In my journey through leadership, I’ve recognized it’s very difficult at times to give up control. You know what I’m talking about, my friend?
Control is an issue for many of us leaders. It has been for me. And why? Because control is what creates reality. It’s what gets people together, it’s what arms them. Controlling and getting in charge of the situation is what makes things happen. And if we didn’t have that power of control, we’d be fools to think anything would get done.
So, I’m with you. I understand the power of control and its value, and I know how to use it. As a martial artist, we use control as a powerful way to generate and create our reality, to master how we are interacting with another person who is trying to harm and hurt us.
Let’s look at what happens when we bring that same philosophy of martial arts into the world of business. If we are constantly fighting face-to-face and smashing each other, and not working with our reality, or we’re always clashing with what’s happening, we are going to be using more and more control. We’re going to try to control the uncontrollable, and the uncontrollable becomes even more uncontrollable.
So, what happens is, the more we exert control, somewhere down the line, something out of control happens, and unconsciously we draw up and re-enact the struggle and clash experience. Fires keep coming up over and over again. If you haven’t noticed, that’s what happens when you try to control the uncontrollable. The more you try to press mercury down and keep it under control, it slips out from underneath you.
In Brazilian jiu-jitsu, the masters are the ones whom you can put all your weight on, and they can slide up around, they can sweep you, and end up on top of you. This is the mastery of control. It’s learning how to relinquish control, to soften your breath, to allow your beingness to let go of the grip of control, to find where there’s a space, a breather. And like these masters, move into that space in your day, in your being, into the advantage of the circumstance. And not force reality, not control reality, but relinquish that power more. And when that grip sensation happens, we become sensitive, even more sensitive to the spaces, where we can see, “Ah, there is a breath there. There is an opportunity there. I can find my way out of that struggle.”
So, it’s a funny paradox in this path of leadership, that ultimately, when we relinquish control, what happens is there’s a new level of control that comes to us. The things happen which we wanted to control, spontaneously rearranging themselves. On a team, people more easily find control in how to work together as you relinquish how to control them. People come to their own power of synchronicity, their own power of collaboration, their own power of making things happen when you’re not overpowering them to make things happen!
Leaders do it over and over again in their companies. At WarriorSage, we teach them to recognize when they are in their control states. And then we remove the control impulse, we integrate the control impulse, the excessive control impulse, and then what starts to happen is, their teammates respond. They feel the ego structure of control gone from the energy of their leader. Now breath and relaxation happen, and in their response, and now they are like, “Ok. Great.”
The reason is, we have eliminated the games of
“I need to control you.”
“Don’t control me.”
“I want to control you.”
“I don’t want to be controlled.”
The two sides of this equation are equally disempowering. We don’t realize it at first, but it’s equally as disempowering to say “Don’t control me,” as “I need to control others.” They are both struggle patterns that keep us trapped in power games.
It’s the unification of these opposites in our consciousness that brings about the higher wisdom; being able to see, hold, understand, and integrate both polarities within ourselves. This can only happen through conscious integration practices. It can’t happen alone just through philosophy. It has to happen through doing the inner work of uniting these antagonistic forces in our consciousness.
Again, it comes down to the Zen of relinquishing control so that a deeper level of control can happen. From this place, watch how your nuance of power grows. Watch how your ability to empower others to take control grows, as you step by step become the witness, the inspiration, and the space holder of their innate attributes, gifts and skills.
Then control happens without you needing to control.
That’s the ultimate sweetness.
WarriorSage delivers Leadership and Culture trainings for CEO`s and their Teams.We unleash the dormant power that’s trapped in struggle and interference patterns so your company soars to the next level.
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