It occurred to me today that we give away control so much.

I have a friend that I snoozed on Facebook about an hour ago. Every single Facebook rant from this friend of mine over the course of the past few weeks has been vicious and poisonous and toxic and –in short– reactionary.

In our current situation, there seems to be a lot of that going around. This friend that I snoozed on Facebook wasn’t the first one I’ve recently had to cut out of my social media streams. This friend wasn’t the first one to go off the deep end with targeted tirade after targeted tirade.

But, here’s the problem with being reactive. Reactive people have lost control. And, I don’t primarily mean “they’ve lost control”, even though they have. What I primarily mean is that they’ve given away their control to someone else.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I try not to give away things that I want to have. Later, when I don’t have something that I’ve given away, I have no one to blame but myself.

Here’s another example –> my three children are sometimes not nice with each other (perish the thought!). Inevitably, when this happens, I have children coming to me, asking me to intervene to stop the other child from doing the things that have caused a REACTION in the complainant. And, sometimes, depending on the situation, I will step in and force the issue. But, there are other times that I try to school my children in giving away their control.

The lesson always seems to end with a line like, “If they have the power to determine how you feel, then they are in control of you. Do you want them to have control over you?”

I’ve tried to teach them that they have to be the one to make the decisions as to whether or not what is going on in the world will have the power to change the way they are feeling. I don’t know if my words have ever worked, because they keep coming to me to complain about their siblings and what they’re doing.

In fact, I catch myself doing it sometimes, too. Reacting to what’s going on around me rather than making conscious decisions to maintain control of me. For me, the reactions use come fast and thoughtlessly. When I am able to win these control battles, it’s because I am able to step back, and pause, and think about how I’m going to move forward, under my own control.

Maybe you’re realizing some situations in which you tend to be reactionary. Stop giving away your control. A part of me is convinced that our petty reactions to fleeting circumstances are keeping us from tackling much bigger giants.