It Will All Work Out: The Freedom of Letting Go

by Kevin Hart

The punishment of every disordered mind is its own disorder.

if you don’t have your shit together, it’s that very lack of togetherness that becomes your sentence to pain and suffering.

The unique disorder in my own mind has caused me and other people no shortage of grief.

To be asleep in your day-to-day means to be living it without awareness. To let your bullshit take the lead. And living this way has its consequences.

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.

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.

All these events—these bottoms—I don’t believe they’re random accidents. I believe they’re chapters building up to something much greater. Pieces in a lesson plan of higher design, marking the beginning of your next semester of life.

Flatlining, whether you want to take that literally or metaphorically, might be just what we all need to snap out of the trance of our own bullshit and wake the fuck up.

And I can promise you that you’ve got monsters in your life. There just might be some you feed more than others. Some that control you more than others. And some that are sneaky, hiding in the background, whispering dumb bullshit in your ear that you listen to.

They make you see what they want you to see, and think about what they want you to think about. So you’ll keep feeding them, instead of your family, your health, and the things that really make you happy.

these monsters cannot eat when you’re living right. Why? Because they have no food. Their food is your attention. Their food is your trust. Their food is your unthinking obedience.

you only fear what you don’t know.

I just wanted control. When I had it, I felt like I could breathe. Like everything was going to be okay. And when I didn’t have it, I was filled with anxiety, feeling like every little thing could go wrong.

But no matter what form your Control Monster ends up taking, they all serve the exact same purpose: to manage anxiety, and make sure you’re safe and successful.

In the sneaky version of this monster, one of its key methods of control is avoidance. If certain situations or people make you feel anxious, you’ll steer clear of them. And for a lot of people, one of the biggest causes of anxiety we avoid is conflict.

And if the Control Monster sees failure as a potential outcome at the end of the road, it can try to avoid that outcome by jumping into action nonstop. It has you fighting your way through and doing everything yourself, because it doesn’t believe other people can do a good job or look after your best interests.

Any form of control is really just protection. And you get protective because you’re afraid. And you’re afraid because you don’t trust. Let me say it again: Any form of control, at the end of the day, is really just protection. And you get protective because you’re afraid of something bad happening. And the reason you’re afraid of something bad happening again is because you don’t trust yourself or others to handle a situation.

You were strategically using certain behaviors in hopes that they would affect how another person treated you or how they behaved around you. For all the right reasons, you were trying to make sure the world around you stayed safe and cool at all times.

One time I asked for help, and somebody said I was stupid for needing it.

when you use avoidance as protection, you’re strapping huge limitations on yourself and what’s possible in your life. You may never get what you want because you’re a pushover. There’s so much you never take a chance on, because it involves even the smallest amount of risk.

I’ve been the biggest thing holding myself back.

But I assumed that if their way wasn’t like mine, well, that couldn’t be correct. And if their way was like mine, then I could do it better and they were unnecessary.

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

When everybody’s trying to feed themselves, and get theirs, they end up starving. They don’t get anywhere. They miss the point. It’s only when we trust each other, rely on each other, and give each other our best instead of saving it for ourselves that we can experience the full banquet of life.

when you’re stuck in control mode, you’re constantly anticipating negative consequences.

You’re living in a constant catastrophe before any problem even presents itself.

I feel anxiety. I try to manage someone else to alleviate my anxiety.

But when you apply control to yourself, that requires a lot of surrender and acceptance.

What we can’t is other people.

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

The more you chase comfort, the more unhappy you become. Because happiness isn’t about being comfortable; it’s about growing and improving. And by nature, growing is not comfortable.

Happiness is what happens not just every time you conquer an obstacle but every time the obstacle temporarily conquers you, and you struggle to get back on your feet.

It’s easy to be happy when things are going your way. But true success is still being happy when they’re not, knowing that eventually, you will prevail, because you’re the one writing the rules of this game.