00:00 

Hey there, this is Intentional Living with Tanya Hale and this is episode number 164, How Being in Control is Destroying Your Life." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:20 

Alright, hello there, my friends So glad to be here with you today. I love what I've prepared. I'm excited to share it. But before I jump in, a couple of things. If you're new, welcome. If you are returning, welcome. So glad to have all of y'all here. Second of all, a couple of things...I would love to see my podcast grow a little bit. I'm doing great and I love what I'm being able to do, but I would love to share this message with more people. I just think there's so much good stuff here. If you listen to a podcast that brings somebody to your mind, will you share that podcast with them will you help people learn how to live better lives? And you can do it just by sharing on your podcast app. There's a little place there where you can...mine has three buttons, and I can click on that and it says "copy link." And I send podcasts to people all the time. Not my podcast usually, but podcasts that I listen to. When somebody comes to my mind and I just share it with them. So I'm like "I just thought of you and I think you would love this." Please share episodes that are touching you and helping you, and that brings somebody else to mind. 

01:33 

And one other thing that you can do to really help this podcast ,this message, grow is to write me a review if you have not written a review yet, please take the time to do that. What that does is in the algorithms, it moves it up so that it can actually be a suggestion for other people who may be looking, who may already listen to similar kinds of podcasts. So those two things would really, really help this message to grow, help people to live better, healthier lives with stronger relationships and stronger self-love. And that's really what I want to do here. I want to be able to, oh, this is what I love, I want to be able to help people be better. I mean, be better with where they are in their lives and find more happiness. And it's just so important to me and as much as I do this work, you can also do this work by sharing stuff. And it may not be your thing to get on a podcast and record every week, but you can share things that are impacting your life. And I just plead with you, not just with my podcast, but other things when you are reading things, when you're listening to things, when you're watching things, if somebody comes to your mind and you think, "I bet this person would love it," act on that. Please don't put it on the back burner and wait. 

02:58 

We have the ability to make a huge impact in this world. Ugh, why is this getting to me today? But we can make a huge impact by doing small and simple things. Like listening when somebody's name or their face comes into our mind. When we're listening to something and sending it to them. Little small things make all the difference in the world. And all the difference in how we're able to be an instrument in God's hand to make the world a better place and to strengthen our brothers and to be there for them in their time of need. It can be as simple as sharing a podcast. Or as simple as sharing an article or a scripture or a meme or something that you see. Please listen to that. So important. Okay. Enough of that soapbox. Let me get on another soapbox, can we? 

03:59 

Okay, my friends. How being in control is destroying your life. This is in on a personal level. This has hit me so strong this last week. And just my poor little niece who lives with me. I just went off on a rant last night about this with her. And so I'm like, I'm doing a podcast on this. And because it's just so important to me. When we are seeking to be in control of all the things, we are destroying relationships. When we destroy relationships, we destroy our lives. Those are the things that matter. I want to tell you that I sought far too much control in my marriage and I can see the impact that that had. Not only on the ultimate demise of my marriage, but also on how my former husband viewed himself. I was harsh and my heart aches for that. Whether we would have stayed married or not, I don't know. But I was harsh and I was not ultimately showing up the kind of person that I wanted to be. 

05:15 

I thought on one level that it was because I was trying to control all the things. I was trying to create this perfect life. I was  trying to create this space where everything was going well. I was trying to help him do his church responsibilities and step up, by controlling him. I was doing the exact opposite. I was destroying him and I was destroying our marriage. This is not the "end all" for what created the demise of my marriage, for sure. But this was a key player. I just want to help you see things that maybe you haven't seen before. 

05:54 

So here's where it all kinds of starts. I think that when I was a teenage girl in church, I think we started in the 80s, right? We had all of these idealistic versions of what our life should be like when we became adults. We should get married, we should have this perfect home, we should have a spouse who supports us physically and emotionally and spiritually and he steps up as the spiritual leader in our home and we have all these ideas of what it should be like and I think, especially in the 80s, we were given a very black and white view of what things should be. Now, is this everything that caused my issues? Absolutely not, but I think that this was a key player and I don't think I'm alone in this. We had these black and white views of what we should do and it was pretty much that we should be perfect, right? There was this idea of "this is what you need to have" and so I think this is where a lot of my perfectionist ideas come from that I still am working on today, right? I'm still trying to overcome a lot of this and as I just mentioned, it showed up in my marriage like no other. 

07:15 

So here's the thing, when it comes to controlling ourselves, have at it, right? Like, I get to control myself and that is the only thing that I really can control. But when it comes to controlling others, this is where we run into serious problems. and I think one of the problems here is that we are engaging in ideas and beliefs and behaviors that we don't even recognize are controlling. We think it's just us trying to help other people, and we have these sweet little thoughts in our head that say, "oh, I just want him to be the best he can be." By beating him into the ground with controlling issues? That is not...it sounds so sweet and lovely. "I want him to be the best he can be. I want him to step up into his spiritual role. I want my children to develop their greatest possibility." And so we step into this place of control, which is doing the exact opposite of what we want to do. 

08:16 

Because the control in these areas is very often fear-based. We are afraid of not being enough. We're afraid of our family not being enough. We're afraid of other people's judgment. We're afraid of not going to God's kingdom. We're afraid of our children taking a different path than we had hoped for. And maybe we feel like that's going to cause other people to judge us for the kind of parenting we are. We're afraid of our husband not stepping up and stepping into his potential. We're afraid of our own failure. Sometimes we're even afraid of our own success. There is so much going on here and we have to slow down the process and start creating awareness of what's going on. Why are we afraid of these things? What's happening? Why are we seeking to control all the things in our lives? It's because we think it's going to make us feel better. Right? What motivates us in almost everything we do is because we think it's going to make us feel better. It's going to move us in a place where we don't feel so much discomfort. And when we feel uncomfortable emotions, we very easily look outside of ourselves to try to solve them. We try to change the circumstance. 

09:49 

For example, situations. We may try and just change our job. We may just let go of friends. We may blame our marriage or leave our marriage. We may think that where we live or what we buy is going to solve those uncomfortable feelings that we have. How many of us go shopping when we feel a little bit of discomfort? How many of us go to the kitchen and eat a snack or go get ice cream with a friend? How many of us are trying to change our circumstance? We're trying to change from outside sources, the uncomfortable emotions. We try and change people. We get all up in our spouse's business of what we think they should do, and how they should respond, and how they should react, and how they should treat people, and how they should be serving in the church. We do the same thing with our children. All of these shoulds about what they should be doing for school and the choices they should be making, and who they should be hanging out with, and who they should date. We do it with our co-workers. Right? Think all these things. We do this by having opinions about them. Opinions about what they should do, how they should do it, how they should behave, how they should engage. All of these opinions, can I tell you? This thinking we need to have an opinion about what other people are doing and how they're living, it needs to go away. We have to stop having these opinions. Do I still have them? Absolutely. Am I working on letting go of those? Definitely. I'm working to say when I recognize that I'm expressing an opinion or having an opinion in my brain, I am working on learning to say," whoa, whoa, whoa, none of my business." Get out of that. It's deep rooted. I think we are modeled people having opinions about other people from the time we're very young. Okay, but that doesn't mean we can't manage it. It doesn't mean we can't move into a better space with that. 

11:49 

Okay, so when we have opinions this goes into our manual for them to...remember the episode on manuals? Let's see that was episode...let me look at my paper really quick, episode number 153 about manuals, right? If you've not listened to that one go, listen to it. Okay, these are the expectations of how we think other people should behave. Like, I've got this owner's manual for how other people should do this. I'm gonna tell you, I saw this in myself this week. Okay, I saw me having an uncomfortable emotion and thinking that I knew what somebody else should do. I was in a situation where I was feeling some anxiety, now I'm not a big huge person to feel anxiety. In fact, I if I look back on my life. I'm gonna be 100% honest I don't know that I've really connected with the feeling of anxiety before. I will tell you I probably felt it, but I've been so good at pushing off my more difficult emotions and I've really been working concertedly, the last several months, to learn to feel more difficult emotions in my life. And so, here I was in my office. I was feeling this anxiety. Now I'm gonna tell you, it felt like there was a small miniature cat in my chest who was panicked and was crying to get out. I just... I don't know does that... does that connect with anybody? I just felt so anxious and so shaky and and like I just couldn't concentrate. I kept trying to get this podcast done earlier Which you probably would have gotten less of a rant had I done that, but I was feeling this. I was having a hard time focusing and concentrating. I didn't want to sit calm. I didn't want to explore that emotion. I didn't want to process through that emotion. I just wanted the other person engaged in this situation, I wanted them to do something. I wanted them to change their behavior. And when and I was doing a thought download at the time, and that's when I made that connection, and I was like "whoa Whoa, whoa, here's some awareness that is gonna change my life. I'm feeling uncomfortable. I'm feeling this anxiety and I want this person to change their behavior so that I can feel better." That's what this awareness is all about. And come to coaching if you can because these pieces of awareness change our lives. 

14:23 

Okay, that was so enlightening for me to see that I was looking for somebody outside of me to fix how I was feeling inside of me. Okay? So I was having expectations of this other person. Any and all expectations are seeking to control someone else. Now I know a lot of people are like, "but we have to have expectations." Okay, let's chat, because we don't. And I will tell you, is it okay to make requests of people? Absolutely. Is it okay to have boundaries? Without a doubt. Is it okay to have expectations? Little kids? Yes. Employees? Yes. A spouse? No. Adult children? No. Friends? No. No. Coworkers? No. Not your job, right? Expectations have got to start going away. Expectations are seeking control. They are laced with consequences of whether we will accept or love that person. 

15:31 

Now, here's two reasons why seeking control over other people is harmful. And we've already kind of talked about these, but I want to reemphasize these. One: we are not caring for our own emotional health because we have to learn to feel and process difficult emotions. This is such an important part of our emotional health. And many of us were never taught to do this when we were young. I absolutely did not. It's only been in probably the last two or three years that I've really connected to this idea. But learning to feel difficult emotions is vital for our emotional health. Learning to take 100% responsibility is vital for our emotional health. 100% responsibility means that we stop blaming other people. We stop thinking that other people are responsible for making me feel better and we step into what we call "emotional adulthood." 

16:37 

Okay. Now, I don't have numbers for a lot of these, but I have a podcast on 100% responsibility. I have a podcast...I'm not seeing it on my list really quick because I just scanned through it. I have a podcast on emotional adulthood. Look those up, find them. Listen to them if these concepts, if you're like, "oh, I need to understand this a little bit better." Listen to them, find out what's going on, figure this out for you. Emotional adulthood means that I take 100% responsibility for my emotions and I stop blaming other people for making me feel certain ways. One reason we get controlling is because we want, we don't wanna be responsible for our own emotions. We want somebody else to do that. Let me give you an example. If you have a spouse who is not stepping up into his spiritual responsibilities, religious responsibilities, whatever you do, and you feel uncomfortable about that, that is yours, that is not his. You do not need to manipulate or talk or get on his case about him not taking care of his responsibilities because you think it's going to make you feel better when he does that. No, we cannot be looking outside of ourselves for that. Your discomfort with his behavior is your issue and you have to start stepping into that. That is emotional adulthood. 

18:10 

Okay, the second reason why seeking control over others can be so harmful is that it destroys relationships and it destroys other people. And this is the piece that hit me like nothing else this week. And I'll probably get a little emotional as we talk about this because it was a hard situation for me to see. First of all, our manuals. Our manuals, our expectations of other people, destroy our ability to love cleanly, without manipulation, without passive aggressive behavior, without these expectations. We have to learn to love cleanly. Check out podcast number 92 on clean love. Okay, we cannot love cleanly when we are controlling. If we're controlling, it's not clean love ever. 

19:04 

Okay, another way that it destroys relationships and people, we are constantly judging other people when we're controlling. We're judging that what they're doing is good enough or not good enough. We're not accepting them. Okay, and because we're constantly judging them, we're constantly trying to fix them. You a fixer? I am such a fixer. And when I step into fixer mode, I'm also stepping into controlling mode. One of the greatest examples in my life of someone who didn't judge others was my mother. Now, I know there's millions of good people in the world like this, but she's the person closest to me. She was so excellent. Accepting of all people. Rarely did I hear my mother say anything judgmental about other people, and can I tell you what? In all my years growing up in my parents house, for 18 and a half years, I never remember having a fight or an argument or a disagreement with my mother. She never tried to tell me what to do. She never tried to micromanage and control what was going on. She let me have a messy room even though it probably drove her crazy. I mean, she just was so good. And I'll tell you what, to this day, my mother's been gone for 15 years, but she had a great relationship with all eight of her children. And when we get together as siblings, we discuss how we all thought that we were mom's favorite child because of this, because she did not judge us. She did not try to control us. She gave us a very appropriate amount of freedom over our lives to create what we needed to as we grew up. 

20:51 

Another way that controlling behavior destroys relationships with other people is because it beats other people down. And this is the one that this week just really hit me hard. I have male clients and I have male friends that I talk to about this and can I tell you, wives are destroying their husbands because of their controlling behavior. I know that I did, and the sorrow that I feel for that for me and for my former husband, it just, it breaks my heart that I was so harsh and so unkind. But this is what I want us to understand is, I've worked with these men. These men are in a place where they feel they can do nothing right. Their wives are constantly on their case about what they should be doing, how they should be doing it, how they should be showing up. And these men end up cowering because they don't want to fight. They don't want to create this disharmony and they don't want their wives to continue this behavior. But what happens is the more that they are beaten down and beaten down and beaten down, eventually they give up trying. They start to question everything they do. They question their worth. They question their capacity. They question their possibility and they live far below their possibility because they are so freaking afraid to fail, because every time they fall short, their wives are on their case trying to control everything. Their wives are scared of their husband failing and so they try to control all the things. And what that does is it creates failure. It creates good, honest men from stepping up into their possibility. It's destructive. 

22:58 

Our desire to control other people and other outside situations, it screams insecurity. Insecurity in myself. Now being organized, being prepared, trying to control those aspects, it's not the same kind of control that we're talking about. That's something very different. What we need to start looking at is what is our reason behind what we're doing. So if we're talking about "I want to be in control of my calendar," what's the reason behind that? I tend to be a little bit, the only word that's coming to mind right now is controlling, with my house, but I like it to be organized. Don't ever like to lose my keys. I don't want a pair of shoes and not know where they are. I want things to be organized. I want to be prepared so I'm not running behind and showing up late. So what I have to ask myself is what is the reason behind why I do that? So for me the reason is just because I love myself enough to not put myself in those stressful situations. I don't enjoy the stress. I don't love the stress of things falling apart, of things not being in good repair. I don't love that. And so as for my own self-care and to honor myself, I like to keep up on those kinds of things. That's my reason.u 

24:21 

Bt if my reason becomes fear, then I have something to look at, whether it's my life or something else, right? And this comes back to when we're looking at our reason. This comes back to our thought line and our feeling line in the thought model. What is my thought behind it and what is my the feeling that it create. Is the feeling that that thought is creating fear or anxiety o frustration? If you're going there, you need to take a look at your thought and find that your thought is going to be what's creating those. And I can almost guarantee you that your thought is going to have the word "should" in it: "I 'should' be doing this. He 'should' be doing this. They 'should' be doing this." Okay, so we want to take a look at that. We have to  start letting go of even the desire to control others. We have to stop stop that behavior. But we have to move it back into the thought line of wanting to control other people, otherwise, we're just left white knuckling it when we hold our tongue. We don't want to white knuckle this, we want this to become a piece of who we are in our hearts. We let go of even the desire to control other people people, to have other people live the way that we want them to. 

25:47 

Okay. So here's some questions of how you can tell if you have some control issues. Okay. Ready for these? Hold on, buckaroo. Here we go. First question. Do you have a lot of opinions about how other people should live, how they should be doing it? Anything, right? Do you have a lot of opinions? Next question. Do you complain a lot about your spouse? About your children, about your friends, about your coworkers, about situations? Third, do you get angry or frustrated when people don't respond how and when you want them to? Do you become impatient with things outside of yourself? Do people around you respond in passive aggressive ways? Meaning they will tell you one thing and then go off and do something the exact opposite? Do you find yourself moving into manipulation to get your own way? Does having things go your way trump your relationship with people? Remember that quote from Thomas S. Monson where he says, "don't ever let a problem to be solved become more important than a person to be loved." Our relationship should always take precedence over all the controlling all the things of what those people are doing. Two more questions. Do you find yourself blaming other people for your emotions, for your behaviors or for the results in your life? And last one, do you have a lot of shoulds in your life? He "should" be doing this. She "should" be doing this. They "should," right? Start listening to yourself talk. Are you are you laced with shoulds? Girlfriend, if you are if you are using should more often than you should, we gotta move out of that. That is control behavior thinking. That's where we're going. 

28:00 

Now here again, control issues are fine if we're focused on controlling ourselves. Go back to podcast number two, which talks about control issues. We talk all about that. If you're learning to control yourself better, you want to look at that. But even within ourselves and controlling ourselves, we want to extend compassion rather than a heavy hand. We want our desires for control to come from a space of love, and not a space of fear. Anytime we're moving into control, we are responding from fear and fear destroys relationships. It comes from a place of scarcity and insecurity, whereas love creates relationships and it comes from a place of abundance and security. 

28:50 

Here's another piece about being controlling. When we are controlling other people, we are not creating trust and trust is vital for relationships to thrive and to progress, and to create the vulnerability within that relationship necessary to create the emotional and physical intimacy. This doesn't mean just in a marriage relationship, the physical intimacy obviously, but the emotional intimacy that we want with our children, with our good friends, with our parents, with our siblings, based on trust. When we are seeking to control others, to tell them what to do or to pressure them to do things, we are letting them know that we don't trust them. Trust is an essential element of successful relationships. Trust backs off and lets other people walk their own path. It respects the fact that everybody has their own path. Trust empowers others to step up into their own lives. Trust helps other people to grow and progress in their unique way, not in our way. 

30:12 

When we're controlling, we want people to do it our way. We want them to grow in the way that we think they should. Guess what? You have no idea how somebody else should be growing and progressing. Sorry, you're not God. You do not have any idea how somebody else needs to do it. We just don't. Get out of their way and let them and God figure it out. Trust says, "I know that you're strong and capable. I know that you will figure it out." And again, trust is love-based, not fear-based. Is it hard? Absolutely. Absolutely. I have two daughters living with me right now who are both getting ready to go to college. And, oh boy, you know what, I mentioned a few weeks ago that I have a daughter who didn't get on housing. And she struggled and finally found a place to live. But, boy, they are gouging those students like nobody's business down there. And she's having to pay a huge amount of rent. 

31:24 

I have another daughter who can't even register for classes until she has taken a test. And here it is, August. And guess who has yet to take the test? And I have just sat back and I have taken a lot of deep breaths and I've just been, "you know what? She'll figure it out. She's an adult," and finally two days ago she said, "oh yeah, I think I'm gonna register for my test," and I'm like "oh oh whoo I can finally relax a little bit." I've been uptight about it, that's the control part of me, I'm like "girlfriend, get on this. You have to take this test so you can get back into school," and yet I cannot be controlling of her. I cannot try to do that for her. And when I start reminding her and reminding her and reminding her, I am taking control of her path and that is not my job. She's an adult child. It's my job to just stand back and go "good luck with that, girlfriend." And when she told me she was doing that I'm like "oh that would be great," and dropped it. It is hard, it can be so hard, but let me promise you, it has been so worth it for me to learn to control and to check my own controlling desires. 

32:44 

Because boy, I want to step in. I want things to work smoothly. I like my life running smoothly. So I go to bed on time. I get up on time. I do the, you know, I do my chores and stuff generally when they need to be done. I don't lose things very often. Like, I like my life running smoothly. So I try and control those things for me But guess what, not everybody cares. Not everybody cares if they have a last-minute stress about not being able to get into school or not be able to get housing and I have to let go of control of trying to be in charge of their lives. Because guess what? I'm not and I have learned to let go of trying to control all the things of everybody else. When we're trying to control things of other people, things that we can't, it will always be a losing battle. Always. And that feels like crap. And that makes us miserable. If we want to feel better in life, if we want more peace, we have to let go of control. 

34:03 

And I'll tell you what, that means that other people are gonna be living lives and doing things and engaging with us in ways that we may not like. Guess what? It is what it is. So the acronym for that, by the way, is IIWII. So, my friends and I years ago came up with...we started using that "it is what it is." We started saying "IIWII" was our was our acronym for ""it is what it is" and we would be doing something and we would just go "IIWII." It is what it is. I cannot fight against what things are. When I fight against it, I will always lose. If I want to feel better in life, I have to learn to let go of trying to control things that I can't control. IIWII.I have to learn to manage my thoughts around these situations and around these people. I have to learn to let go of the expectations, to get rid of my manual. And I have to learn to trust others, to love others, and to accept other people for who they are, and where they are, and learn to find joy and excitement for their path and for the experience that they are having with God as they figure out what God has for them. And I need to learn to find joy in my path with God. and learn how to start focusing on my path. Because that's what I can control. That's where my greatest joy is going to come from. Letting go of other's paths and stepping onto my own. 

35:50 

Okay, I love this so much. I know I got a little bit soapbo-y today, but you know what? I'm done with it. My heart just aches as I worked with a male client this week. And I saw his pain. And this is not the first that I've seen. Ladies, we can do better. Doing better means stepping back and stepping into our own lives and onto our own path. It doesn't mean taking over everybody else's. Okay, that's going to do it for me this week. Leave me that review, share podcasts when you feel, when you think about somebody, when you feel this, let's in our own small, amazing way make a difference in the world. Let's make the world a better place. We've got this, my friends. We can help other people find greater joy. We can save marriages. We can save relationships by learning to step into greater emotional health. Okay, I love you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for wanting to make the world a better place. 

37:06 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya.