacophony of turmoil, how then are we able to maintain complete composure throughout the journey?
Do we work with everything we’ve got to stay on top of all of the variables? Unquestionably, we should. And yet, despite such diligence, preparedness and focus, things are still readily capable of spiraling past our established boundaries and delivering us to a state of confusion and frustration.
My mantra: Freedom comes from being at ease with the certainty of uncertainty.
It has taken decades for me to adopt something I was given at 19 years of age by my mother. It is so clear and obvious, and yet, when we get to cacophony, we are overwhelmed by the resulting stimuli, leaving us short of breath, and high on adrenaline, anxiety, and potentially, fear.
Surprisingly (for me) a large component of grasping this truism came in my training on my path to second degree black belt. I was terrified to spar with the other students. I had never been in a real fight other than the time the bully beat me up on my way home from school. So the prospect of getting out on the mat with students who had learned what I had learned was daunting to me (to say the least!) We were not doing combat in which everyone was going full force, we were just going gentle to practice our skills, but if someone is throwing a kick to your head, even going gentle can easily break your jaw, or similar. What I discovered in this process was that if I stopped being afraid long enough to apply all that I had learned to date, I could slow down time, (like Neo in the Matrix in bullet mode). In that expanded time space, I could watch the opponent, see their eyes move to their intended target, watch their body weight shift to deliver the attack, recognize what was coming in my direction… and low and behold, with that element of calmness in the face of danger, I was able to strategize, calculate, and deliver my defense, combined with a counter offense.
With this lesson, combined with the aphorism about certainty, I started to readily apply it to my life in business. There are most certainly attacks that come in the business realm. They can be swift and brutal. But if you are able to pause in that moment, see it for what it is, eliminate both fear and panic and stay in the moment, you will soon discover that your mind will deliver you to safe harbor. If your mind is racing all the time, you have no opportunity to enjoy your life, and one day it will all be in the rear view mirror, and you will be left with nothing but memories of endurance. Far better, to understand that you have all that you need to succeed right inside you. You just need to get calm, stay pragmatic, recognize that most of it is outside of your control, and operate from a place of certainty. Even when things look quite uncertain.
Happy Sunday!
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