Control Can’t Give You What You Really Want

For the first fifty years of my life, I was, without realizing it, something of a control freak. That experience has helped me understand both the appeal of control and why so much of my spiritual journey has involved learning to release it.

From my early connection with Shaltazar, I was encouraged to release, let go, and surrender—wisdom I have spent many years seeking to understand more deeply. For a long time, I thought the answer was simple: let go more, surrender more, trust more.

But I am beginning to see that control is not something we can simply rip away.

Control is often our attempt to protect ourselves.

Most of us have experienced things we never wanted: loss, illness, betrayal, disappointment, plans falling apart. Experiences like these teach us that life is unpredictable. And the mind, whose job we believe is to protect us, may quietly reach a very understandable conclusion:

I do not want that to happen again.

So we plan more carefully. We anticipate. We worry. We replay conversations. Somewhere inside us, we begin to believe that if we can control enough, perhaps we can protect ourselves from pain and finally create the better life we’ve been hoping for.

But what if there is another way of interpreting those experiences?

What Else Does Your Past Prove?

We can look back at everything that hurt us and say, “See? Life is unpredictable. I need to protect myself.”

But those same experiences can tell another story. You survived them.

Maybe you struggled, fell apart for a while, needed help or changed in ways you never expected.

But somehow you responded. You adapted. You learned. You found resources in yourself and around you that you may not have known existed before you needed them.

What if the experiences we have been using as evidence that we need more control are actually evidence that we can trust ourselves more?

Instead of saying, “That hurt, so I need to make sure nothing like that ever happens again,” we can begin saying, “That hurt, and somehow I found a way to get through it.”

The past does not only prove that difficult things can happen. It also proves that we can develop the capacity to meet difficult things when they do.

That is a huge paradigm shift.

From Control to Self-Trust

There is a significant difference between trying to control what happens and trusting ourselves to respond to what happens.

Control says: I need to know what is going to happen so I can be okay.

Self-trust says: I do not need to know what is going to happen to know that I can meet it.

Self-trust does not mean handling everything alone or never feeling afraid. Sometimes trusting ourselves means knowing when to ask for help.

It means trusting our capacity to respond. We can adjust. We can learn. We can grieve. We can change direction. We can begin again.

This is where resilience and adaptability become important.

Resilience is not becoming so strong that nothing affects us. It is discovering that being affected by life does not mean life has defeated us.

Adaptability says, “If life changes, I can change with it.”

Each time we adjust to change, find another way forward or move through uncertainty without an immediate answer, we build adaptability, resilience and self-trust.

Life itself becomes the training ground.

Participation Is Not Control

We do not build self-trust by avoiding life. We build it by participating in it.

Letting go of control does not mean becoming passive. We still make plans, prepare, solve problems, set boundaries and take action.

That is participation.

Control begins when we expect those actions to guarantee an outcome.

I can usually tell when I have crossed that line because my actions stop being useful and start becoming attempts to relieve anxiety. I check again. I research again. I think about it one more time, not because anything meaningful has changed, but because I want the uncertainty to disappear.

At that point, I am no longer influencing what I reasonably can. I am trying to eliminate the unknown.

And I cannot.

This does not mean being reckless or ignoring genuine danger. There is a difference between unsafe and uncomfortable. Growth is often uncomfortable because we are entering territory we have not experienced before.

If we require certainty before we move, change or explore, our desire for safety can quietly become another form of control.

Perhaps our goal is not to know everything. Perhaps it is to become more comfortable with not knowing.

We cannot eliminate uncertainty from life. But we can increase our capacity to live peacefully in its presence.

Two Kinds of Trust

This is where faith becomes important. But I do not think telling someone to “just trust the Universe” is enough.

We need two kinds of trust: trust in something greater than ourselves, however we understand it, and trust in ourselves.

If I believe the Universe is guiding me but do not trust myself to handle what happens, I can still live in fear. If I trust only myself but believe everything depends entirely upon me, I can become exhausted trying to manage every outcome.

For me, deeper trust sounds like this:

I trust that I am being guided, and I trust myself to respond as best I can.

Faith is not another method of controlling the outcome. It does not mean everything will happen the way I want.

It may mean trusting that whatever happens, I will not have to face it alone—and learning that self-trust means knowing I will be present and take part in facing it.

Together, those two forms of trust create a different kind of safety: not the safety of knowing what will happen, but the deeper safety of knowing that we can meet life without controlling every part of it.

Maybe Surrender Comes Later

We often tell ourselves that we need to surrender control. But perhaps surrender is not where the process begins.

If control has spent years trying to keep us safe, we cannot simply take its job away and leave nothing in its place.

Something has to replace it: self-trust, resilience, adaptability, faith and a greater capacity to live with uncertainty.

As those qualities strengthen, control may not have to be defeated. It may simply become less necessary.

The experiences that once convinced us we needed to control life can become the experiences that show us we are capable of meeting life.

Perhaps the opposite of control is not surrender.

Perhaps it is trust.

And surrender becomes possible when trust grows strong enough.

Activate the Wisdom

Choose one area of your life where you are trying hard to control the outcome.

Instead of judging yourself, ask:

What am I afraid will happen if I stop trying to control this?

Then look at your past. What experiences may have taught you that uncertainty is dangerous or that you need control in order to feel safe?

Now ask:

What do those experiences reveal about my ability to adapt, recover, respond, seek help or begin again?

Let your past become evidence not only that life can be unpredictable, but that you have become increasingly capable of meeting that unpredictability.

Finally, ask:

If I trusted myself to meet whatever happens next, what could I stop trying so hard to control?

You do not need to know what comes next.

You are learning to trust that when it arrives, you will meet it.

August 27, 2026