Give Up Control To Gain Freedom

Too many of us try to control others without even thinking why we do that.

In truth, people who try to control others do so because of the unconscious want for power and recognition.

However, by trying to have power over others you lose peace of mind and feel as though you are in bondage.

So although the compliance of other people makes you feel important and powerful, soon this feeling vanishes and anger, doubt and uncertainty takes hold of your mind.

So next time you think of nagging your partner for failing to do things the way you want them to do, have a second thought. Gaining power over others will not make you happier, even if people entirely comply with you.

When someone complies with your orders you suddenly feel more important and in control of your own life. That is, however, a false sense of importance which maintains your ego and impoverishes you, blocking you from acquiring peace of mind and emotional freedom.

How You Seek Power Over Others

There are many ways to control others, some of them are extreme and some may not even feel like the forms of control. For example, criminals get a sense of importance and control by holding someone at gunpoint. The person in such situation will surely comply and the criminal will certainly feel very important in that person’s life. However, such control later on brings him much more pain than pleasure, resulting in guilt, depression, aggression and disappointment in one’s own behaviour.

What the criminal seeks, mainly the importance and power, can easily be acquired by searching for importance inside. You only need to consider yourself important and powerful and others will feel the same about you too. You don’t need to do something foolish or use other external means to be considered important.

Other people might seek power over others by making someone else’s life a hell. The best example I can think of to illustrate this point can be found in probably any large company. Whatever large company you can think of, there are almost always managers who are hated by all employees. They make a big deal out of small errors whilst missing the great job that employees do.

What employees mostly fail to understand is that such behaviour always means that the manager has a poor family life or she is downright lonely. Because she is unable to take control of her own life, she tries to compensate for that by taking control of how the employees feel. She gets satisfaction in seeing that she can make others miserable to compensate for the fact that her own personal life sucks.

There are so many direct and indirect ways people seek to control others. Some people seek control using multiple methods which include talking about someone behind their backs (no direct control but the illusion of the control is felt), pointing out small errors in someone’s work, insisting on how another person should act or disapproving of how someone dresses.

The most cruel, in my opinion, desire to control others is shown by those people who hate other races or nationalities. I not only think it’s cruel to the people on the receiving end, but also to the people who spread the hatred, because what goes around always comes around. Such haters create prisons in their own minds and are ruled by all kinds of negative emotions such as impatience, anger and aggressiveness. Such people have no idea how freedom and peace of mind feels and they don’t realise how quickly they could change their hatred into appreciation. They just need to want to change, that’s all.

Now I’ll show you how you can quickly check if your friends have the need to control others. If you get in the situation that you and your friend walk past the person who made completely different choices in life and therefore he looks very different, pay attention to your friend.

If your friend expresses her opinion which sounds like “Why would he choose to dress this way?”, “Look how weird that guy looks!” or “I hate to see people acting this way”, it means that she still tries to control others to create the illusion of her own importance. I know, it’s mad when you think about the reason why people say things like that. It unconsciously gives them the sense of importance. However, when you now consciously think about it, it seems really stupid, doesn’t it?

The want to control others shows not only your want for importance and appreciation, but also your lack of confidence. Because if you would be completely fine with who you are, you would not point out what’s wrong with others. Click here to read the second part of the article.

Go back to All Articles from the Give Up Control To Gain Freedom page.

Go back to the homepage from the Give Up Control To Gain Freedom page.

You might also like:

1. My Experience with Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT)