5 Keys to Practicing “Acceptance”
An underlying theme of my book, Losing Control, Finding Serenity, is that acceptance is fundamental to reducing our need to control. Readers agree. The most highlighted sentence of Amazon’s best selling eBook version is: “The more we accept...
Control Troubles in Paradise
I think most people (myself included) take vacations to take a break from their busy, and at times hectic and stressful lives. Vacations give us the opportunity to spend unhurried quality time with friends and family, or just simply to lay...
Understanding Control Freak Dynamics
In Losing Control, Finding Serenity: How the Need to Control Hurts Us and How to Let It Go and on this blog I write about how to deal with control freaks (and excessive controllers) and what’s behind their often abusive behavior. Thomas J...
How Confidence Helps Tame Control Freaks
In my radio interviews following the publication of Losing Control, Finding Serenity, I am frequently asked for advice on how people can deal with the control freaks in their lives, whether it be a controlling spouse at home or a control freak...
Easy Tips for Letting Go of Control
Do you realize that you should be letting go of control, say with your children or partner, or at work, but find it real hard to do? If so, asking yourself these basic, but very effective, decontrol questions will make it much easier...
Are Control Freaks Healthy?
“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 Freaks Suffer, Too—And You Can Help Them!
In my media interviews with respect to the recent publication of Losing Control, Finding Serenity: How the Need to Control Hurts Us and How to Let It Go, interviewers and listeners alike often relate their considerable angst and discomfort...
Work Control: Five Ways It Harms You and How to Avoid It
The workplace is where humanity’s primal drive for sustenance and survival is most prominently played out. As such, it is a hotbed for costly control practices. Some graciously refer to the compulsion to control at work as just “trying...
Gain Control by Losing Control
Most people think they need to control people and events in order to get what they want, or think they want. This is quite understandable when you consider the fact that from the time we were young children we have been immersed in a...
The Remarkable Gifts of Letting Go of Control
Most of my blog posts discuss the remarkable and often unexpected gifts that are bestowed upon you when you are willing to let go of control–even partially. I have also tried to carry this message in articles I have written for some well...
Decontrol Your Life: Thriving and Prospering with Freedom and Contentment
I am honored to have been selected as the keynote speaker at the prestigious Inside Edge Foundation for Education on Wednesday, May 11 at the Faculty University Club of the University of California, Irvine. My speech is entitled “Decontrol...