If You Want Less Stress, Give Up Control
We need to let go of the idea that we are the ones calling the shots
They say you never know when inspiration will strike. Well, I was on the first day of a three-day fast, having just finished my run when I got this revelation:
Stress is almost exclusively generated by our constant striving to control things
I was sitting on a bench and I was waiting for my friend to finish his workout so we could go home. Having left my phone at home I decided to do a meditation. However, all I could think about was food. I hadn’t eaten all day and I wasn’t going to eat for the next two days either. Unsurprisingly, food was the only thing on my mind.
As I sat there fighting with my own mind, I kept getting those ideas about how to kill some more time. Should I go for a walk, should I count birds, anything at all, any distraction that could distract me from the torture that was fasting. In the same time, I knew perfectly well that I will not eat anything for at least 48 more hours, no matter what I do or think.
This is when I told myself “this is futile. Whatever you do or think right now, nothing is going to change. There will be no food for the next two days. It is not negotiable. Just give up”. The next second I felt relief like never before. The moment I stopped fighting hunger and I just surrendered to the feeling I was finally able to clear my mind and actually focus on my breath.
There is a force in each of us, which makes us constantly try to rearrange the world in a better way. Some call it ambition, others call it desire but in the end, this is what life is. Striving for improvement is a part of being human. However, just like anything else, it can be taken too far. Believing that we can change something about our life, and believing that we can change everything, are two different things. The former gives you the energy to go on, the latter gives you nothing but stress.
If we have an objective look at things we will quickly discover that the amount of control we have over our lives is quite limited. Everything around us is in constant motion, pushed along by a million forces that are hidden, and sometimes incomprehensible to use. Believing that we can learn to control everything is crazy. And yet we believe. We keep bashing ourselves for not being good enough and for not being smart enough. We keep trying to make every tiny detail perfect.
We are like a sailor, who, in the middle of the ocean tries to use a bucket to move water from one side of the boat to the other
Every time we try to do something, it is our expectations about the result that create the stress inside of us. Do you feel stressed if you break an egg and both halves of the shell don’t look perfect? Of course you don’t, because you weren’t trying to make them that way. Now imagine this is your job — breaking eggs in a way that both halves of the shell are the same. How much stress would that job cause you!
Ultimately, it is our expectations of the world, combined with our idea that we can somehow control everything, that stops us from being present in the moment. Unless we learn how to stop thinking “what else can I do? How can I prepare better?” we are doomed to exist in a state of constant effort. Just like Sisyphus, pushing a rock up a hill just to see it roll back down, we keep trying to order the world around us just to see things going their own way.
We need to learn when to apply ourselves completely, and when to give up trying to control everything. This balance is vital to understanding and removing stress from our lives.
