Discomfort Zone

It is part of life to be tested, challenged, moved out of your comfort zone. I think if you stay where you are comfortable, you will not grow. Like a flower in a pot, you will use up your nutrients and no amount of water or sunlight will help. You just have to MOVE and get to a rich environment. Maybe because I am older, I am more accepting of being nudged by life to the discomfort zone. I have learned to trust the process and also learned that fighting it does not help. I wonder if there is a way to teach this to our children. Maybe by resisting the idea that everyone gets a trophy for participation or by saying "no"when you had the means to say "yes" because you don't want them becoming entitled. Today I am celebrating the Discomfort Zone. On the other side there is always...the other side. :)

A new 12-Step Program?

I really think they should start a 12-Step program for Control Freaks.  But they couldn't call it "CA" since that's taken (cocaine anonymous). They already have workaholics anonymous, but I don't think that completely fits. Here are my proposed 12 steps:

1. We admitted we were powerless over controlling every detail of our life --- and that as a result of our controlling spirit, our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that ONLY a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Became entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God's will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to controlling people everywhere (without insisting they listen of course), and to practice these principles in all our affairs. 

So I have worked through these steps, in part, and my conclusion is...if you can get #1 you have hope. Now, it's not cool to admit that you've got an issue with control. In doing so, you're basically saying that you're not in control which people with this issue can't tolerate! (See the importance of Step 1?) Learning that the world will still turn even if you let go is pretty tough when you are used holding the reigns so tight your knuckles turn white. Even if you do get a personality transplant through years of therapy, laying on of hands, eating a raw diet, meditation, cutting out your exposure to phthalates, or some other mechanism--chances are in times of stress you will go back to your old ways and search for subtle acceptable ways to take charge (making 'better' to-do lists, revising 5- and 10-year plans, trying new 'self-help' system that promises relief, organizing closets) . My proposed solution for this scenario involves running through the Steps in your mind and trying to work the program. Well, in honor of Step #12, I'm putting this idea out there to inspire others that "Let Go, Let God" is more than a nice song they play on the radio or thing that old folks say. Try it out and see where it takes you!