Confidence vs. Control - Grasshopper

The Grasshopper offered me this the other day: “Strive for confidence instead of control.”

I took his message to mean how to approach undertakings. Instead of looking to control a situation, enter with the confidence that you’ll know what to do when presented with the circumstances. In other words, trust your ability to respond.

Making control your goal is like seeking perfection. It produces more agony than results.

Be confident there’s a part of you that knows how to respond. When we seek control, we look for all the available options with our intellect. That’s a limited database. The part of us that knows how to respond has access to a much bigger reservoir of answers. Trusting that part of you to deliver gives you confidence that will serve you.

I always knew, in theory, that I had this part of me, but what got me to discover and trust it was doing crossword puzzles. Normally, I would answer as many of the clues as I could, but when stymied by some of the hints, I would just give up and say something like, “only really smart people know these answers” and toss the puzzle aside. Then, one day, I revisited a partially solved puzzle and, like magic, the answers just seemed to come from nowhere. From that point forward, I would answer as many of the queries in a puzzle as a I could and then just put it away. Then, when I came back to it, answers would come my way.

I can’t control this process but I can trust in it and have confidence it will deliver answers.

When you discover your ability to respond, you’ll strengthen your confidence and cease trying to control all the variables.

All the best,