Running the Show

All of life, I believe, is one extended control issue. We fight for it as children, fight harder for it as teenagers, and will take on the world for it as adults. Every human interaction is, at it's root, a struggle for it, all human dynamics are based on it, wars on every scale break out over the lack or excess of it. The reality is that the very idea we have control at all is a myth. Want to make God laugh? so the old saying goes, Tell Him you have plans.

Still, we find ourselves needing to run every show. We don't delegate very well because we know in our hearts that no one will do it the way we would. We see delegation as surrendering control to the hands of another and that becomes a threat. Besides, we know that we'd just have to do it all over again to get it right. When we teach, we leave out small but critical details in order to ensure that no one will be able to do our job and this helps keep us indispensable. If we set up systems, we practically encrpyt them to keep them secure so that no one else will be able to make sense of them. We fear loss of control, are threatened and made defensive by it. We are team players only as long as we lead the team.

It's exhausting work especially when we have to spend so much time denying that this is how we are. But controllers recognize other controllers as if there's a sixth sense at work. Perhaps it's the inevitable conflict or just that our threat detectors go into high gear, or maybe we fear disclosure.
It's really all just so much wasted time and energy and it almost always results in additional labor, labor that could be far better spent.

We all need to feel that we have some say over our lives and circumstances and the choices we make. We just need to learn that it can't extend to the lives, circumstances and choices of others.
Letting someone else run the show may result in mistakes, disorder, even chaos and clutter but in the end we'll be better for it and no harm done.