“Are Alpha Males Healthy?” is the lead article in the Personal Journal section of the September 13 Wall Street Journal. Alphas are “ambitious, assertive, confident and competitive,” says psychiatrist T.Byram Karasu in the article—all control-like behaviors. It is thus pretty clear that most excessive controllers are Alpha males—and females.
The article cites extensive studies showing that Alphas experience far more stress than others and that their exhausting ways take a severe physical toll on them.
Are Excessive Controllers Healthy?
In Losing Control, Finding Serenity: How the Need to Control Hurts Us and How to Let it Go and on this blog I write extensively about the tolls that excessive controllers endure. Here are just a few:
1. They have very little peace and serenity because they devote so much time and energy in constantly trying to control and direct people and things that are beyond their real control.
2. Their lives are constantly out of balance because they are so intensely focused on attaining their “perceived” needs, that they are unaware of the beauty that is all around them and unable to pursue and enjoy creative, recreational, and social involvements that could vastly improve their lives.
3. Their close relationships lack trust and intimacy because friends and loved ones resent being told what is best for them and how they should act and be.
4. They are burdened by the constant “what ifs” and “what might happens” that their fears stoke.
Control Less and be Healthier, Happier and Wiser!
This is perhaps a simplistic way of saying what I strongly believe and have personally experienced. I have repeatedly found that the more I am able to let go of control in such vital areas of my life, such as parenting, love, work, relationships and creative endeavors, the greater joy, connection—and balance—that is bestowed upon me.
I thus encourage you to try letting go of control and enjoy the many rewards that will be yours.
In the meantime, remember to,
Let It Gop–and Accept “What Is!”
Danny
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