Trying to control everything leads to suffering.

Stopping trying to control everything that happens to us helps us to adapt to life.

Suffering is something inherent to the human condition, it is part of life and cannot be separated from each other.It is something that is part of life and one cannot be separated from the other.

Now, it is possible to live suffering less; for it we can apply some of the precepts of a school of philosophy called stoicism, that counts with more than 2000 years of history and that has been of great influence for the development of one of the main theoretical frameworks in psychology: the cognitive-behavioral model.

Different forms of pain

We can suffer for multiple causes and, in this sense, it is necessary to do a first distinction between physical Pain and emotional pain..

When we refer to emotions it is necessary to point out that all of them are useful and necessary, even though some may be more pleasant than others.

We can see emotions as a tool with which nature has provided us to direct our life (without letting our emotions direct our life). So anger, well conducted, moves us to defend ourselves or others against something we consider unjust. Fear, when based on the basis of real danger, protects us from possible harm. Y sadness at the loss of something important moves us to withdraw into ourselves, invites us to analysis and reflection, promoting necessary changes in our lives.It is a way of promoting necessary changes in our life or in the way we see the world, or the way we see ourselves.

However, not all the emotional suffering that afflicts us is necessary or useful.A good part of our pain is excessive and sterile, in other words, it does not lead us anywhere, it does not contribute to improving our life.

This unproductive suffering is explained by the role of thought, which is a human attribute that differentiates us from animals, so that people grieve over fantasies of a future that has not yet arrived.e grieve over fantasies of a future that has not yet arrived (and may never arrive), or we lament over things that have happened. or we mourn for things that happened long ago. These thoughts lead us to escape from the only place in which we can truly exist: the present moment.

We can project ourselves into the future to make plans or to prepare for possible setbacks, and we can review the past to learn from mistakes. The problem lies when this activity becomes excessive or misdirected, when we feel the need to get ahead of everything that can happen or when we wallow in guilt, preventing any option to reflect and grow.

Thinking, like many other activities, can become a habit, and when we get in the habit of when we get used to think in a certain way we get used to suffer, many times without being aware that we are hurting ourselves with that way of thinking. with that way of thinking. When we talk about thinking, we can also talk about cognitive processes, such as language, memory or attention, among others.

That on which we put the magnifying glass of our attention is amplified, so that if I decide to focus on the opportunities I will pay less attention to the risks, and if I focus on the valuable things in my life, I will pay less attention to the losses or to the things that I still do not have or that I could lose.

Suffering caused by the search for control

Many of the torments we inflict on ourselves correspond to the habit of trying to have everything under control. We often pay too much attention to matters in which we have no direct control or no control at all. As our attention span is limited, when we concentrate on what we are concerned about, we neglect what we could be concerned about, i.e. we neglect our room for maneuver.

This behavior, sustained over time, causes a feeling of helplessness, fatigue and defenselessness. By always being alert, we are in tension and this can make us irritable.

Developing the habit of focusing on our real area of possibilities will provide us with greater peace of mind and avoid time wasted on issues of our own.It will free up mental space, give more fuel to the creativity muscle, and all this will have a noticeable impact on our state of mind.

To recover and strengthen our true power we must ask ourselves the question "what can I do in this situation?" and thoroughly explore the answer, mobilizing all the resources at our disposal. We will no longer torment ourselves for not doing what we could do.

However, if the answer is "nothing" there is no other option but to accept this reality and cope with the situation. Surrendering to the inevitable brings immediate relief, for one is no longer struggling with something that cannot be changed.

Conclusion

The tendency to be in tension, watching, sometimes makes us live believing that all those unpleasant situations that we imagine do not happen to us because we are controlling what happens, and this makes us believe that if we leave that unhealthy state of alertness terrible things could happen to us. Functioning in this way makes it very difficult for us to stop being alert, because we consider it a threat.because we consider it a threat.

The paradox is that when we allow ourselves to let go of control and relax, our mind expands and our wits improve, so that we can cope better.so that we are better able to cope with the possible eventualities that may befall us. This, in turn, is an opportunity to prove that there is no need to try to control everything.

Lord, grant me serenity to accept what I cannot change, courage to change what I am able to change and wisdom to understand the difference.. - Reinhold Niebuhr -