The Illusion of Control: Now You See It. Now You Don't | 2

Part 2: The Control You Didn't Know You Had

In Part 2 of The Illusion of Control, Suzanne explores the subtle ways we try to control life without even realizing we're doing it. From seeking validation and needing people to see us a certain way, to quietly outsourcing our identity, worth, and peace to the people around us, she'll unpack how these hidden patterns can keep us stuck.

Through the lenses of psychology, spirituality, and real life, Suzanne explores what it means to meet people where they are, stop negotiating with reality, and begin finding a steadier sense of self from within. Because the more we're sourced from ourselves, the less we need the world to become different before we can be at peace.

Thank you for listening! Learn more at suzannsole.com

Check out Suzanne's spiritual and sassy t-shirts at personallyspiritual.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

My connection to myself was like out there and then back. I like outsourced my connection to myself with others and then needed them to give it back to me. And thus leave that sets you up for trying to control. You're listening to the Spiritual Shit Show Podcast with Suzanne Sol, episode 89. Welcome to the Spiritual Shit Show Podcast, where we get into the amazingness the healing and spiritual journey can be. I'm your host, Suzanne Sol, comedian, lifelong spiritual student, and I'm sharing some of the stuff I've learned along my journey that has helped me and that I hope helps you too. The Illusion of Control. Part two. Because some of us really lean on control. When I tell you that you try to control life in ways that you don't even know that you are trying to control, I'm telling you the truth. Look around. Where are you not accepting the way other people are? What are you doing about it? Are you holding a grudge against them? Are you withholding? Are you withholding love? Are you withholding approval? Are you withholding kindness because you're trying to get them to be someone they're not being for you? That's control. Sure what she's won, Bob. Why, she's won a whole lot of illusion of control. That doesn't work. And that other person probably feels like poop. Okay, here's another quote by Jack Cornfield, who is a really cool spiritual teacher as well, and uh runs the Spirit Rock uh Center in Colorado and was a contemporary of Rom Das, one of my faves, and he is also a contemporary of Sharon Salzburg and Krishna Das, and these are really cool people, and so you know you should check them out. Anyway, this is his quote. Peace requires us to surrender our illusions of control. We can love and care for others, but we cannot possess our children, lovers, family, or friends. We can assist them, pray for them, and wish them well. Yet, in the end, their happiness and suffering depend on their thoughts and actions, not on our wishes. Now that's another element of control, like trying to get someone to be someone you want them to be for themselves, but of course it's always really for you. At the end of the day, I'm sorry to tell you, even with your kids, where you're like, I just want the best for them, I want them to do this, what for you. I mean, and that's not a bad thing, right? Maybe they're really fucking up, maybe they're on drugs, maybe they've made a lot of really poor choices. Maybe they harm others. I mean, I'm not saying like trying, like wanting the best for your a loved one is not a valiant attempt. But there's only so far you can go with it. And like I always say that Joseph Campbell says and said in forging your own path, at the end of the day, the person whose life it is has to do the last trick. We can get guidance from people all day long. We can give guidance to people all day long. But when it comes to the life of the person in question, they're the ones who have the final say. And respecting that is important. So if you're giving guidance or giving help or giving assistance, know that you cannot control the outcome and that, you know, do it because you want to, because you love them. But being attached and really tethered to what the final result will be will only cause you suffering because you don't have control of people outside of yourself. And sometimes not even yourself will get into that. This is something from the Tao Dejing. The master allows things to happen. She shapes events as they come. She steps out of the way and lets the Tao speak for itself. Now, the Tao is basically the flow of life or life. That is what I understand from the Tao, which is a spiritual or philosophical uh teaching, however you choose to look at it. Um, and it's very much about allowing life, being in the flow. Uh, it's really quite beautiful. And I'm here to tell you, as someone who has really had a quite a neurotic path. I mean, I have been a very neurotic person. And one of my biggest pieces around my neuroses was how people were viewing me. So, so hard. I had so much shame, embarrassment of myself. And it was like, please don't add to that, everyone. And it was like, we're just living our lives, okay, Suzanne. I mean, if I'm having a bad day and I tell you to fuck off, you can't like like live and die by that. But I was. And so therefore, I was really challenged to be in the flow. And anyone who knows me for a long time probably remembers getting calls of me, like backpedaling or I'm just checking in, I was feeling like this. You know, again, of course, communication is important. You know, I'm not saying if you're feeling a specific way, you shouldn't be able to call someone and ask what's going on. But it for me caused me so much suffering because I based everything about myself on what was reflected back to me. I had no like connection to myself. My connection to myself was like out there and then back. I like outsourced my connection to myself with others and then needed them to give it back to me. And thus that sets you up for trying to control, trying to control people loving you because you need it, because you you've now, you know, made them your self-love proxy. And uh, and and God bless us all. You know, I mean, we're all doing our best. And I I hope that some of the stuff I share like kind of maybe turns on a light bulb for someone who's been suffering and not realizing that, you know, some of these things that they're doing and they're trying to control, and it's only because they have outsourced their own power and their own sense of self and their own self-love. And we've all been on this journey. So wherever you are on this journey is okay. I'm not trying, I'm not trying to control you. Okay. I have another quote. This is from Don Miguel Ruiz, who wrote the four agreements, but this quote is from the little book of wisdom. And it's pretty good. When you try to control others or make them act or believe the way you want them to, you are not respecting them. What you are really saying is that you don't think they are good enough or strong enough or intelligent enough to make their own choices, and that you need to impose your beliefs on them. Of course, you may think that you are helping them, but it's not true. I'm sure you can think of many instances in your own life when others have done this to you, thinking they were helping you, and that wasn't true either. When you stop trying to push your beliefs and ideas on others, only then are you truly respecting them. You are letting them know that they are good enough, intelligent enough, and strong enough to make their own choices in life. That is being truly helpful. That is real love, and it is based on respect. Now I want to talk about ourselves, controlling ourselves. Now there is a self-accountable way that we're referring to when we say the only thing you have control of is yourself. That's in a self-accountability kind of way. There's another way, and that is kind of like the evil twin of you only have control of yourself. And that is a little thing I like to call perfectionism. Well, I don't just call it that. Everyone does. When we are really seeped in a perfectionistic life, we are doing toxic self-control. We are being unkind to ourselves, we are not accepting our humanity, we are not allowing ourselves time to learn how to do something. We are expecting ourselves to never make a mistake. We are expecting ourselves to be able to uh somehow transcend our wounds and pains and insecurities and the stuff that we still want to spend time healing and growing. We sometimes expect ourselves to be living at the level of a black belt when we're kind of like a green belt, and that's okay. And it's okay. I love this little Irish uh story that I have used before, and I think it really uh speaks to that style of control and that perfectionism, and that is a man was going to his cousin's wedding in the country. As he was walking along the way, he realized he was lost. So he stopped and asked a farmer for directions. The farmer scratched his head, looked at him, and said, Oh, I know the way, but if I were you, I wouldn't start from here. Meaning knowing where you really are and being honest about that is gonna be so much more fruitful for you, so much more effective and impactful uh for where you're wanting to go than trying to be in a place you're not, and then beating the shit out of yourself because you can't sustain play acting that you are in a place you're not. And whether that be with your healing, with your uh knowledge of a skill, with a with experience, whatever it is, when we are not allowing ourselves to be human, to live life, we're not allowing the life that is within us to just be and exist and evolve when we're expecting this and this is all we accept, that is toxic. That is a toxic environment for ourselves. Show her what she's won, Bob. Oh, she's what a whole lot of bullshit. Self-induced that is. And that is us trying to control ourselves in an unhealthy way, in a way that is not kind or loving or compassionate or even reality-based. I mean, that's the thing. It's an illusion, right? We are our perfectionism is an illusion. It's an illusion of control. Because there's no way to be perfect. There's no way. It is impossible to be perfect. It is impossible to have absolute control over anything, including yourself. Because you're coming from a different place each time, right? Oh, let's go there. There's this really cool therapy called Internal Family Systems by uh Dick Schwartz, is the therapist. And his concept is that we have all these different parts, and it's like we come part mentalized when we go through trauma and we're trying to develop coping strategies. We have this kind of part and this kind of part, and then there's this like really super vulnerable part that all the other parts are trying to protect. I'll get into that in another episode. But when we are operating from different moods or different parts of ourselves, those different parts and those different moods want control of different things.

SPEAKER_01 12:39

Oh my gosh. Check, please. So that's unreliable too.

SPEAKER_00 12:46

What you want control of today, you may not feel the same need. The element that you feel like you want control of in your life or in a specific environment may not be the same element that you want control of in a month. What we feel like we need to control changes. It is inconsistent. Illusion. It's an illusion. One goal we may have in our attempt to control or our illusion of control is certainty. Which, of course, as you well know, I'm gonna tell you is impossible.

SPEAKER_01 13:28

Life is always lifing, things change every millisecond.

SPEAKER_00 13:34

And I think there is a certainty only here, only going in, and that's still a quiet place within us, that constant place within us. That is to me, in my experience, the only place where I experience certainty. Can I feel safe with people? Can I love people? Can I be grateful for people? Can I lean on people? Can I go to people? Can I rely on people? Of course. Of course. Can I be someone someone relies on or comes to, or where I listen to them or help them? 100%. We need each other, but we have to leave room for the flow of life. We have to allow life to be the malleable thing that it is. We have to allow people to be themselves and in their own journey. And I think, and I think that when we start the journey to learn to help ourselves and love ourselves and be patient with ourselves, which is not a perfect experience, BTW. We cannot even control that. That is the path in my mind to allowing life to be. And we will get caught over and over and over again. Oh, girl, I get caught. I just got caught and I'll probably get caught again. Don't tell me you don't get caught. Something that uh I like to think about as well, which is helpful when I'm trying to like out picture what's going to happen or think about how I will make this certainty if I ever get caught in that kind of thinking. I always try to remember that when I'm doing that, I'm not enjoying the present moment that I have right now. Because the choice is to allow ourselves to be in the present moment as it is, or be thinking about how it should be different, or how it will be different, or how we hope it will be different, or how we need it to be different in the future. We're missing out on actual life when we're trying to think about controlling which is an illusion. Thank you very much. And the idea is in spiritual communities is that the beauty of just being alive and the gorgeousness of life is so much more fulfilling than trying to organize it all and focus on forcing and boxing everything in and the control. It's just we're missing out or missing out on the beauty of life. And the thought is, we think we need certainty more than we actually do. If we really allow ourselves to rely on the self and breathe into ourselves and just uh enjoy the beauty of our own life. I mean, just like the energy of our own life is just so incredibly beautiful that we'll realize that the certainty out there is not as necessary as we have told ourselves. Because we've lived without it. We live without it every day. We can think we want certainty, we can try to get certainty, but we'll never get it. Isn't that a bitch? Oh, God, I love it. Another thing that uh was something that I really would get stuck in was trying to understand what was happening outside of me. I wouldn't understand why someone was behaving the way they were. And my thought was if I could just understand why, that would bring me some safety, security, some certainty. And that one was a really hard one. I was really, really married to that idea. I was really, that was such a coping strategy that from a kid I used trying to understand why people were behaving the way they were, why they were treating me that way. So maybe I needed to do something different so that they wouldn't, or, you know, I was constantly trying to figure it out. And my belief and thought was, you know, up until, you know, not very long ago, if I can understand, then I can relax. If I can understand what's happening all around me, then I can feel okay. And guess what? That, even when I did start to understand what was going on around me in different situations, that feeling lasted like one second. It would be like, ah, now I know what's happening. I feel great. Okay, now we're back to the crap. That's real. That's real. And it's scary, right? If you, you know, if you grew up and you didn't understand things uh that were happening, and you know, you were afraid at times, and it's really, really hard to start to be okay with recognizing that you don't have to try to understand everyone to feel okay. Because that is like your wounded inner child is like, hold my bear. I've got this one. I hope your inner child doesn't drink beer. But I mean, you know, that's what happens, right? We get what they call hijacked by our wounded inner child parts back to the IFS. And uh, and we don't even realize that we're like, oh yeah, Sally, my inner part Sally, who is like gonna go figure it all out. She's got this. I'm gonna let her handle this. But we don't realize we're doing that. And Sally only knows how to try to control her environment because when she was a kid, she didn't have choices. She couldn't be like, I quit this job and I'm leaving. She could be like, I quit this family and I'm leaving. She would have nowhere to go. Or, you know, it'd be challenging for a child to do that. Not that they wouldn't have anywhere to go, but it's it's definitely bigger and scarier and more complex than one of us looking for a new work environment. Or, you know, sometimes we have to let a person go because we just keep running into the same thing, and all of a sudden we are becoming someone we don't really like to be with. And that is a controlling person. Do you want to be someone who's constantly pushing someone else to be who you need them to be? And you'll tell yourself, you want to hear the tricksy thing you do, because I have had this done to me, and I've done it. We're telling ourselves that we're trying to get them to be a good and loving person.

SPEAKER_01 21:03

Like in general. But we're really trying to get them to give us what we personally need from them. I hate to break it, Taya. It's not a morality thing. It's a, I need you to give me this.

SPEAKER_00 21:25

I need you to treat me like this. Again, I always say this. We don't say abuse is okay. We don't say it's okay for someone to treat you like shit or be unkind or disrespectful or anything like that. And, you know, I say that either someone in their fumbling, imperfect humanity really wants to show up for you as your friend or as your partner, um, or family member, even. That's One thing. You know, then you work stuff out and you guys talk, and when something happens, you work it out. As opposed to someone who is like the wall and does not have it available to give. Cannot hold your emotions, cannot be present with your vulnerabilities, cannot give you connection because they don't have it. They're cut off from themselves. They can't give you what they aren't giving themselves. And if you're in the place where I was when I would hear that, I would be like, no, I don't accept that. It's too upsetting. It's too devastating. And get oh, I get it. And let me tell you something, I had to go through some grief when I recognized that.

SPEAKER_01 22:54

It was sloppy tears.

SPEAKER_00 22:58

But it like freed me. It really did. It's like I am able to allow people to be who they are. Does it mean I don't hold boundaries when I need to? No, I hold boundaries when I need to. Does it mean I don't get upset sometimes? Of course I do. But I allow people to meet me where they are. And that means that some people I, you know, um have a less intimate relationship with. You know, maybe we don't share our deepest feelings with each other, but maybe we love each other and it's more like they don't go there. And so you don't go there with them and you just enjoy them for who they are, and you go somewhere else to get that connection where you're like, I need to talk about deep feelings. I'm that person, obviously, as I've said them before on the Enneagram. And all my close people, like, we go down there, we get in there. But that's just, you know, me. That's just how I am. It doesn't make not doing it wrong. That's a big piece that I think it's really important to recognize that everything is subjective. Now, is there right or wrong, like, yeah, you shouldn't kill someone, but then they say, well, what if this person was trying to like kill my kids? You know what I mean? So it is kind of subjective, but not really. Obviously, we know these things. But as far as like this person should be like this and that person should be like that, that's your, you know, barometer. That's your rule book. And for you, yes. If that's your rule book, live by that rule book. And if you're not able to be with other people who don't live by that rule book, fine. That's fine. That's what you do. But I believe in meeting people where they are. That has brought me a lot of peace. And that starts. And that starts by going in. Mm-hmm. Damn, it always comes back to that. Learning to make contact with yourself. That's the first step, real hard. Learning to uh understand who you are, learning what you need, learning what's true for you. All of that stuff. Join me next time for the third installment of the Illusion of Control. This has been the Spiritual Shit Show Podcast. My name is Suzanne Sol. Thank you so ever loving much for listening, and I will see you on the next one. Roll it.