How to Be an Adult: A Handbook on Psychological and Spiritual Integration

by David Richo

Our next task is to let go the illusion that we are in control or need to be in control in order to survive. We fear the changes that might happen within and around us. We fear the risk that we might experience or face overwhelming feelings.

They were choices that had an origin in wisdom but now may no longer be serving our best interests.

You can be informed by others’ behavior rather than affected by it. You can observe the behavior of others without having to react to it or to be controlled by it. You operate from your own repertory of responses that uphold you no matter what others do, say, or mean to you.

Feeling the pain keenly without being so possessed by it that it devastates your self-esteem. Feeling but not acting on feelings is the way we let the experience in without letting it penetrate the core of our self-worth. “I acknowledge this reality even though I don’t like it. It could be better or it could be worse.”

The need to be right is a form of holding on which is based on fear. Giving the gift of letting someone else be right compassionately allows both of you to relax.

This is actually a way of practicing for life: you do not have to be caught up in the drama in your head. You can be the watcher within who sees with full awareness but without anxiety or selfreproach. You can let what occurs inform you rather than overwhelm you.