CONTROL ATTACHMENT

I think I've noticed another thing I don't like very much: I appear to be attached to control.

That's a strange way of saying I am a control freak, because I'm not quite ready to admit it. In other words, I don't even want my words to paint that picture for you; I am literally undermining my own argument.

So, what am I talking about then? Well, the people around me are starting to notice that I get stressed out at losing control. Occasionally, circumstances get really intense, everyone talks and advises me at once and the path disappears.

What I had thought through (and I think everything through) just vanishes in the fog and instead of clarity, there is suddenly a cloud of noisy voices telling me what to do.

It feels like the situation is careering all over the place and there is no way to wrestle it back to where it was. It is out of control like a runaway truck in a mine shaft.

This is how I feel when doing big group song writing. I can't express why the course the song is taking is not where I would have taken it - I only feel the sadness of not being able to do anything about it while it veers uncontrollably towards cheesy, mawkish or something we've all heard before.

This is how I feel in meetings where the conversation spins through rational tangents and somehow ends up with a group of people making an irrational decision. Worse, in that situation, groupthink sets in and the voices round the table are actually excited about the unwise thing they're planning (karaoke for developers, wheelbarrow wacky races, office olympics) without considering it at all.

This is how I feel when ideas get hijacked by well-meaning free-thinkers who have confused improvement with fixing-the-wheel.

I wish I were a bit more chilled out about it all. I don't like that uptight feeling, that internal reminder that I somehow think I know best. It has a name that feeling, and I don't like it.

What I hope to be is less attached to having to control everything. I'd like to be able to let go of all the things I care about, instead of clutching them so tightly. I don't really care about getting credit for good ideas, amazing decisions in meetings or incredible songs. I just care about not being so uptight about holding on to them.

And I specifically don't want to keep thinking that everything good that happens is because of me. No. I want to be wrong. I want to be corrected. I want to be told that I'm being rude, unfair, stressy or outrageous. At least then I can recognise it, appreciate it, and correct it.

Most of all I want to care much more about how I treat people, even when they wind me up. I want everyone around me to be brilliant, to have room to shine like the stars and to lift them up and encourage them to be the best versions of them that they can be. And to do that, I want to let go of control, to let go of stressfully caring about everything that goes on inside my creativity, and ultimately, to let go of me.