We are entering the month of May and the theme is: relationships. The human condition is the relationship we have with ourselves (know thyself.)
The only 2 things we actually control directly are our thoughts and emotions, everything else comes indirectly. Trying to control everything else is futile.
In this episode we talk about starting to let go of some of the control that we are trying to have over others.
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What You’ll Learn From this Episode:
- How to let go of the control we think we have over others
- Why trying to change the circumstance rarely gives us the result we really want
Listen to the Full Episode:
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Speaker 1:
Welcome to The Alpha Male Coach podcast, the only podcast that teaches men the cognitive mastery and alpha mindset that it takes to become an influential and irresistible man of confidence. Here’s your host, certified life coach and international man of mystery, Kevin Aillaud.
Kevin Aillaud:
What’s up, my brothers? Welcome back to The Alpha Male Coach podcast. I am your host, Kevin Aillaud, and I still have Bell’s palsy. It does take a few weeks to gain full recovery and you will notice when that happens because my F’s will stop flapping my lips. When I say alpha, I won’t have that flap in my lips anymore. You hear that flap? That comes because of the F. And I am taking this time, guys, to be grateful for things I hadn’t thought of before I got Bell’s palsy. I do. I walk the walk that I talk and you guys know I always say life happens for us.
Kevin Aillaud:
So, I know this has happened for me to learn and I am certainly learning a lot about being grateful for neuromuscular control, eating, drinking, talking, kissing, whistling. It’s all effected, guys. So, I am grateful. I will recover because there are a lot of stroke patients who lose neuromuscular function and it doesn’t recover for them. So, neuromuscular function in your face, very important stuff. I’m also very grateful for that.
Kevin Aillaud:
I’m also very grateful for all the five star ratings in iTunes. I’m just saying if you haven’t hit me up with a five star rating and review, what are you waiting for. Brothers, it’ll take 30 seconds. Pause the podcast real quick. It’s totally worth it. Now, we are entering relationship month in the Spartan Academy. And being a cognitive mastery coach really means being a relationship coach because the human condition is the relationship you have with yourself. This is what has been said for millennia, guys. Think about it. Know thyself, right? It’s like almost the earliest languages that we have have talked about knowing the self.
Kevin Aillaud:
So, during the month of May, the podcast episodes will cover various concepts around relationships. And in this episode, I want to address a phenomenon that I see repeatedly in my students, in society and quite frankly in the human species, and this is the illusion of control. There are only two things, guys, two things that we control directly and that’s our thoughts and our actions. That’s all. The only two things that we control directly… Indirectly, we control our emotions, right? We control our feelings and we control our results, because feelings are the cause of thoughts or the cause of beliefs, and results are the consequence of action, right?
Kevin Aillaud:
So, our thoughts and our actions are the only two things that we control directly. And indirectly, we have some control over our feelings and our results. Now, obviously our feelings sometimes come to us out of our control. As we learn to process those feelings, we learn to allow them to happen. And results, sometimes we don’t get the results we intend with our actions. So, these are indirect controls.
Kevin Aillaud:
Things that we do not control ever, things that we do not and cannot control ever are the past, right, what has happened. We can’t control. We can’t go back and we can make a difference. The present moment, right? What is happening is happening and we can’t make that different either. It’s just happening. And other people, what other people say and do is up to them because they are in control of their thoughts and their actions. And I want this to really sink in. I want this concept… I want you to really understand this. Human beings, adult humans get to do whatever they want. Controlling them is futile. Even trying to control it, they don’t like it, which you’ve probably noticed. You probably noticed that people don’t like being controlled. And check this out, you’re an adult, so you know what that means is that you get to be and do whatever you want. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, even if someone really, really, really wants you to.
Kevin Aillaud:
That’s the beauty of it is that even when somebody wants you to do something, you don’t have to do it and it doesn’t make you selfish. It makes you a human being. You aren’t responsible for how someone else feels if you don’t want to do something. Now, you might want to do something for someone because you want to do it, but this is different than feeling like you have to do something because then this other person will be mad at you or punish you if you don’t. You’re not a child and no one can punish you, and none of the adults in your life are children, so you can stop trying to punish them for not being the way you want them to be.
Kevin Aillaud:
Adults can lie, adults can cheat, adults can steal. Adults can come home late or forget things or they can smell bad or they can leave garbage around. They can not clean up after themselves, and you can complain. You can yell, you can be passive aggressive. You can give them the cold shoulder, you can freak out, you can do whatever you want. That’s what humans do. But when you start to let go of the idea of control, you have so much more energy. You start to realize that that energy you are wasting trying to control other people to behave in the way you want, you can now free up all that energy to just work on your own thoughts and you can just be happy and you don’t have to change them at all. And you know what? They appreciate it. They love not trying to be changed by you. Like I said, there’s nothing better than being with someone who just loves you for you and isn’t they’re always trying to change you or fix you or control you.
Kevin Aillaud:
So, in this episode, I want to offer you a thought experiment. In this episode, no tools, no questions, just an analogy you can use as a thought experiment for letting go or starting to let go of some of the control that you have or trying to have over other people. There are basically two ways that we try to control other people in a relationship. The first way we try to control people is we want to control the way other people behave. We want to control the way other people act. We want them to act differently. Essentially, we want them to be something other than what they want to be or are choosing to be. Right? These are our thoughts about them.
Kevin Aillaud:
The second way that we try to control the people is we want to control the way other people think. We want them to think about us in a certain way. This is when we want someone to like us or to love us or be in a relationship with us and they don’t want to be or they don’t want the same thing we want and these are their thoughts about us, right? We’re trying to control their thoughts. So, the thought experiment is the same for both of these two types of ways we try to control, but what I want to offer to you from both illusions of control. Even though the root is the same, it’s all cognition, I want to offer you both perspectives.
Kevin Aillaud:
So, I’m going to observe the first way in which we want to control people in which we want them to be different, and maybe we think they’re too negative, right? Maybe we think this person is too negative or they complain too much or they talk about politics and money too often or they don’t clean up after themselves or whatever. We just want them to be different. We want to control them and we want to change them.
Kevin Aillaud:
Maybe we’ve even convinced ourselves that we think we know what’s best and we’re helping them or fixing this person, but I’m telling you, unless they ask for help and are open to receiving your help, you aren’t helping them. You’re just trying to control them. We never know what’s best for other people. We only know what’s best for ourselves and then we assume it’s the same for other people. And a lot of times, we assume it’s the same for all people. That’s where we get into politics, right? We assume what’s best for us and then we assume it’s best for all other people, but here’s the thought experiment.
Kevin Aillaud:
The thought experiment is this person that you want to change, that you want to control, this person is an apple. You want them to be a steak, okay? That’s kind of the analogy in totality, but I’m going to go further with it. This person’s apple, you want them to be a steak. No matter what you do, they are always going to be an apple and they are never going to be a steak. Even if they tried to be a steak, even if they want it to be a steak for you, even if they fooled you into thinking they were steak, like if they cut themselves into the shape of a steak and covered themselves in beef tallow, the moment you took a bite, you’d know that they fooled you. You’d know that this was an apple. They’re always going to be an apple. So, because they’re always going to be an apple, you have two choices with this apple, you can either learn to like apples or you can decide to not have apples in your life and go after steaks.
Kevin Aillaud:
Now, unfortunately, most people in this analogy, they don’t do either one of those choices, right? They spend their lives trying to change the apple into a steak, right? They spend a lot of time and they get frustrated because that’s never going to happen. They think that something is wrong with the apple and that the apple would be better if it were a steak. So, it has to change, right? It has to be fixed. The Apple is the problem. It has to be a steak. But the apple is an apple. It’s the best apple it’s ever going to be. It’s the best apple it can be at that time. It’s never going to be a steak. In fact, it makes a horrible steak because it’s an apple, right? So, it’s never going to be a good steak, but it’s an amazing apple. Now, you want this Apple to be a steak so bad that you miss out on all the amazingness that comes with being an apple, right?
Kevin Aillaud:
So, you’ve got this amazing Apple in front of you, but you’re just wanting this apple, this person to be a steak instead. So, on top of that, you’re creating a lot of suffering for yourself because the apple will never be a steak, and there’s plenty of steaks out there, right? There’s plenty of other steaks, but you just want this apple to be a steak and it’s total madness, right? It’s like you’re trying to turn sand into water while you’re standing next to a well. So, here’s what you can do. You can change your circumstances by leaving the apple and starting to eat steaks. And I want to kind of hesitate with that because changing the circumstance is something that when I work with my students, it’s like you don’t change the circumstance because you think there’s something wrong with the circumstance.
Kevin Aillaud:
What I want you guys to understand here is that you can change the circumstance by leaving the apple and eating the steak, but the most important part of that is recognizing that there’s nothing wrong with the apple. It’s still a perfect apple. You just prefer steaks, right? So, you can change your circumstance, but you can also change your thoughts by recognizing the apple as an apple, not a stake and admiring the apple for it’s apple-ness. You might still not like the taste of apples and that’s okay. You might only like apple pie or apple juice or maybe you don’t like apples at all, but you learn to find the qualities that make apples amazing and a part of our human experience. We need apples. You might start to see how other people maybe could even like apples. Even if you don’t and never will.
Kevin Aillaud:
And you never have to like apples, brother. That’s the other thing. You never have to force yourself or convince yourself to eat an apple. You just want to realize that the reason you don’t like the apple isn’t because of the apple. It’s because of your preference of steaks over apples or simply a distaste for apples has nothing to do with the apple.
Kevin Aillaud:
Let me give you a real life scenario having to do with this analogy. A buddy of mine is dealing with his sister who he says she’s complaining about money all the time and constantly asking him and their parents for money. He tells me he was taught to take care of his parents. All right? So, as his parents get older, he sends them money, not to mooch on them, not to take any more money from them. After you become an adult, your parents don’t take care of you anymore. Now you take care of them. He says she is taking advantage of their parents because she didn’t make good choices in her life and she has money problems and whatever and he wants her to stop asking their parents for money and start working for her own money. He wants her to be different.
Kevin Aillaud:
Now, my buddy wants to have a good relationship with her sister. He thinks he can’t do that because of the way she is. He thinks she needs to be different so that they can get along. Basically, he thinks that she needs to think of the way he does and make different choices. My buddy wants his sister to be a steak and she’s an apple. He says to me, “If it were a friend of mine, I would just cut the relationship off, but she’s my sister. She’s family. I can’t just cut the relationship off.” So, what he’s saying is that if this were a friend of his, he would change his circumstance. Right? He would just stop with the apple nonsense and start with the steaks, but this is his sister so he won’t. Well, he says he can’t, right? But we all know the truth is that he won’t cut off the relationship. He won’t change the circumstance that he has with his sister. He won’t change the relationship with his sister.
Kevin Aillaud:
So, what does he do instead? He tries to change her. What he can do… He’s never going to change her, right? He tries to change her, but that creates suffering. That creates conflict in their relationship. She doesn’t want to be changed. He can’t change her, so he’s frustrated. She doesn’t want to be changed, so she’s frustrated. Everybody’s upset. What he can do is he can realize that his sister is an apple. She’s not a steak. She won’t change, and he can learn to love her for the qualities that make her an apple instead of not loving her for the reasons she isn’t a steak, right, which is basically to say love her for who she is instead of not loving her for all the reasons that she’s not, not loving her for all the reasons that he wants her to be, which is the way she’s not.
Kevin Aillaud:
Now, you can see this in play in any relationship where you want someone to act or be different, but the other way we want to control people is in the way they think, right? We want to control the way people think about us. This is where the people pleasing comes in. This is where all that weird needy and desperate behavior starts to get involved. And in this analogy, it’s a little bit different. It’s the same analogy, brothers, but it’s a little bit different because in this analogy, you are the steak. You are the prime cut perfectly-marbled grade AAA Kobe beef. You are the perfect steak from the perfect cow in the perfect herd in the perfect field. You can’t get more perfect. Anyone who is a steak lover would grab you off the meat shelf. You are so amazing. You’re so amazing as a steak and you’re perfect in your steakness and you want this vegetarian to take you off the meat shelf. You want this vegetarian to take you home and eat you, right? You want this vegetarian to eat you and they won’t.
Kevin Aillaud:
Brother, you’re a steak, okay? You’re a perfect steak. There’s nothing wrong with you at all ever. In fact, for being a perfect steak, everything is great. You are 100% beef. You are 100% great AAA beef. This person doesn’t eat meat. It’s not about you. It’s about them. They won’t do it. And again, it’s not because of you. They choose not to. It’s not because there was something wrong with you. There’s not something wrong with meat. Maybe they don’t like the way animals are treated. Maybe they are intolerant to beef, like it’s their dietary enzymes or something’s going on in their gut, something in their stomach. Maybe it’s the flavor or the texture of beef. Maybe it’s the idea of eating an animal. I don’t know. All I know is that it’s nothing to do with the steak itself. It has nothing to do with you. And I know this because a lot of people do eat steak, right, guys? I mean, it’s not like we’re talking about plastic. We’re not talking about something that could be harmful if you eat it. You are food, you are great, you are a steak. It’s just this person prefers not to eat steak.
Kevin Aillaud:
So, in this thought experiment, we end up wanting to control the way the other person thinks about us. We want them to eat us even though we’re a steak. We want to be an apple. We want to try to change who we are, but no matter what we do, we will always be a steak and we’ll never be an apple. We want this person to want us to take us home so bad and we just want to be this apple and we’re never going to be this apple. We’re never going to be in the home of a vegetarian, brother, because we’re a steak. And no matter what you do, no matter how much people pleasing you do, no matter how much compliments you give or how much nice things you say or Mr. Nice Guy or whatever it is you try to do, you’re a steak. You’re not going to end up in the kitchen of a vegetarian.
Kevin Aillaud:
And the worst part is not only are you never going to be an apple, like not only are you… That is never going to happen. You’re going to spend your entire life trying to be something that you’re not. The worst part is you miss out on being a steak. You miss out on being all the things that make you who you are when you try to be something that someone else wants you to be because you are an amazing steak, you’re a perfect steak.
Kevin Aillaud:
Now, the easiest example of this analogy is when one person wants to change the relationship and another person doesn’t, right, like what we call a breakup. It’s like you’re in a relationship with this person who one day says they like steak. Like, wait a second, you said you like steak. You’re telling me you’re a vegetarian now? What are you telling me? You’re giving up meats. What does this mean? I can be an apple and I can be a salad. It’s like no, brother, you can’t. You can’t be a salad, okay? And I’ll tell you what, you don’t really want to be an apple either. You don’t want to be a salad because you’re a fabulous steak. this person has made changes in their mind. They’ve made changes in their life and the story that they want to have in their life, it has nothing to do with you. They have given up meat, but you’re still a perfect steak.
Kevin Aillaud:
Now, both of these thought patterns come from scarcity. I want to kind of finish the episode of this. Both of these thought patterns come from scarcity. The first thought pattern, the first scarcity is over for recipes, right, over recipes on what we can do with that apple and it has to do with our thoughts. And the second is scarcity over shoppers, right? It has to do with scarcity over people. It has a view scarcity over people that want that steak, that want to eat meat. So, the scarcity of her recipes is what you can do with an apple. Look, you can eat an apple as is if you want, but it’s not the only way. You can make juice or paste or sauce. You can make apple tarts. You can make apple pie. You can put apples in oatmeal and you can put apples on toast. You can plant apple seeds and grow apple trees. You can make apple cider and you can make apple hard cider. The problem is you want the apple to be a steak and all you see is not steak. You’re missing the amazingness of the apple that is right in front of you.
Kevin Aillaud:
You can use your brain to see the apple for all the things that make the apple necessary and perfect for the human experience. Then, decide if you want to eat the apple or not because you can have apples and steaks. You can have them both if you really want, but the thing about it is when you look at that apple and all you see is not steak, your brain is running scarcity, not steak, not steak, not steak. Instead, look at the apple as an apple. See it for all of the amazingness that you can have with this apple because the apple, in itself, it’s perfect. Now, the scarcity over shoppers in the second thought experiment is the people who will pull you off the meat shelf.
Kevin Aillaud:
You want that vegetarian, right? You want that vegetarian to take you home and eat you and they won’t. They don’t eat meat, right? They never will. The scarcity is not seeing all the other shoppers out there, right? The scarcity is not seeing all the other shoppers out there, many of them who are looking, actively seeking that perfect steak. We don’t need other people to like us for us to be worthy. As steaks, we will never be a perfect salad, but we will always be perfect steaks. We will always be worthy of being a steak. We will always be 100% beef. And it’s all food, guys. Some people are on a keto diet. Some people are in the zone. Some people are vegans or vegetarians. Other people are doing the paleo. It’s all food, it’s all good. None of us are plastic, okay? None of us are nondigestible. All human beings are some form of food.
Kevin Aillaud:
We are all digestible in this analogy, so it’s really up to the person doing the eating as to whether they want the experience of steaks or apples or peaches or pears or rice or beans or whatever. It doesn’t make a difference because all humans are edible. All humans are worthy of being eaten. We are all perfect, nutritious foods. Simple as that, and none of it has anything to do with you.
Kevin Aillaud:
That’s what I have for you this week. And to lead off this month of May and the relationship work that we’re going to do in the Spartan Academy, brothers, this is the month to start your cognitive mastery and emotional ownership training. This is relationship month. This is the month that so many of you have been asking me for, waiting for, looking forward to. The concepts and methods you learn this month will change your life immediately and permanently, and I can’t tell you this, right? I can’t explain this to you. I can only show this to you when you learn the process and do the work. And I can’t prove it to you. I can’t sit here and explain to you how this works with words, but what I can do is I can guarantee that it will work for you when you do the work for yourself.
Kevin Aillaud:
When you apply the methodology of cognitive mastery to your life, you will create the relationships of your dreams. Go to thealphamalecoach.com. Right at the top, “Work with Kevin.” Click on that menu button and it will give you the option to see the elevated Elevated Alpha Society Spartan Academy. Go to that webpage, read about the academy, read about how to enroll, join the tier one program and start your cognitive mastery and emotional ownership training today. This is the month, this is the time to make your relationships the way you want them. And until next week, my brothers, elevate your alpha.
Speaker 1:
Thank you for listening to this episode of The Alpha Male Coach podcast. If you’ve enjoyed what you’ve heard and want even more, sign up for Unleash Your Alpha, your guide to shifting to the alpha mindset at thealphamalecoach.com/unleash.