It Will All Work Out: The Freedom of Letting Go

by Kevin Hart

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

When everything is going wrong. When it seems like God woke up and came down to earth just to slap you across the face in front of everyone. Then left, and decided to come back one more time to slap you again for good measure.

your bottom can be your blessing.

As these monsters take over, you start to lose yourself and who you are. Your common sense—your ability to process true reality versus self-delusion—lessens.

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. To serve that goal, the Control Monster uses a variety of strategies, which can be broken down into two basic groups. Some people’s control happens right out in the open, in plain sight. That’s the style my monster loves. Whereas other people’s control can happen more beneath the surface. This style is less obvious and harder to spot, since it’s mostly operating inside someone’s mind.

Anytime an outcome matters to them—whether that’s in their parenting, their job, or a school project—they start micromanaging things to make sure they turn out all right.

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.

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.

So, to avoid getting blowback and the consequences that come with it, the best control strategy was to start walking on eggshells.

I had to see how I wasn’t working with people in a smart way. I was setting them up to fail, whether it was putting them in a situation they didn’t yet have the experience to handle or not giving them the training and access they needed to succeed or holding them to impossible standards because no one is perfect all the time.

After all, success is in getting it done, not in what other people think. That’s something that, once the monster leaves, you learn you can’t control.

“You know what, you got this. You’ve been prepping for it all week. Go ahead and knock it out of the park. Let me know how it goes, champ!” Instead of belittling this person, I’ve empowered them. If I continue to do this with everyone, rather than just having one player on my team, I will start to have a genuine team full of superstars. And I can sit back and just be the coach.

One of the most common misconceptions is that happiness equals pleasure. Doing and having the things that make you feel nice and comfortable in the moment. The trouble with that is a lot of what makes you feel nice in the moment doesn’t add up to much in the bigger picture. And without self-control, you can quickly get lost in monsterlike behavior that you didn’t expect to get lost in.