Winning the Battle of Control

Do you ever find yourself needing to be in a place of power, influence, or in charge of making all the decisions for the people around you? If your answer is yes, then you might consider yourself controlling. When people are labeled as controlling, they might think of it in a negative notation, but it can be viewed as a good thing if you are controlling the right stuff. The definition of control from the Google English dictionary is the power to influence or direct people's behavior or the course of events. 

Control can be broken into two parts: the things you can control and can not control. A lot of people find themself losing the battle of control because they are trying to control things that they can not. The easiest way to lose the battle of control is to think you can influence, direct, or make someone do something they do not want to do. As I start to list off some of the things you can not control you might be surprised because these are the things you thought you could due to the definition I gave earlier of control. Some of the things you can not control are the past, future, whether people like you or not, how other people feel, what people think of you, others being kind or honest, how others respond to you, other people's actions, what people say, and how someone treats you. Here are the things you can control: your words, actions, goals, attitude, reactions, boundaries, asking for help, taking care of yourself, how you treat others, working hard, and who you spend your time with. 

As a therapist, we spend a lot of time getting our clients to focus on themself and the things they can control. Redirecting our client to focus their energy on the things they can control is the key to winning the battle of control. Once your mindset changes from focusing on others and their actions and attitude to focusing on your own choices, is the first step to always winning the battle of control. This concept is one of the hardest for most people to achieve, but it is not impossible. I know Mental Health Awareness Month just ended but I want to remind people that focusing on their mental health one month out of the year is not enough. Keeping a healthy mental space is something you have to constantly work on daily if you want to have a chance at winning the battle.