“Life gets better when we choose the desire to influence over the need to control.”
~ Bill Crawford
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Dealing with the Need to Control
This quote came to me while working with a client, and I immediately thought of using it in our weekly connection. The most important words here are, “choose, influence, need, and control.” Choose, because it speaks to making a conscious choice which those of you who follow my “Life from the Top of the Mind” philosophy know come from the conscious part of the brain… the neocortex. This is the purposeful part of the brain (versus the reactive, lower brain) and as such, can play an important role in helping us create the life we want.
The second important word from this week’s quote is “influence.” Of course, we all want to be more influential in life, but what does that really mean? To me, it means choosing to bring certain qualities and characteristics to life, versus being made to feel a certain way by the difficult people and situations we face. It means making a purposeful choice about how I want to define who I am in life and having this choice be congruent with what I would teach and/or recommend to someone I love. This is what I call our “Highest Purpose,” meaning that, to pull this off, we must make it the most important thing in our life and practice this self-definition all of the time, until it becomes a habit. Ironically, influencing who we are first and then bringing our best to life allows us to be influential in situations and with people, because we have access to all of the problem-solving skills and interpersonal skills necessary to do so.
The third important word is, “need.” This is a word we hear a lot, but I’m not sure we really understand its impact in our lives. The truth is, when we use the word “need,” we are saying that this (whatever we need to do) is necessary to avoid bad things happening. Of course, when we are talking about basic needs, this is true. We need to eat, we need to breathe, we need to have a place to live. However, when we combine “need” with “control” (the fourth important word in this week’s quote), we put ourselves at a disadvantage.
Why? Because A) many situations can’t be controlled and B) most people don’t like being controlled, which when combined with the word “need” makes this a real problem. In other words, when we define life (situations and/or people) as something we need to control, we are really saying, “if I can’t control them, something bad will happen!” This worry or fear will throw us into the lower part of the brain, which triggers more stress, worry, and/or frustration, and a cycle of stress is created.
Therefore, I suggest we choose the desire to influence over the need to control so that we can ensure we are coming from the part of the brain that chooses, the part of the brain where our clarity, confidence, and creativity resides, and the part of the brain that allows us to choose again (or accept what is) when our attempt at being influential in life doesn’t work out the way we want.
Take care and God bless, Dr. Bill