PERSONAL CONTROL

A Better Way to Deal With Control Issues

By Deepak Chopra


When thinking about control issues, there's a simple starting point: everyone is happier being in control and more unhappy being out of control. The reason for this goes back to how your body operates. Its normal state is homeostasis, or dynamic balance. Homeostasis is like being a runner on second base in a baseball game. The runner has a stable place to stand while he watches the next pitch, but at the same time he is poised for action. Homeostasis works the same way. Your body exists in a stable place while at the same time being poised to go into action.

Being in control, then, has two sides. You feel stable, well within your comfort zone, but you also feel ready to meet challenges and opportunities as they arise. Preserving such a state keeps you in control at all times. Yet even though our bodies want to preserve homeostasis, and we psychologically want to be in control, all kinds of things work against us. Here are the major influences that throw off the whole control mechanism.

• Stress, which forces the body to go into emergency mode, disrupting normal homeostasis.
• Unpredictability, which creates a state of tense vigilance waiting for the unexpected to happen.
• Negative emotions like hostility, resentment, and anxiety.
• Frustration, which limits your freedom to act and react.

To be in control, you must eliminate or minimize these things, and that has become increasingly hard to do. Consider how you feel at the airport waiting for a flight. Typically, it's not certain that your plane will take off on time, or at all. Weather and mechanical problems are unpredictable. It's frustrating that you have no ability to change the situation or escape it. The atmosphere often contains a degree of tension and resentment. All of this creates mounting stress.

But normal working conditions can create the same sense of losing control. Others can tell us what to do, and if your boss makes arbitrary decisions, unpredictability enters the picture. There are frustrations, large and small, because no one at work is completely autonomous, or free to do what they really want to do. On-the-job stress goes with the territory that's why so many people dream of running their own business. No matter how difficult being self-employed turns out to be, it offers an opportunity to feel that you are in control.

But you can do a lot to stay in control if you take a better approach to your control issues. Look at them from the viewpoint of your body, which wants to stay in balance while remaining poised to act. From this vantage point, the do's and don’ts are more clear cut.

• Don't shut out the stress that is throwing you out of balance.
• Don't shut down emotionally. Your body always knows if you are angry, anxious, or resentful, and it reacts negatively in various ways.
• Don't go passive and slack. This only makes mind and body become dull, reducing your ability to act when the time for actin arises.
• Don't become a control freak, someone who is critical, demanding, a perfectionist who constantly finds fault. Control freaks are trying to clamp down on externals while ignoring the real problem, which is inside themselves.
• Don't become a slave to rigid routines and ways of thinking. Rigidity feels like control but turns out to be lonely, isolating, and a cause of stress for those who interact with you.
• Don't mistake control for harsh self-discipline or dominating others.

These don'ts should carry no surprise, since they are based on the most basic psychological truism - each one leads to greater unhappiness and frustration, which are the opposite of being in control. In the same vein, the things you need to do are aimed at making your existence freer and more balanced.

• Look carefully at the daily stresses in your life and address them.
• Examine if you are adding to the stress in your surroundings. If so, take steps to put an end to it.
• Be aware of your feelings, especially the negative ones, and take active steps to improve them.
• Follow a routine that keeps your body in a healthy state of balance, which means at a minimum adequate sleep, regular meals, and avoiding toxins like alcohol and tobacco.
• Be active. Mild physical activity at least once an hour, such as standing up and stretching, has been shown to keep the body in a state of homeostasis.
• Recognize the frustrations you face and do what it takes to resolve them.

If this list of do's seems like too much work, you are already out of control, because everything on the list is what comes naturally to mind and body when they are in balance. Homeostasis is the simplest, easiest, most natural way to exist. It takes effort to keep yourself out of balance, which unfortunately has become the new norm. We push ourselves, ignore our body's signals of discomfort, sleep too little, eat too much or at irregular times, and pride ourselves on how much stress we can take on.

In reality, you aren't in control just because you're free to make bad choices. Control depends on a sound foundation in mind and body, a state that makes you feel secure, centered, alert, and ready for whatever comes next. Once you realize this fact, you are in a position to take a much better approach to the whole complex issue of being in control.

This post contains a powerful message. It's time this message went viral. Basil Venitis, venitis@gmail.com, http://themostsearched.blogspot.com, @Venitis