Power vs. Control

Power vs. Control

This was a topic that came up on a coaching call today that led to a rich discussion.

Words mean different things to different people, but to this person, control was about force, pushing, and extremes, while power was about both/and, groundedness, and capacity.

Control was about fear. Power was about love.

In a world in which we experience hard things and where there is so much beyond our control, power asks to deepen into the infinity within our own borders and reminds us that there is always possibility we can create with our own magic and within our own being.

The beautiful thing about power is that it's big enough to hold the hard stuff (whereas control seeks smallness by pushing all the bad stuff away until we too shrink into oblivion).

There is power in presence - in not abandoning ourselves when things get hard (so we won't have to experience the hard thing).

Power reminds us that there are things within us (mystery, beauty, magic, and strength) bigger than the hard experiences and emotions that are passing through.

Paradoxically, the hard stuff often reminds us of our brilliance and strength - that we can be in the both/and and find our power and aliveness in that space.

The Comforts of Uncertainty

In recent years, uncertainty has become one of my greatest comforts. I find so much relief in reminding myself of all I do not know.

Mystery has become a pathway to peace.

My mind (like yours perhaps) loves projecting, predicting, and catastrophizing. It loves looking at a frustating situation, hard moment, or painful truth and spinning and extending it into distrous visions of cataclysmic ruin.

Left to its own devices, my mind usually opts away from the reasonable, low-drama approach. We’ve had to work hard together to get to any measure of calm composure and grounded equanimity.

And while its talents for creating patterns, making judgments, and crafting predictions have been immeasurably helpful in all sorts of ways, my mind often needs to be reminded that it is not the omnipotent power it presumes to be.

So this is what I do to help it along: I remind myself that every thought I think and every idea I believe is less than the absolute truth (because my mind does not have access to absolute truth). I remind myself that there are gaps – often significant ones – in my stories, beliefs, and predictions. I remember that interpretations of reality and actual reality are two very different things. I remind myself that I can never know for sure what will be real in 5 years, 5 weeks, or 5 minutes.

An important note: uncertainty is not denial. In other words, uncertainty does not refute what’s real or bypass what’s hard. It doesn’t say: I can never know anything, so I’m just going to opt out and ignore reality. It simply says: I do not and cannot know the whole story. I cannot know the future of what is now. And I cannot grasp the whole of reality in all its complexity, possibility, and dimensionality.

Which brings my energy and attention back to what is here for me now: in this moment of time and location in space.

Since I cannot know how the story ends, I am left with presence, mystery, and an open space where the only real and necessary thing is how I choose to live these questions: what will I do, and who will I be in this moment before me now?

Castles and Post-Vacation Blues

I recently returned from a vacation that was absolute perfection – nothing fancy, but a couple days in the paradise that is autumn in Door County, the luxury of a hotel stay, and a plate of cheesy nachos paired with cheesy reality TV – filled my soul and restored my body in ways that felt downright miraculous.

And now, having returned to the Grim Reality of Life, I am suffering from a classic case of post-vacation blues – lamenting the fact that tomorrow, I will be spending 8 hours in a windowless office instead of an enchanted forest.

Thankfully, I know that despairing moods like these are my reliable cues to take my own medicine and do some self-coaching.

So I looked more closely at what I was feeling: dread – and noticed how that was showing up in my body: as sharp ice cubes in my throat. Then, because I believe all emotions and feelings have benevolent, useful messages, I imagined myself stepping into and “becoming” the ice cubes to see what they might have to say and how they might answer questions like: why are you here, what’s your purpose, and how are you trying to help?

As I was channeling the consciousness of these metaphorical, imaginary ice cubes (as one does), I suddenly flashed on the ice castles built each winter near the town I grew up in Minnesota.

The ice cubes wanted to be building blocks and tools of creation, apparently, and they wanted me to build a (metaphorical) castle. They didn’t want to be swallowed or shoved down, and they didn’t want to cause pain. They just wanted to be put to good use, in service of my imagination.

So, what if instead of dreading my return to ordinary life, I brought the magic, joy, and freedom of my vacation back with me tenaciously, intentionally, and imaginatively? What if I found a way to fold that goodness into the whole of my life?

It’s so easy to believe that what I most want can only exist in perfect circumstances far from the messy realness of daily life – that I need to escape to find what I’m truly looking for. But I have a hunch that allowing the good stuff to be present and alive in the here and now, along with my yearning for more of it, in whatever form that takes, opens the way for creativity, ingenuity, and all kinds of magic.