Do You Ever Allow Yourself to Lose Control?

John, I won't respond to those questions yet, but I find them interesting to think about.
So far, I can only answer to this one without giving it deep thought:

Do you ever allow yourself to give in to life, to accept that you cannot control everything?
No.

 

yea there are a ton of questions in there...and I have another


do we really live anymore?


Sometimes it feels we are just robots programmed to go to work, make the money, raise the kids, wash the dishes, clean the clothes, vaccum the rug....

We have so many things to busy ourselves with that there never is a time when we are alone with ourselves.

Society deems us to be, do, act...

money money money

buy buy buy

what would happen if we did just slow down?

 

I know I can't, but I try anyway. I don't know if that's insanity or what.

 

I wonder sometimes if the view of the ambient culture is really just a lot of white noise, noise one can deliberately tune out should one choose to....more illusion than substance. My existance is pretty simple, but it has been (and continues to be) a long, long process of seeing, understanding (some things anyway) and letting go. It is an ongoing dynamic by which one makes decisions about the world rather than just being carried along by the current.

Case in point...yes there's tons of stuff out there on raising kids. But actually raising them is a moment by moment project...it is often far more clear what to do in the moment than trying to project out too far. Acceptance, love are very immediate things when it comes right down to it.

On a broader and contrasting scale, I think it is also possible (and good) to maintain a sense of bearings in this world. The present is always a bit murky, isn't it. Drawing on something more solid, more centered, helps one navigate the shoals and currents that can rob us (or at least distract us) from our deeper purpose and/or mission in life. I also think having a well-developed sense of purpose/center can help us relax a bit because, since we have a direction, it's okay to play a bit now and then or have a good ol' adventure. I find this is something of a paradox...one would think having a direction would limit one or impart too much focus. I find the opposite to be true....if you have a good map, you can deviate pretty liberally and never really get lost.

 

I believe that we'd be less wealthy on material level.
But then again, just working for food and living your life studying what interests you, having experiences and being with others seems like paradise.
I don't think it is possible though.

 

I like your take NAI.

I read the book 'Power of Now" and it really focuses on the need for humans to accept life in the here and now and beauty is in the small things. The continual practice of this theory has led me to accept many things that I cannot control. Of course I have days that my willpower will just not be as strong to accept or allow things to unfold..it has also led me to be more patient and let go of resistance.

 

since when is contributing to society a good thing? ;P

to answer your question.. well i don't really have much of a choice. i've been forced to accept certain things, because no matter how much i'd like to the alternative to be true, some things are out of your control and always will be. that's life. it's been an interesting challenge discovering just where the limits are, though.

 

You can't allow yourself to lose control- that is fallacious. If you have lost control, then you have also lost the ability to prevent yourself from losing control.

I don't see it as synonymous with accepting that there are some things in life that you cannot control. In that case, you didn't lose control; you only realized that you never had control in the first place.

Be skeptical of Eastern fatalism, however.

 

Those are all very good questions. Everything has at least two sides though. For example, the philosophy of simple living, the Tao of Pooh, is beautiful. And healthy. But (but! - you knew, right) it also has this nasty aspect of letting some other people make big decisions that really influence the world at large. While we are "independent, because nothing depends on us" (^^), we may be missing our chance to make some real difference. At least by finding way to make our position be acknowledged. It's a tough question, worth thinking about it. At the same time, I hate the notion that the human as political animal must immerse itself in these grand social fields /they are quite abstract, aren't they/, and forget about living as the body that it is.

Now, do I? Certainly.
Not all the time, but oh, I can be very good at letting go. Especially when I've already achieved the perfect control of that level. It just gets boring. Then I tend to flush it all away, as if it never happened. And the feeling is so great; refreshing.

 

To my view, we only control certain things of self such as behavior and to some degree thoughts. To attempt control of anything else is, I believe, misdirected energy. We can only make personal behavior choices that potentially influence the choices others will make, however they will be their choices. I accept this and I honor this.

As for expectations, I do try to engage in goal-setting or expectations by thinking about what I value in life and then making conscious behavior choices in line with those values. I work toward acceptance of what my moment delivers to me, but I also continually work toward choosing behavior in line with my values. My hope is that then no matter where my steps take me, it will be somewhere I value.

 

that is funny, I'm in a point in my life where I'm asking myself the same question (http://forum.infjs.com/showpost.php?p=230529&postcount=116)

I know the tao te tjing and I believe that accepting your life the way it is and to stop trying to keep your life in control is the best way to live your life to the fullest.

But having said that, I must confess that I'm doing a bad job. In fact it is the reason why I'm always so exhausted. I never give up control, not even when I go to sleep. I'm always under tension, ready to jump on my feet to do what is expected of me. I can't stand the idea that i let somebody down, that somebody whould think negative things about me...

There is a pressure in me to stop the train of every day life ones and for all, to get of and take my own route, twisting through the fieds and not in a lineair direction to the "desired future". So I can finely hear myself thinking, to hear what it is I want to do. And the pressure gets higher and higher...

But I have to think about it every second to be able to calm down, relax and follow the stream. Otherwise the program in my head starts again and I'll be the same old robot over again

did you ever think of "mindfulness". I haven't practice it but it seems to be a very good method to live in the now. I think I should give it a try!

 

As in Eminem style?


...I wish!

 

I will address all of this at once. I HATE losing control, it scares me in so many ways, and in a way this is the root of all my anexity. I MUST remain in control of my mind, my emotions, my life events, my friends, my family, ect. This doesn't mean that I become athoratative over these people or things, but I have to control them. In essence, I just need to know things. If a friend asks if I want to go out to dinner. I will then proceed to ask more or less this searies of questions: "Ok, where at, what time, who is going?" and if they say "oh I don't know", I will then proceed to answer all of those questions for them (allowing them to give feedback of course). I must have things nailed down. I need certainty at all times. Not knowing things flips me out, and I will often back out if I don't know enough. Call me neurotic, but I need to know these things. You could chalk it up to my high judging score.

With larger scale things like month long events and plans, I will put a high level of effort and strain into nailing things down and making them certain and direct. The problem is if I can't I start to freak out. It is the sense that I lost control and can't motion the outcome. I in a way feel helpless when I feel like I should be doing something to help out. This has lead to terrible bouts of anexity in the past but I do work on it.

When it comes to my mind and emotions, it is a little different. I have to understand where things come from. If I have a thought I will then proceed to figure out where that thought came from, and why I had that specefic thought. I have to understand it, for me to feel like I am in control of myself. Emotions are similar, but so much more diffucult. They will easily overload me if I can't figure them out, and that leads to nondescript stress, which really is the worst of it. Because the only method to quell it is to take a breather, and at times where life is factoring into this, I can not bring myself to do it. It become a highly repetive vischous cycle that is nearly impossible to break. I can only break it seemingly by magic. And in hindsight, it is almost always by getting a big hold over some kind of certainty relating to it all, and more often then not it is tangiable certainty.

There are times where I do want to lose control, and just cut loose. This is rare though.

Man all this makes me sound like a neurotic basket case. I swear I am not that bad.

 

No. Not usually, anyway.

 

Life had to smack me in the head and then kick me when I'm down to drive in this lesson. I basicly hit rock bottom physically, emotionally and spiritually before I learned to give it to God. Looking back I'm glad this happened early in my life, maybe it will save me a mid-life crisis later.

 

Lose control? I've never felt that I had control over anything but myself. There is to much randomness in the world for me to control most things, even myself sometimes.