We live in a very complicated world, where companies spend lots of money trying to persuade us to spend our time and money on their products.
All of these companies are trying to control a part of our lives.
We also have organisations trying to persuade us to help them, examples are organisations we belong to and charities. Friends and family want certain things from us. How do we satisfy all these competing demands and still feel in control of our lives?
Most people want to be in total control of their lives, but it is not always easy to feel in control all of the time. If we do not currently feel in control of our lives, it is because of decisions we made in the past.
We all make many decisions every day.
We are all responsible for our own thoughts and actions.
Some people make a decision to allow another person to have a very big influence on their life. This could lead to a feeling of lack of control.
Maybe this is a matter of perspective.
If you make a choice to allow another person to influence your life, you are still in control because you made the choice to give them the power. It is necessary to really trust the person who you choose to allow to influence your life and your decisions.
We all have to choose how we interpret any situation.
If a situation seems very negative, but taking a different perspective on the same situation could change the feeling to positive.
All situations have positive and negative aspects, so we can choose which aspect of any situation that we focus on.
This choice does not change the facts, but can change how we feel about them.
Geoff Peck from Woosehill Church writing on behalf of Churches Together Wokingham
