How Do You React When Life Makes You Feel Out of Control?

Lately I’ve been cleaning a lot of closets and drawers. I had a two-fold excuse for this: my husband is job-hunting, so we might be forced to move, and I have the opportunity to participate in a community garage sale. The real reason stems from my desire to gain control over the uncontrollable in my life.

Control Your Environment

That’s right. When I feel I can’t control aspects of my life, I tend to try to control my environment. I clean and organize. This gives me the sense that I can, actually control something—how much junk there is in my house, how neat or orderly my home or office is, how I feel in the spaces I occupy. But the end product actually leads to something even more positive.

Control Your Connection

Controlling my environment provides me with a way to control myself. When everything around me feels out of control, I need a way to get calm and centered. I need a way to stop myself from getting stuck in reacting rather than responding and to stop focusing on negative thoughts and emotions, like fear.

If my surrounds are out of control, it’s hard to focus and to tap into my higher self or a Higher Source. My tidy and less-cluttered surroundings help me create a sacred space in which I can tap into the sacred within myself and where I can connect with God. Once I have less distraction, I can stop and connect, and that connection with myself and with Divine Wisdom helps guide me—helps me realize that it’s all good and it’s all God. I don’t need to control anything. God is doing it all.

React vs. Respond

I hate feeling out of control. I’m a fixer, and I tend to fixate on a problem or situation until I figure out how to “handle” it or get it under control. So many times, this just isn’t possible. Yet, my reaction is to jump in and fix things so I will feel in control or so I will feel my life or the situation or the other person’s life is in control, not necessarily because it’s the best way to handle anything. I don’t respond after thinking it through or meditating on the situation or praying and asking for guidance. And I don’t allow things to remain out of control until they somehow resolve themselves.

So, cleaning actually gives me that time to respond rather than react. It allows me to reach a balanced and centered place from where I can actually respond. It creates a sacred space in which I can meditate and pray and allow…and trust that everything will work out as it should.

How do you react when life makes you feel out of control? Let me know by leaving a comment below.

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