Quotes About Control

To go beyond the ego's model of the world, the lucid dreamer must relinquish control of the dream—surrender—to something beyond the ego.

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

Not until Gilgamesh gives up on transcendence can he realize how beautiful his city is; only then, freed from his restless heart, can he fully return to the place he started out from. Suppose that the city is this moment: things as they are, without any meaning added. When the mind gives up on its quest for control, order, and meaning, it finds that it has come home, to reality, where it has always been. What it has -- what it is -- in this very moment is everything it ever wanted.

The self is a friend for him who masters himself by the Self; but for him who is not self-mastered, the self is the cruelest foe.

we're responsible for our own lives.

Our ultimate freedom is the right and power to decide how anybody or anything outside ourselves will affect us.

Anytime we think the problem is "out there," that thought is the problem. We empower what's out there to control us.

A serious problem with reactive language is that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. People become reinforced in the paradigm that they are determined, and they produce evidence to support the belief. They feel increasingly victimized and out of control, not in charge of their life or their destiny. They blame outside forces—other people, circumstances, even the stars—for their own situation.

If our feelings control our actions, it is because we have abdicated our responsibility and empowered them to do so.

Basing our happiness on our ability to control everything is futile. While we do control our choice of action, we cannot control the consequences of our choices.

Changing a planning tool or a method won't create significant change in the results we're getting in our lives—although the implied promise is that it will. It's not a matter of controlling things more, better, or faster; it's questioning the whole assumption of control.

It is our willing permission, our consent to what happens to us, that hurts us far more than what happens to us in the first place.

For those filled with regret, perhaps the most needful exercise of proactivity is to realize that past mistakes are also out there in the Circle of Concern. We can't recall them, we can't undo them, we can't control the consequences that came as a result.

humans have between what happens to us and our response to it.

I am the creative force of my life.

You have control over three things: what you think, what you say, and how you behave. To make a change in your life, you must recognize these gifts are the most powerful tools you possess in shaping the form of your life. —SONYA FRIEDMAN

Reactive people are also affected by their social environment, by the "social weather." When people treat them well, they feel well; when people don't, they become defensive or protective. Reactive people build their emotional lives around the behavior of others, empowering the weaknesses of other people to control them.

As Eleanor Roosevelt observed, "No one can hurt you without your consent." In the words of Gandhi, "They cannot take away our self respect if we do not give it to them." It is our willing permission, our consent to what happens to us, that hurts us far more than what happens to us in the first place.

Your planning tool should be your servant, never your master.

Anytime we think the problem is "out there," that thought is the problem. We empower what's out there to control us. The change paradigm is "outside-in"—what's out there has to change before we can change. The

When I finally realized that I do have that power, when I swallowed that bitter pill and realized that I had chosen to be miserable, I also realized that I could choose not to be miserable. "At that moment I stood up. I felt as though I was being let out of San Quentin. I wanted to yell to the whole world, 'I am free! I am let out of prison! No longer am I going to be controlled by the treatment of some person.

My money will be my servant, not my master

Between stimulus and response is our greatest power—the freedom to choose.

To not say the unkind or critical thing, particularly when provoked and/or fatigued, is a supreme kind of self-mastery.