Confessions of a Control Freak

It’s Me, I am the Control Freak, and here’s my story.

So since life has not taken its foot off of my neck yet, let’s keep talking about the shit that I’ve learned, but this time it’s what I’ve learned over the past 4 months.(Yeah, I know the last blog was about lessons I learned over the last 3 months, but since life is not through with me yet, my 90 day story has a part II, and has turned into “what I’ve learned in the last 4 months”.)

Now if you know me personally, you’ll know that I am a planner. I have about 5 different notebooks, journals, and writing pads that I use to organize me and my family's lives. I plan out our finances for years in advance. I plan out vacation locations, times, dates, excursions, dinners, flights, and budgets. I plan outfits, date nights, family gatherings, holiday celebrations, and any other social engagement requested. I plan the content for All Queens Army, write out content ideas, schedules, and topics to discuss. I plan contracts, schedules, tasks, and things to do for my trucking company and my 9-5 job. Yes, it’s excessive. But, it keeps me organized, calm, and most importantly (for me), it keeps me in control.

But, something changed right after Thanksgiving last year. I felt a very unfamiliar shift in energy around me because as I was going about my normal extreme need to plan and control, some things were not working out or happening as planned. It felt like I had hit a wall. I felt stagnated. Like I was being held back from moving forward on decisions that I was making. One instance was when I chose the house that my family and I were going to move to. I received no response to my offer. No matter how determined I was to get some sort of response, I got nothing. Over 5 emails went unanswered, 7 phone calls went unreturned, even social media messages and DMs were ignored. Another incident was when I decided to accept contracts for my business to meet a financial goal and fund my next venture, my husband and I ran into some mechanical issues with our tractor and the contract was canceled. We got the tractor fixed and the same result occurred again. We got the tractor fixed once more, and what do you know, another mechanical issue.

Needless to say, what I was trying to do was not panning out as I planned… and I started to panic. The anxiety, fears, and insecurity that I try so hard to bury and keep under control were unraveling as each day of uncertainty passed.

See, the thing is, feeling like I’m in control is comforting for me. It’s comforting because I feel like I know how a goal is going to be attained or how a result is going to turn out if I create a plan to get there and work the plan. When I can see the path to my destination, I feel at ease. I feel at peace. I feel confident. On the contrary, when I do not see a clear and attainable path to my destination, I feel discouraged, anxious, insecure, and fearful. So, as you can imagine, with the chain reaction of things not working out, my anxiety was triggered. I spent hours upon hours each day trying to come up with solutions, overthinking possibilities (positive and negative), and worrying about if I had made the right decisions thus far.

But one day, as I was in the middle of yet another business hindering incident, I had an unexpected encounter of awareness. Like a switch that was off, was turned on at that moment. It was like I was awakened by a higher power. And all of a sudden, I knew that it was high time that I surrender.

I knew that I was being spoken to, guided, influenced, encouraged, and most importantly taught a lesson.

The lesson was that I am not, have never been, and will never be in control.

And that’s what I learned. After I had exhausted myself with all the planning, working, resolving, and fixing of problems and setbacks - I still did not have the resolution or results that I was trying to create. As a matter of fact, I was still in the same spot (minus a few thousand dollars and lots of additional gray hairs). I had spun my wheels and gone nowhere. I knew at that moment that I was in the midst of a lesson. I knew at that moment that I felt stagnation because nothing was going to move until I learned that it was never me moving shit anyway. I knew at that moment that in order to manifest what I wanted, I needed to stop trying to control HOW I was going to get to the goal/destination that I had asked of the Universe. I knew at that moment that I needed to re-learn how to trust, how to have faith, how to ask for what I want and wait for God to deliver.I knew at that moment that I was going to stop trying to control and instead trust the Universe. Some people call it “Let go and let God”. Whatever you call it, that is what I surrendered to.

I wanted to get to the root cause of my need to control so that I could learn what triggers it within my personality. And after some deep self reflection I realized that control is a result of fear. It is the opposite of faith, belief, trust, and hope. So, essentially, if you are trying to control things, people or outcomes, you likely have little or no faith. It means that you need to see a path before you believe you can travel it. It means that you need to understand how your dream will come to you before you believe that it can come to you. It means that you need to have some proof that what you hope for is possible, before you believe that it is possible. This may be a result of you living in the past, rethinking and responding to a previous failure, letdown, or heartbreaking outcome or result. So, your need to control is your attempt to defend yourself from experiencing the disappointing outcome you’ve experienced before.

And how do I know? Well, because that whole paragraph above describes me, my life, and my experience.

In the past, I believed that I had stepped out on faith (blind faith), but I failed. It hurt. I was humiliated. It was traumatizing. Since that experience, I have been approaching my goals strategically in order to prevent myself from going through that shit ever again. So, I created a trauma response to shield myself from the possibility of making a major mistake, the pain of failure, and the humiliation that I experienced. And that trauma response is to control.

So, here I am, years after that traumatizing failure. I was still living in the past and trying so hard to prevent myself from making the mistakes and decisions that I blame for my humiliation and insecurity. But, the action of attempting to prevent an outcome actually creates that outcome. The action of trying NOT to fail manifests failure. The thought to plan for a potential issue actually manifests the issue. So, there is no plan that I could have come up with and no level of control that I could ever have that will guarantee any outcome, result, goal, or dream.

The way to pray and get your blessing or manifest what you want is to believe that what you asked for is done. We speak things into existence with the power of the tongue. Remember, it was with the power of His tongue that God created the heavens and the earth. And since we are made in His likeness, it is also the power of our tongue that will create the life that we want as well. So, speak what you want, and it is so. Believe it with all your heart and it will come. Trust that the whole universe is conspiring to create the path for your manifestation and it will be.

Your control, fears, insecurities, and worry only create resistance to the flow of blessings and manifestations coming from the Universe. Remember, they are the opposite of faith, trust, and belief and therefore will cause stagnation. So, your plan is not needed.

Ask for what you want.

Then, be still. And know.

I hope my journey helps someone out there.

Love y’all. Mean it.

Breeze Phoenix