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Many times we struggle with external need to control situations, conditions, and people outside of ourselves, and this becomes a self-defeating journey.

It becomes a self-defeating journey because one cannot truly experience any situation outside of themselves, and when dealing with different personalities, it is you driving yourself into pure chaos hoping the situation, condition, and people change. Today's post will help support and empower your mindset of choosing peace and happiness over the need to assert control over situations that cannot be controlled.

You can gain power and control over the outcome of any difficult situations, conditions, conversations, people, places, and/or the universe by following these few simple stress-reducing tips.

Here are five tips to practice fostering this control.

No Expectations

Practice having no expectations with your interactions, conversations, people, places, and situations. Disappointment occurs when we place expectations on others. Those are our personal views, biases, and perspectives of others and assuming they will understand these expectations through our electric wavelength or mind waves. Approaching life with a list of expectations sets us up for feelings of lack and all the other bad adjectives that spell disappointment. Practicing no expectations can prevent us from feeling disappointed, unheard, and not understood. You got this; save your peace and choose no expectations.

Radical Acceptance

The word "radical" makes it sound kind of bad, but all it means is that you choose to free your mind and self from the limitations and control that hold you hostage to your struggles. We often fight for power and authority and resist the changes around us. This is common within the family and brings more chaos, breakdown, loss of friendship, and heartache. What if I told you that you gain more control and power by choosing radical acceptance? You achieve your authority, strength, and peace of mind by understanding: "Let it go." Why join the chaos when you can claim peace within yourself through acceptance? The resistance and need to gain power and control over others bring us anguish, pain, suffering, and disappointment.

Focus On Yourself

Focusing on yourself in difficult situations, conversations, people, and places is not selfish. Bring the focus back to yourself. Focus on what you have control over, which is YOURSELF. You have control only over yourself. Use this control to set yourself up for the next step in your life.

Set Small Goals

Choose small goals to work on that can help you develop around these difficult situations, conditions, people, places, etc. Working on a larger goal can become too overwhelming, so accumulating these smaller goals creates a large ripple in a blink of an eye.

Take It One Day at a Time

Approach difficult situations, conditions, people, and places with a one-day-at-a-time mindset. Because problems and conditions can be unpredictable, a one-day-at-a-time attitude helps you be more flexible and fluid to tolerate unexpected, unplanned changes in events, etc. Also, it protects you from needing to figure it out all at once. Nothing in life is ever meant for us to figure it out all at once, and part of life's adventure is that people, situations, places, and conditions are all evolving, and there will always be the next after the next. So set yourself up for success by taking a one-day-at-a-time approach and claiming your peace. If all fails, understand you got this.

Umu Coomber-Benjamin is a Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner in Rockville, MD.
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