It Will All Work Out: The Freedom of Letting Go

by Kevin Hart

In life, sometimes the only thing that will shake you hard enough—that gets the message through your skull that you need to change your ways and get better—is to hit a bottom. And every bottom is different for every person.

when you have to sit with the consequences of your actions, and you really don’t want to live with them, you almost have no choice but to gain a new perspective and become a different person.

I was at the brink of death. That’s the edge I came back from.

You’re either dead for good, or still alive but dead asleep on the inside.

They can kick the shit out of you. But they don’t have to, because they’ve already got full control of your mind. And it’s happened so slowly, so naturally, that you don’t even see it.

Read that again: these monsters cannot eat when you’re living right.

Because they have no food. Their food is your attention. Their food is your trust. Their food is your unthinking obedience.

Control is having power over a situation, yourself, or others, and being able to influence what goes down.

’Cause you can’t fail if you never try in the first place.

In the face of scary situations, your brain wants to choose either fight or flight. And way back when, the Control Monster chose whichever option felt the smartest at the time.

If something makes you anxious—it could be asking for a raise or asking for a date—you might just not do it. Because that’s how your monster learned to deal with anxiety.

God, I’m so lonely. I’m so unhappy. I never saw how I’ve spent so much time avoiding people, and not chasing the goals I’m afraid to fail at, and not speaking up for myself. It’s made me feel safe in the short term, but I think I’m actually worse off for it. I’ve been the biggest thing holding myself back.

Just because people aren’t like you doesn’t mean they’re not capable.

You can’t judge others by comparing them to yourself.

The same thing happens when you quit avoiding what freaks you out. When you try something new, and start stepping into your fears a little bit, suddenly the playing field of life becomes ten times bigger.

success is in getting it done, not in what other people think.

You’re no longer living in fear. You’ve got a free mind, with clearer vision. And instead of fighting with the universe all the time, you can finally trust it to work with you to help find your way.

The first thing to understand if you want to be free is that letting go is the only way. And that might sound scary. After all, you’ve spent your whole life trying to avoid this. But if you look back on it, your need to control didn’t make things any safer. It only made them smaller. It will ultimately shrink everything, from your joy to your relationships to your life span.

Most of all, you’ll feel a hell of a lot better. Because when you’re stuck in control mode, you’re constantly anticipating negative consequences. Even though most of the time those consequences never happen. You’re living in a constant catastrophe before any problem even presents itself. So to tame this monster, the first tool you need is logic.

Every time this creature rises up and tries to take control, you talk it down with logic.

That’s when I confront that beast and let it know very clearly that it’s not protecting me.

Instead, I need to recognize that my anxiety is my problem.

And what I really need to be doing is to go directly to the problem

Stress is a limiter. The less we feel, the more we can take on.

Self-control is the way you flip the Control Monster and use it to your benefit.

Being able to train yourself means that you’re in some position of control over your behavior. You’ve taken all that outward control and reassigned it to personal discipline. It becomes fuel and direction in whatever you want to do. It lets you work overtime to hit deadlines, or override that lazy voice that’s telling you to skip workouts, or that timid voice that wants you to play it safe.

And when you catch yourself wanting to avoid a challenge that might actually be good for you, you can stop and say, “Wow, I see I’m anxious about this. But I’mma be okay. I’m a grown-ass adult, and I can handle whatever comes my way. Even if I fail, I’ll learn something that will help me do it better next time.”

Self-awareness plus self-control equals the best possible life you could ever hope for.

But if your self-control is very low, then the Control Monster can still be activated and allowed to run free. You’re not bringing any willpower or direction to the situation.

With self-control, you put the last piece of the puzzle in place. You’re able to understand yourself, your environment, and your plan, and now you can decide where to put your effort and where to let go. You can choose when and how to put this monster you’ve trained to work for you.

WELCOME TO THE BIG LEAGUES, PEOPLE. Before we talk about how to play this game, I need to warn you about the biggest mistake you can make at this point. That mistake would be thinking that this monster will stop testing you.

Addicts don’t plan on being addicts. They just started doing something that felt good. And they got lost in it. When they tried it the first time, they probably didn’t mean to let it get so out of hand. But eventually, that once-pleasurable thing becomes a monster, more important than your friends, family, and career. You get, as the saying goes, thrilled to death.