Shaking up the Control Freak

And I'm back! Anthony and I had a wonderful, present vacation in Costa Rica, with just the right mixture of natural wonders, vigorous adventure sports, relaxing times of just being, and connecting with old and new friends across a variety of languages.

There is something about a vacation that helps you see things just a bit more clearly. Maybe part of it is that you see what aspects of your life you leave behind, and which you take with you. The stuff that you take with you seems even more glimmering against the backdrop of a new locale and new adventures.

On my trip to Costa Rica, one Samantha characteristic that glimmered and shone in the sun was that I am a control freak.

I like to be in control. Heck, I would even call it an addiction. You can see it in the way that I strive to control my time, trying to use every minute of it with optimal efficiency. You can see it in my friendships, where I control the flow of conversation to focus on what I want to focus on, and avoid what I want to avoid. You can see it in my relationship with Anthony, where I try to control where he puts his towel and how he pronounces the word "miracle."

This proved particularly maddening in Costa Rica, when I tried to control our schedule across two languages, poor phone access, and a populace that is, in general, a tad laid back.

Now, there are many good things that come with being a control junkie. Oftentimes, I get what I want, how I want it. But here is a drawback of being a control freak: there is no space for the world to surprise me. Oftentimes, the answers that we seek in our lives are waiting just around the corner, in the most unsuspecting of places... but if you are always in control, you never look in the unsuspected places. You look in the suspected ones. And so you look and look and start to short-circuit because you've found one thing you can't control, gaining insight, and meanwhile the signs around you are pointing the way.

So, I'd like to share with you an exercise from Beth and Lauren, cofounders of the Handel Group. The goal of this exercise is to shake up your nicely orchestrated routine to make space for new perspectives to enter. What you do is deliberately shift your daily routines to something unfamiliar. For example, if you always eat cereal for breakfast, try oatmeal. If you brush your hair with your left hand, try your right. If you always run down Willard Street during your daily jogs, try running down Orchard Street instead. Answer the phone with a different greeting. And so on.

This exercise in neat, because it makes you realize how familiar we are with a small set of daily experiences, and how thoroughly unfamiliar we are with an infinite number of others. Your day has a dash more adventure and intrigue in it, and you find yourself being more present in the NOW (nod to the last blog post) because you can't run on autopilot. You need to concentrate on what you are doing, otherwise you'll start brushing your shoulder, or get lost on that jog. Moreover, by loosening your iron-clad grip on your daily schedule, you allow the unsuspected to appear and touch you.

Maybe the Costa Ricans figured this out a long time ago. Maybe this trip was exactly the right thing for me, for all the unsuspected reasons.

Image courtesy of http://forums.trossenrobotics.com