You Have More Power, Strength and Control Than You Think

Throughout the years, I’ve encountered many people who have a hard time recognizing that they have much more power, strength and control in their lives than they have assumed.  It can be hard for us to buy into this when we’ve encountered really painful times and ongoing conflicts in our relationships.  Others might pick on us, we’ll screw up, we’ll make bad choices and suffer the consequences, and others will make decisions that impact our lives without thinking about our well-being.  When we become upset by our circumstances, our emotions tend to falsely convince us that we can’t do anything, that we’re helpless, or that others are completely to blame…but this is far from the truth.  When we reflect upon these believes and situations, you’ll start to find that no matter your circumstances you always have choice.  And since we always have a choice, we always have the freedom, power and control over how we live, relate and respond.

Another truth in life that we need to remember is that we don’t have control over other people or our environment.  People will say and do things despite our wishes.  Sure, we can try to manipulate others, but we’ll never have control over them.  When we continue to try to control anything outside of ourselves, we create our own unhappiness.  Our lives are consumed by anger, resentment, fear or hopelessness.  We may constantly swing between the extremes of passivity and aggression.  If you find yourself experiencing any of these things, it’s time to re-evaluate your approach, to brainstorm with people who are open minded and supportive of you, and then to experiment with changes while accepting life’s limitations.

A piece of powerful advice that my father gave me when I was young was to “learn how to play the game so you can get what you need out of life.”  To be clear, he didn’t mean that I should become manipulative, dishonest, mean or aggressive.  Instead, he was suggesting that I should be more thoughtful about my choices.  As a teenager, I hated most rules, high school felt like a cage and I wanted to rebel.  But when I thought about it, why would I want to draw more attention to myself?  I knew the rules and the consequences that I’d get, so why would I do that to myself?  Now, there were times when I broke a rule but because I knew the consequences for it, I accepted them without a fight.  Doing so allowed me to maintain my integrity and worth, and the situation resolved itself sooner.  As adults, we do this all of the time when we speed in traffic, call in sick to work when we just want a day off, or don’t get a permit when we work on our house.  We know we’re taking a risk so why fight the consequences?  It just makes the situation worse!  It’s better to ask ourselves, “are the consequences worth it?”  If they are, then okay.  If they aren’t, why bother?

For parents, academic staff and other authority figures, it’s important for us to be consistent with our rules and expectations, and to fully embrace that all of us have the freedom to choose regardless of age.  We may change the rules after we think about a situation and that’s okay but being consistent and realistic are extremely important.  If we’re trying to control another person then we’ll become angry and arguments or fights will ensue.  Do we really want to live this way?  Of course not.  Therefore, we need to remind ourselves of these truths so we can practice calmly responding to situations while still enforcing rules and consequences.  And sometimes we don’t even need to dish out a consequence because the person will experience them naturally.  At that point, we can hope that the person chooses to better their situation and themselves.  However, that’s up to them…just like it is for each of us.