As I'm cleaning up the house today I have my audio playing on random and something played that I thought might be helpful, not only to myself, but to many others on this forum, however, I'm not supposed to "start multiple threads yet" as I'm a newbie!
"On controlling behavior" He starts talking about how as humans, we have a hard time realizing that SOME things are out of our control, and we struggle with understanding that. He talks about the Serenity Prayer (I'm not a religious person, but the message remains).
"God, grant me the SERENITY to accept the things I cannot change, the COURAGE to change the things I can, and the WISDOM to know the difference."
All three points in that sentence hold individual value, and all are good things to work on, but only when you can take all three and consistently let them play off one another as a team, you get the best results when dealing with issues in life.
In a marriage that's in crisis/struggling, you have... 1. Am I being controlling? 2. Am I even trying to control the RIGHT things? 3. Why am I getting pulled into that?
People lose track of where you can actually make a decision and make a difference, on things you CAN control. There are 3 main categories on what you can control.
FULL CONTROL - things you can fully control, regardless of emotion, fear, anger, etc. You do have full control of some aspects in your life. Problem is, a lot of times people don't notice the things we have full control over, and are manipulated.
PARTIAL CONTROL - I'm not going into this one too much, but you get it.
NO CONTROL - Things you have no control over, and ironically, probably the one that we often struggle the most with TRYING to control. We are all constantly looking at those outside things that we cannot control, and we are trying to find a way to grab a hold and make it shift, making it so we CAN control it, but it is a losing battle we play throughout our entire lives.
We also have NO CONTROL over our thoughts, and your fears. Our thoughts are what our mind does, it's designed to create lots of thoughts, and part of what we struggle with is that some of those thoughts are disturbing to us, some good, some bad, some helpful, some not helpful, etc, and there is no way for you to stop those thoughts. What you can do though, is decide how long you will entertain those thoughts, how much power over you the thoughts will possess, how to react to the thoughts, etc.
Four Main Points to Take with you: 1. Give up controlling others! ...including their actions and their beliefs. You cannot control these things, EVER! you can work to improve the situation, but you can't control it. You're spouse may be saying mean things about you, hateful things about you, that you KNOW are just not true, and yet, you can never control whether they hold that belief or not (even if it is emotional/angry outrage).
2. Attend to the interactions and recognize your choices in these interactions. Notice when you DO have a choice during an interaction, pay attention! You may not have a choice in what happens, or how the other person reacts, but realize you do have the choice.
3. Accept responsibility for your "Three A's" Aspiration - Attitude - Actions. Know that your 'aspirations' to make a changes in your life, lead to a new mindset or 'attitude' on how you handle things as they come up, which leads to better actions by you.
4. Practice asking yourself: Do I have full control, Do I have partial control, or do I have zero control? ...and this is where the Wisdom happens, once you start to realize where you stand on 'controlling' something, you make better decisions on how you deal with things.
--- I'm sorry such a long post, but I thought it could be useful. and people who have been following my thread will understand how it applies to me, so thanks and I hope you all get something useful out of it.
