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L - Lighten Pressure
The first thing you need to do is to lighten the pressure when you feel the psychological need or compulsive drive to control, change, fix, rescue, enable, give advice, or correct other people, places, or things. To do this, use the TEA, ALERT, ANGER and CHILD Systems to help you become more rational and realistic about your current pressure or compulsive drive to control.
E - Exercise Rights
Second, once you have regained a healthier, more rational and realistic perspective on the current person, place, or thing you want to control, you need to exercise your right to declare that you can only change or control one thing and that is you.
T - Take Steps
Third, once you have accepted your personal responsibility for your own life, you need to take steps to cease your attempts to control, fix, change, rescue, enable, give advice, or correct other people, places, or things. You need to allow others to experience the natural consequences of their own thoughts, emotions, and actions.
G - Give Up Need
Fourth, once you have handed back to people, places, and things responsibility for their own thoughts, emotions, and actions, you need to give up the need to control to others in your life. You need to let go of the uncontrollables and unchangeables in your life by embracing the spirit, words, and meaning of the Serenity Prayer.
Serenity Prayer - By Reinhold Niebuhr
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God, grant me the serenity
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to accept the things I cannot change
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Courage to change the things I can,
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Wisdom to know the difference,
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Living one day at a time,
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Enjoying one moment at a time,
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Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
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Taking as Jesus did this sinful world
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as it is, not as I would have it.
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Trusting that you will make all things right
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If I surrender to your will.
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So that I might be reasonably happy in this life
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and supremely happy with you forever in the next.
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Amen
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O - Order Life
Fifth, once you have embraced the serenity gained from letting go of the need to control other people, places, and things, you need to order your life accordingly. In the Tools for Handling Control Issues by Jim Messina, Ph.D. the many faces of the need to control are discussed in great detail. These tools can help you to order your life in the serenity of accepting personal responsibility for your own life. In the Tools for Handling Relationships by Jim Messina, Ph.D. many issues involved in nurturing healthy relationships also contains tools to help you let go and order your life with others in a healthy way.
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