Relinquish ControlWritten by Sibyl McLendon
One of greatest illusions of life is that we have control over it. The heartfelt belief that if we just keep control over everything, then nothing adverse will ever happen to us in akin to old saw, “Hope springs eternal in human breast.” Sounds good but it ain’t necessarily so.Too many people send their days trying to control uncontrollable. And exactly what is uncontrollable? It is anything that exists outside of ourselves. It is our significant others. It is our jobs, our co-workers and our bosses. It is our children, our parents, our siblings and our friends. In short, uncontrollable is life. When we live our lives based on attempt to control behavior of others, we are wasting our valuable time and energy. Telling ourselves things like, “He will quit drinking because it means so much to me, and then everything will be fine.” “If I clean until house is spotless, this time my mother will not criticize me.” “If I just have everything perfect when he gets home, this time he won’t be verbally abusive.” “He is going to change this time.” And on, and on, and on. The reality is that other person is not going to change unless they somehow experience a life-altering event, and expecting them to is a waste of time. It isn’t really even fair to them. The people in your life are what they are, and expecting them to change because you want them to is unrealistic. If you have gotten into relationship with someone based on notion that you can change them is a huge waste of time. You must learn to accept people as they are, not as you want them to be, not as potential that you can see in them, and not as you wish they would be!
| | Is Court in Session?Written by Jerry Lopper
Publishing Guidelines: This article may be freely published so long as author's resource box, bylines, and copyright are included.TITLE: Is Court in Session? AUTHOR: Jerry Lopper CONTACT: jlopper@att.net COPYRIGHT: ©2002 by Jerry Lopper. All rights reserved WORD COUNT: 533 FORMAT: This article is formatted to 61 cpl. ---------- Is Court in Session? Is your courtroom in session? That is, are you acting as prosecutor, judge, and jury for your fellow humans? Do you evaluate actions and behaviors of your loved ones, reminding them even silently that they’re doing things "wrong" way? I thought my courtroom was closed, but I was fooled by my mind. I thought I had ceased judging behaviors of others as right or wrong, but found that I had simply masked judgments; I covered them up with self-righteous thinking. Avoiding judgment is difficult, a big shift of behavior for many of us. I succeeded, for most part, in avoiding verbalizing my judgments, but internal judging continued, and that self-righteous energy transmits to others just as strongly as words. So now I’ve renewed my commitment to myself to avoid judging others for what they say, how they say it, and their resulting actions. Why? Judging others is hard work. Judging others is not only hard in terms of effort, it adversely affects one’s state of being. The next time you find yourself judging some behavior as right or wrong, stop and take an inventory of your feelings. I think you’ll find feelings of tension, defensiveness, superiority, and separation. I think you’ll observe your mind at work prosecuting offense and handing out punishments. Focus on your body. I think you’ll notice taut muscles, grim features, and aggressive positioning. Is this what you want for yourself? I don’t, yet that’s result of judging.
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