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Allowing vs. Control

Through allowing you become what you are; vast, spacious. You become whole. You are not a fragment anymore, which is how ego perceives itself. Your true nature emerges, which is one with the nature of GOD. (Eckhart Tolle) In this quote by Eckhart Tolle, he makes us keenly aware of the space that allows everything to be. The space he is referring to is the Now or the Present moment. Have you ever heard of the saying, Your life runs you, instead of you running your life? Imagine you are here, someone who has fallen victim to their life. Have you ever felt like you are just going through the daily grind motions with low energy controlled by someone or something? You feel you have no choices and are stuck in this life situation. You feel boxed in, small or of little value. It could be that your life schedule is so busy, so hectic you find yourself doing for everyone but not for yourself. In this place you are feeling down, complain often of someone or some circumstance and you fear your life dream slipping away. Eventually, the feeling of being controlled or powerless makes you uncomfortable and angry. In turn, you project this feeling to the outside world in an attempt to gain back the control; you display controlling behavior. People in your life you come in contact with are puzzled by your communication and your changed behavior. You may feel so controlled that you experience hopelessness and want to get away to escape. How did we get to a place of losing control over our life, losing our true natural self? If allowing the present moment is the place to be to experience our true nature-and we are not here-then where are we? What are we allowing? In this case, we are not in the present moment; we are in denial of the present. We have formed a self-defeating belief by going into the future and drawing a conclusion or we have yet to release what happened in the past in order to move on in the present. Eckhart Tolle in his book, The Power of Now explains the past as resisting what happened in the past, so resisting what is. Self Application When we let go in stillness, go inward and are present in the moment, we are allowing. As we begin to relax, breathe and let go, the divine energy within us begins to free us from our need to control and struggle and we feel our true nature again. We are open to infinite possibilities. We are in the process of receiving and releasing self defeating beliefs, noisy thoughts, and low negative energies. The low negative energies are gone and are replaced by uplifting, inspirational, positive energies. We are taking our power back and trusting in something bigger, something greater. We are at peace and can allow creation to exist in our lives again placing us on our divine life path to serve many. We are in a state of higher awareness, connecting to our oneness and tapping into our truth. Our renewed light, energetic state of being is contagious to other people who desire to feel and act as we do.

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When we control, we are playing small with limits and resisting possibility. We are feeling trapped or backed into a corner. We are giving our power away. Instead of feeling a sense of empowerment, we are feeling powerless. Fear masks as control and blocks possibility, creativity, love, connections, inner peace and most of all your higher self, the true you. We may feel anxious, emotionally unavailable, isolated, stuck, drained, lost, burdened or desperate. When we are living as if controlled by something or someone, we are not present in the moment and are attaching to an outcome of events happening in a particular way. We make this outcome so significant; it generates intensity around our every action. The ego is at work falsifying what is limiting us to all that is. We tend to control life externally based on what we are erroneously concluding and we are operating from a self-defeating belief. This not only has an impact on us, it has and impact on everyone who comes in contact with us to where the controlling negative energy transfers to other people enacting similar feelings and behavior in them. If you are controlling, you are not allowing miracles to happen. Allowing + Stillness= Peace Control + Noise=War War is losing the battle with the noise of self defeating beliefs in the mind. Peace is seating ourselves in stillness to allow the true essence of who we are to come through. When you lose touch with inner stillness, you lose touch with yourself. When you lose touch with yourself, you lose yourself in the world. (Eckhart Tolle) Take a look at the example below of someone who is giving her power away, putting herself in a position controlled by psychological time by the minds self-defeating belief. Cindy is a wife, mom, school volunteer, sole proprietor who runs a successful business out of her home and she is currently enrolled in a MBA program. She is an accomplished, driven, ambitious individual who enjoys her family life and loves her work. When her business gets busy, she feels an enormous limited amount of pressure to succeed in all areas and starts to feel controlled by the amount of time left in a day to get everything done. She becomes rigid with her time and believes there is never enough time in the day! She is giving her power away to this self-defeating belief. She is saying yes to all requests and is operating from fear of not completing them on time. Her energetic higher self dissipates into feeling anxious and exhausted. She complains often, feels desperate, and is very reactive at home. The smallest of tasks feel like a heavy burden. She is accomplishing less and less daily and is exhibiting dictating, controlling behavior at home. She is critical of herself and is emotionally unavailable. She has stopped her exercise routine, leisure time with family, social life with friends and, is feeling weighted down. Due to Cindys overwhelming state, she is not present in the moment or aware of her behavior. As she sits down with her son after school to help him with his homework, she cant seem to focus. She is feeling anxious about making dinner and begins to rush her son through his homework. The controlling energy she is putting out transfers to her

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young son who is feeling the same sense of disempowerment. He is saying to her, I am never going to finish my homework on time to play with my friends. Reflections .. What is allowing? What does allowing do for us? Where in your life are you controlling and what are you choosing to believe? What feelings are produced by a controlling, self-defeating belief? What part does the ego play?

Coach Application Building the Practice of Allowing When you are allowing, you are choosing to be still in the present moment to experience the true nature of yourself. Next, we will talk about how to build the practice of allowing through meditation, awareness of self-defeating beliefs, and self-care. Self care is taking time to care for self on a daily basis including asking for and receiving support. Like anything else, when you decide to make a change in your life, it is first a choice and then a commitment which takes patience and daily practice. Research says it takes 21 days to form a new habit and break an old habit, so daily practice and patience is essential. Start with 5 Minutes When I allow myself to be still, I am amazed by what I discover-Life is waiting to share its secrets with me. I trust God, the Universe and Spirit. All is well. (Louise Hay) Louise Hay spoke at the I Can Do It conference in New York last year and shared how to do a 5 minute, simple meditation. She advises to pay attention to the last 5 minutes before you go to sleep at night and the first 5 minutes when you wake up in the morning. She suggests practicing gratitude during your last 5 minutes of the day and setting your intention for the day during the first 5 minutes when you wake in the morning. In anticipation, she also says during these 5 minutes you should quiet the mind, allow the guidance to come in and see what you get. Keep a journal and write it all down. Meditation Silencing the mind is the key to allowing. Another way to build the act of allowing is through meditation. Meditation is a practice of going within to increase self awareness and the truth of

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who you are. According to James Van Praagh, author of the book, Meditations with James Van Praagh, Meditation is a way to move into consciousness of real knowing. As we sit silently and focus our attention inwardly, we start to become aware of our true self. Sarah Mclean, author of the book, Soul Centered: Transform Your Life in 8 Weeks with Meditation, states, Meditation is the perfect companion on your path to self discovery and healing. Meditation should feel natural and effortless. You can meditate lying down or sitting up. You can meditate in silence, in nature, to a guided meditation CD or to music as it is your own unique preference. If its in silence or to music, you can visualize a place that brings you peace and calm such as a quiet ocean beach, sitting under an oak tree, on a bench next to a beautiful garden, in a forest next to a flowing stream, or on top of a mountain. If it feels one with you, that is the place. One begins meditation by closing the eyes and becoming aware of your breath and body. The focus is on the breath on the inhale and exhale while mentally counting to 3 or 4 on both the inhale and exhale. As your breath slows down to a rhythmic breath, quiet and clear the mind and move your attention to your heart space. Experience the stillness and relax the body slowly from head to toe starting from the top of your head. Once fully relaxed, you may begin to feel a release throughout the entire body. As you surrender and let go of the outside world, you free yourself of all low energies, become fully present as you turn inward to your own greatness, feeling your own truth. Meditation takes practice where you can work your way up from 5 minutes a day to 20 minutes or more a day. The practice of meditation has been clinically proven to lower the stress hormone cortisol in the body and the fight or flight response of the sympathetic nervous system. Today, meditation is used as a non-drug therapy for treating high blood pressure and coronary heart disease. Awareness of Self-Defeating Beliefs Becoming aware is the first step in ridding yourself of self-defeating beliefs. In the book, Excuses Begone, by Dr. Wayne Dyer, he identifies 18 common self defeating beliefs that people struggle with. According to Dr. Wayne Dyer: Every self-limiting thought that you employ to explain why youre not living life to the absolute fullest-so youre feeling purposeful, content, and fully alive-is something you can challenge and reverse, regardless of how long youve held that belief and no matter how rooted in tradition, science, or life experience it may be. Even if it seems like an insurmountable obstacle, you can overcome these thoughts, and you can begin by noticing how theyve been working to hold you back. Then you can embark on a deprogramming effort that allows you to live an excuse-free life, one day at a time, one miracle at a time, one new belief at a time (Dyer, 2009, p. 5). Dr. Wayne Dyer illustrates in his book an Excuses Begone Paradigm involving 7 questions he developed with his colleague, Byron Katie to vanish long-standing self-defeating thought patterns and behaviors.

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1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Is it true? Where did the excuse (self defeating belief) come from? What is the payoff? What would my life look like if I couldnt use these excuses? Can I create a rational reason to change? Can I access universal cooperation in shedding old habits? How can I continuously reinforce this new way of being?

Self Care Cheryl Richardson, author of the book, The Art of Extreme Self Care, says, When you let go of control and allow others to take the wheel, you empower them. She also shares it is not always easy, allowing others to help means learning to surrender to the reality that there will be mistakes made and that things will not always get done your way, that doesnt mean its wrong. Through Cheryls work on herself and as a coach with clients, she learned that, the only way to create a successful life based on your values and deepest longings is to take your hands off the wheel and become masterful at asking for and receiving help. She developed a Things You Can Do to Support Me list as a strategy for mastering this skill. Pick an area either at home or work where you could use the most aid. Then choose the person or persons youd like help from and explain how the list works. Let this person know that you are ready to let go of the control and you would like his or her assistance. Consider the following questions: 1. How many items will you include on the list? 2. Where will you leave it? 3. When would you like to have these items completed by? 4. What should your support person do when he or she cant meet a deadline? 5. Who will ultimately be in charge if additional help is needed? In addition, Cheryl recommends: As you begin to work with the list, be sure to give your support person permission to let you know when youre trying to take back control-when you start to do something youve asked him or her to do or when youre interfering in the process (Richardson, 2009, pp 40-41). When you let go of the wheel and let others in to help with the load, you create space for yourself to let go, breathe, center, quiet the mind and relax. Examples of taking time for your self could be booking a weekly massage, taking a daily walk, napping, drawing a bath with calming lavender, leaving work early, reading a good book, listening to your favorite music or just sitting in quiet with a cup of herbal tea. A little bit of self-care goes a long way creating oneness, lightness, renewal, energy, space, clarity and peace of mind.

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As coaches, when we become aware of our clients self-defeating belief that someone is or circumstances are controlling them, its an opportunity to make them aware that it is what they are choosing to believe in the mind that is resulting in a feeling of powerlessness. James Van Praagh often says, Thoughts are things and they are very powerful. There is an opportunity to ask our clients to share and become aware of these thoughts such as beliefs that are selfdefeating and not serving them. Once aware, our clients can then exchange this current selfdefeating belief for an empowering belief that will serve them daily. It is a gift to our clients who are experiencing noise in the mind to do the reverse, and quiet the mind, inviting stillness through daily practice of meditation connecting them to their oneness, their true natural self. When our clients are overwhelmed, we as their coaches can give them permission to practice self-care-that is to take time for the self, and to ask and allow others to take on responsibility; thereby, returning our clients to lightness and a sense of possibility. Reflections In the example, how is Cindy hanging on to control to the disempowerment of others? What is the first question we can ask as coaches to support our clients who are feeling controlled by someone or some circumstance? List some coaching techniques or tools that can help our clients build the practice of allowing.

References Dyer, Wayne Dr. (2009), Excuses Begone, Hay House Inc. Publishing, Carlsbad, California. Hay, Louise, (2011), I Can Do It, Hay House Inc., New York, New York. McLean, Sarah, (2012), Soul Centered: Transform Your Life in 8 Weeks with Meditation, Hay House Inc. Publishing, Carlsbad, California. Richardson, Cheryl, (2009), The Art of Extreme Self Care, Hay House Inc. Publishing, Carlsbad, California. Tolle, Eckhart, (2003), Stillness Speaks, Namaste Publishing, Vancouver, Canada. Tolle, Eckhart, (1997), The Power of Now, Namaste Publishing, Vancouver, B.C., Canada. Van Praagh, James, (2003), Meditations with James Van Praagh, Simon & Schuster Publishing, New York, New York.

Stacey Cripps stacey@scaattain.com 312-560-8461