Ever asked yourself “Who Controls You?” Are you truly the one in control of you, your choices, behaviours, speech? Or do you let others control you, voluntarily or involuntarily.
Yes. People can control you without your knowing it. It’s worse when you think you’re in control not knowing you’ve lost the power. So how do people control you involuntarily?
When you always react to provocation.
Some people are quick to anger. Some even pride in it, you hear things like “na small thing dey vex me” or “I dey quick vex no try me”. You really believe it’s a great stride and hence people should fear you.
Well, permit me to burst your bubbles. It’s not a great feat because you are not the one in control of you; others are.
When you base your emotions on how the other person treats you, you are not in control of you.
When they say “hey you bitch!”, and you crack into flames.
Or they say “your nose is just too big”, you burst into tears and cry a river.
They also say “comot here you no just geh sense”, and you lose your home training and become a street fighter.
Then when you’re finally asked why you behaved that way, you reply “They caused it. See what they called me…”
No sweetie. You did it because you let them control you without even knowing it. You need a lot of emotional intelligence to be in control of you. Letting others have the upper hand in determining your next actions makes you easily predictable.
Do you know what happens when you become predictable?
1). People can easily set you up.
They know how you will react, so they prepare the enabling environment, say something to set you off and there you go, falling right into the trap. You bear whatever consequences alone.
2). You are excluded from many closed circles.
This could be at your place of work, home, or even with friend. Because it is known that you can’t handle certain sensitive information, they will withhold such from you.
3). You will not make a good leader.
Good emotional intelligence is required to handle leadership positions. A leader should be in control, choose logic and diplomacy even when emotional. If people know exactly how to elicit certain reactions from you, you would make a very poor leader.
Therefore, do a crosscheck and be truthful to yourself. Do you have poor handle on your emotions? It’s never late to get it right. Get some help or therapy on anger management, read good books that teach you tricks to pin it down and practise consciously.
Nevertheless, allowing others control you voluntarily is also as bad as involuntarily, except you can better work on it.
You would have to consciously work on your confidence and self esteem, and your sentimentalism.
Do you make choices based on how people would feel? Like you don’t want to hurt the other person. Especially if you’re too concerned with obtaining their validation. Well, if you end up hurting yourself instead, you need to change.
You can’t live your life in the shadow of others. Life comes once, don’t live it like there’s a second.
Cheers.
Let me know if you like this. Please feel free to contribute.
