Breakthrough to Your Potential! Let Go of the Need to Control Others!

To build a thriving Network Marketing business, you must become a true community-builder, for it is an enterprise that is all about connection, team, and a joyful sense of belonging.

For many years, I attended a wonderful community church in Asheville, North Carolina, called Jubilee. Every Sunday, the instant I walked through the doors of this humble, funky, fun-loving little church, I felt extraordinarily light and free. For quite some time, I puzzled over what it was about Jubilee that created this powerful and immediate impact on my spirit.

At first, I thought it was the wonderful music that lifted my soul. But then I noticed the same feelings were present even when the music had not yet started.

Perhaps it was the remarkable sense of community that filled the room. Everywhere I looked, people were embracing, smiling, and connecting. It was as if the Jubilants were actually one very large family. But then I realized that the feeling struck me even before I reached the meeting area.

Perhaps these extraordinary feelings were generated because of the minister, Howard Hanger, and his special spirit. I consider Howard a truly great human being, one of my real-life heroes. He is brilliant, kind, gentle, open, loving, and humble, with a fabulous sense of humor and an endless heart. But then I remembered that I felt exactly the same feelings when Howard was away, and someone else was there to fill in for him. What was it about Jubilee that had this unique effect on me?

And then, one Sunday morning, it finally hit me. It wasn’t the music, the camaraderie, or even Howard. It was that Jubilee is an organization that has broken through the need to control other people.

All Jubilants are honored and appreciated for who they are and free to be themselves. It is the most egoless environment I’ve ever experienced.

Everyone involved with running Jubilee has released any obsession with perfection and replaced this restrictive, controlling spirit with a simple faith that all will be well.

It started with Howard’s comfortable leadership. Howard loved to deliver his Sunday messages and to orchestrate the spiritual rituals and ceremonies that are integral parts of each celebration.

In addition to being a minister, Howard was a professional musician who relished performing and interacting with audiences. But he had absolutely no interest in the financial, administrative, and logistical operations of the church. So those are handled comfortably and joyfully by someone else who was passionate about operations.

Howard’s only participation in those areas was to say thank you! The various teams that added immensely to the sense of community at Jubilee, such as the Service Team or the Arts Team, were led by volunteers with great zeal for those programs. And so, this energizing, comfortable, and free attitude permeated the community.

If you had an interest, talent, or idea at Jubilee, you were encouraged to take the ball and run with it.

Building a spiritual community that is free of the need for control had created a remarkable effect. The participation level in the community at Jubilee was off the charts! Virtually every Jubilant was involved in at least one team.

Every person who wanted to sing, dance, play an instrument, or recite poetry during a service was welcomed and encouraged regardless of their skill and experience.

Some of the most moving moments at Jubilee for me were when someone seized the WOO and performed for the very first time in front of a crowd of people. Though their hands were shaking, and a note or two may have missed the right key, their courage and desire to give something straight from their hearts always left me teary-eyed and inspired. And, at Jubilee, you can bet that that first-time performer received a standing ovation.

Conversely, when you have a compulsive need to control others, the people around you are terrified to make mistakes. And, of course, what you focus on is what you create. Performance will suffer, and morale will tumble.

Eventually, they will either leave you, your family, or your organization or simply fade into ambivalence where the goal is no longer to contribute, innovate, or take positive risks but rather to stay as safe and uninvolved as possible.

The need to control others is driven by the ego’s desperate obsession with having to be right. To the ego, being wrong is the equivalent of death.

When you become aware of this subversive need and make the conscious decision to choose to be at peace and at ease rather than to have to be right, life transforms from a struggle into a beautiful dance. You discover a rhythm with those around you and balance within yourself.

Years ago, I was vice president/general manager of a personal development and team-building seminar company near San Diego, California. When my team and I attended an experiential learning program at a ropes course, it proved to be a WOO that opened my eyes to the futility of trying to control other people.

The goal of the program that day was to bring us closer together as a team, and the most powerful lesson for me came from an apparatus called the “commitment bridge.”

(This is something you would love your downline to cross!)

On this element, you and your partner climb up a telephone pole to a height of twenty-five feet. Suspended at that height are two cables that stretch from the telephone pole in a v-shape, attaching to two other poles about thirty feet distant.

These two poles are placed ten feet apart. The challenge for you and your partner is to support each other with your hands pressed against one another’s as you gradually inch your way along the cables with the goal of reaching the twin poles at the far end.

So, with each step you take, the cables are farther and farther apart, and you are forced to lean into each other at an ever-increasing angle. If you make it all the way to the end of the cables, you and your partner will be practically laid out horizontally with your bodies suspended twenty-five feet off the ground like Superman in flight looking down on Metropolis!

My partner was a young woman who was, at best, five-foot-two. My first instinct as we began to teeter our way along the cables was that as the bigger and stronger of the two, I would need to take charge and control the action. But the effect of my dominance was to simply throw us more and more off balance.

By the time we had moved the first five feet along the cables, it became crystal clear that if I kept to this strategy, we were going to crash fast.

The only way we were going to make progress was to commit to one another equally and to let go of any thought of control. We had to completely trust that we each could supply just the right amount of support that the other needed to maintain balance. The farther we progressed, the more we needed to trust and let go of any thought of controlling the other.

It was incredible! We were each so completely present and connected that we began to move as one. We made it over three-quarters of the way across the cables before we lost it and were eased down to the ground by our harnesses. The instant we landed, we were swept up in joyous celebrations by our teammates.

The more I thought about the experience, the more I began to see that very often in my life, I had been trying to dominate and control others, as I had done with my partner when we set off along the cables.

For the first time, I understood that the effect of this need to control was not only to stifle the potential and creativity of those around me but to weaken myself, just as it had on the commitment bridge.

If I could not trust others, I couldn’t truly trust myself. The WOO closes fast when there is no trust to hold it open.

A couple of weeks after the ropes course, I facilitated what I considered to be the most important meeting we would ever have at my company because we were to determine our team vision statement.

My normal approach to the meeting would have been to control the process. I had come up with what I thought to be a good idea for the vision statement and would have led everyone one way or another to buy into my outcome.

However, the experience of the commitment bridge opened my eyes to the truth that an effective and inspiring vision had to be one that was created and owned by the team, not one that was dictated by me. And so, I put my trust in my team and facilitated the process rather than controlling it.

I asked rather than told, encouraged rather than dominated. The result was magnificent. I had never seen my entire team so fully engaged in a meeting. It was a perfect example of moving from ego to “we go.”

We emerged from the process with a vision statement that everyone owned personally and that reflected simply and powerfully what we aspired to be.

Over 35 years since the day we defined our vision, the statement is still as fresh in my mind as if it were yesterday. This simple five-word affirmation perfectly expresses the result of letting go of the need to control other people:

We are champions of empowerment.

Isn’t this exactly what we want to be for our children, spouses, partners, friends, and ourselves?

If you value freedom for yourself, you must give it to others. You must let go of the reins of control and fully trust. Only then can you truly empower rather than over-power. You will find that your influence grows rather than weakens.

After attending one of my seminars, a doctor named Paul powerfully expressed what letting go of the need to control others can mean to a family. Paul and his wife Julie had raised their children with great devotion. They did all they knew how to create a home filled with love, kindness, and caring discipline. They were committed to instilling strong values and personal responsibility into the hearts and minds of their children.

But as the kids became teenagers and wanted more freedom and trust (as all teenagers do!),

Paul found it increasingly difficult to let go of the reins of control. He found his relationship with his oldest son, John, was more often abrasive rather than embracive. Their home was often filled with the pressure and tension that always accompanies a battle for control.

Everything came to a head when John announced at twenty-one that he was going to marry his college sweetheart. Paul was convinced they were much too young for marriage and did everything in his power to stop them. But what you resist persists. When John defied his father’s wishes, Paul slammed the door shut and refused to have anything to do with his son and his young wife.

That door stayed locked shut for eight long years. John and his wife moved to Colorado and started their own family, bringing two beautiful children into this world. Paul neither spoke with his son nor saw his only grandchildren.

The love we fail to share is the only pain we live with.

When you are driven by the need to control other people, love is withheld, and pain becomes your constant companion. Though Paul continued with his life as a highly successful doctor and a devoted husband to Julie and father to his other children, he could cover up the gaping wound in his spirit but not heal it.

At the seminar, Paul finally faced the pain that his need for control had created. His wooden board represented the misplaced pride and obsession with having to be right that had eaten a hole in his heart.

On the other side of the board, he envisioned a loving relationship with John and the joy he would feel as a grandparent. When he broke his board that afternoon, eight years of repressed agony were released, and tears flowed unashamedly. Within minutes of the seminar's close, Paul seized the WOO and called his son.

He humbled himself and asked for John’s forgiveness and the chance to make a fresh start. Today, John has moved his young family back to North Carolina so that his children can grow up near their loving grandparents.

They see Paul and Julie nearly every day. Paul has come to adore John’s wife and to deeply admire and respect the way she and John are raising the children. Paul has powerfully opened a WOO with his family, which has brought him the greatest joy he has ever known.

This kind of freedom and lasting joy awaits you as soon as you let go of your need to control others. It will bring you greater success in your network marketing business and unstoppable fulfillment in your life! WOO YES!