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Praise for CONTROL FREAK: “Cory is not afraid to tell you the truth and does it with humor, compassion and confidence. Her words empower you to look at yourself with new eyes and fresh perspectives. By the end of this book, you will feel a new sense of purpose, spiritual connection and wholeness.” - Kristen Harcourt (Global Executive Coach & Speaker, kristenharcourt.com) “We each have a control freak operating within us. Cory Thomsen takes us on a deeply personal, riveting, heartbreaking, relatable and ultimately triumphant journey. Control Freak is at once illuminating and inspiring. Filled with compassion and insight into the human experience, Control Freak lays down a map for finding the miraculous freedom that awaits us on the other side of control. This is a must read!” - Michelle Goss, CPCC, LLMCC (Certified Professional CoActive Coach, michellegoss.com) “Being a control freak is a never-ending job; there’s always at least one more thing to control. Exhausting. Cory uses her own life to show you a way out; a way to peace freedom and joy … will you take it?” - Nancy Baker (Life Coach, Mentor, Consultant, nancybaker.com) “Cory is a master at powerfully bringing to light the necessary questions to consciously choose a better and most fulfilling life – one with our true self. She candidly distills the truths and lessons of what it means and feels to be a Control Freak. This book is a gift to anyone’s hands and hearts it reaches.” - Sandra Fazio (Conscious Parent / Life Coach, Author, Speaker, sandrafazio.com)
CONTROL F R EA K a p r a c t i c e f o r l e t t i n g g o, a llowing miracles and co-cr eating your b est life
Cory Thomsen
Copyright Š 2019 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Enquiries should be made to the publisher. Every effort has been made to ensure that this book is free from error or omissions. However, the Publisher, the Author, the Editor or their respective employees or agents, shall not accept responsibility for injury, loss or damage occasioned to any person acting or refraining from action as a result of material in this book whether or not such injury, loss or damage is in any way due to any negligent act or omission, breach of duty or default on the part of the Publisher, the Author, the Editor, or their respective employees or agents. The Author, the Publisher, the Editor and their respective employees or agents do not accept any responsibility for the actions of any person - actions which are related in any way to information containted in this book. The moral right of the author has been asserted. A CIP catalogue record of this book is available from the Library Of Congress, USA, and the National Library of Australia. Author: Thomsen, Cory (CPCC) Title: Control Freak: A practice for letting go, allowing miracles and co-creating your best life. PB ISBN: 9781925900927 HC ISBN: 9781925900910 Subject: Personal Improvement, Self Help, Life Coaching Dewey Number: 158.1 Cover illustrations by Daria and Daniel at Yeticrab and Natalya Antuanetto. Internal art by Eleonora Troitsky. The publisher has done its utmost to attribute the copyright holders of all the visual material used. If you nevertheless think that a copyright has been infringed, please contact the publisher. Published by: Fiosracht Press (an imprint of Of The World Publishing) ACN 133 333 141 PO Box 8070 Bendigo South LPO VIC 3550 AUSTRALIA www.oftheworldbooks.com
G o d t u r n s y o u fr o m o ne f e e l i ng t o a no t h e r A nd t e a c h e s b y me a n s o f o p p o si t e s S o t h a t y o u w i l l h a v e t w o w i ng s t o f ly , no t o ne. -Rumi
To Scott: for sticking with me, keeping it real, and bringing the sardines.
CONTENTS Introduction 10
Par t 1 - Control
1. Controlling Your Body 16 2. Controlling Everybody 26 3. Controlling Your Feelings 35 4. Addicted to Busy 42 5. Surrendering 49
P a r t 2 - Mi r a c l e s
6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
Par t 3 - Co-Cr eation
Toxic Beliefs Sex & the Shame Block Time & the Anxiety Block Money & the Despair Block Choose Love
64 80 91 100 112
11. 12. 13. 14. 15.
Wake Up Calls Pause Priority Power Play
122 132 142 155 168
Epilogue Endnotes & Nods Further Reading Acknowledgements About The Author
180 184 191 192 193
INTRODUCTION T h e w o r l d ’ s g r e a t a t ' s h o u l di ng ’ o n u s, i s n’ t i t ? In our digital age, we have 24/7 access to how to’s: how to be a better mother, a better wife, a better daughter, sister, co-worker, leader, you name it. Everywhere you look, it seems like someone else is doing it better and telling you how you should. Sure there’s tremendous learning potential, but there’s also an enormous amount of anxiety and pressure. This book is not that kind of how to. I’m not going to give you a failsafe way to succeed in life, or even a way to get a bigger chunk of the happiness pie. If you’re looking for something prescriptive, you’ll want to ask someone with far more wisdom and hardship than me. What I can offer you is a practice to help you get better at reading the roadmap to acceptance and peace within yourself. Deep down, I think you know why you’re here. For one, you’re exhausted. You clean up the messes and bend over 10.
backwards and pick up the slack and say yes and hustle to prove yourself. I mean, with all the running between school, work, groceries, appointments, conference calls, after school activities, and taking care of others, who are you (really)? Your spark’s not only taken a backseat - it may feel like it’s not even in the car with you anymore. Something’s been nudging you towards this truth: part of you knows what’s in your highest good but sometimes you can’t see it. Other times, it’s clear but you’re too scared to act upon it. Joy hasn’t left you per say, it’s just been obscured by a mess of delusional thought and misguided action. One way to make sense of our own story is through hearing about someone else’s. Yes, this is a book about me and my pain points. But it’s also about choice, perspective, and manifesting radical joy after the sting of the pain has left us. I wrote my stuff down because others have written their stuff down for me. Sometimes by borrowing someone else’s words, something in us just clicks and we can finally see the forest through the trees. Unapologetically, I want this for you. Feel free to use the margins to journal out some notes or color outside the lines. For decades, I was stuck in a perfectionist cycle: judgment, guilt, rinse, repeat. Straight A’s, check. College degree, check. Married, check. Top rated HR leader, check. Motherhood, check. Anxiety, double check. One by one, the wheels started to come off, and I broke down. I was too tired to push myself to perfection anymore. Spoiler alert #1. I’m not perfect. I’m on a journey to being a happier, healthier human just like you. The subconscious mind is a powerful thing. So I’ve learned some things that help me get out from under my Control Freak and back into my heart quicker than say, 5-10 years ago. Hopefully you’ll benefit from having these simple truths in your tool box now too. Spoiler alert #2. Inside our propensity to control are self-limiting blocks that can be released. And on the other side is a never-ending supply of miracles. Don’t worry, this isn’t a book about conjuring miracles or doing magic tricks, although it does feel magical to me. Remember this is a book about relinquishing control and cocreating with the Universe (read: everyone else around you). By 11.
learning to release your blocks to miracles, you allow them to flow more freely to you. It may require a little digging around in your thoughts, shedding a little light on your subconscious beliefs about you and your purpose. You may have to admit some things to yourself, let your Control Freak flag fly a little, in the name of creating something better. But I promise, you’re not alone. Now, I’m not gonna lie and say this work is easy. We’re creatures of habit so admittedly, change often feels incredibly hard. Scary even. Such as life. Yet, such as life, there’s immense beauty and promise too. It’s up to us to choose consciously. Through awareness of our blocks and the impact they’re having on our happiness, our willingness to release them and choose a more loving perspective gets easier the more we do it. In Part 1, we’ll unpack some of the ways the Control Freak tries to run our lives by blocking us from miracles. These are some of the more common ways control manifests and the critical voice it brings. Through some of my hardship and loss, you’ll see how control grasps and pushes and fights to take over, but steals our joy in the process. In Part 2, we’ll break down some of control’s common blocks and the spiritual reasons this tension shows up in our lives. We’ll see how perception is everything: what you perceive is what you you believe. You’ll walk away with practical ways to let go of control, change a self-limiting belief, and start receiving miracles more consciously. Finally, in Part 3, we’ll walk through each of the 4 P’s I’ve used to incrementally shift from Control Freak to conscious co-creator. With just one of these, you’ll begin to ease up on little agendas, allowing a bigger picture to unfold in your life. With two to three of them, you’ll get better at maintaining peace of mind, even in the midst of fresh chaos. As you commit to a consistent practice of all 4 P’s, you’ll begin to manifest miracles and completely transform your inner landscape. I often use the word Spirit as higher power, but I’m not fussy about this. Feel free to insert the word that resonates most for you - God / Allah / Lord / Universe / Source / Creator / Love - in place of my references. 12.
Because I didn’t write this book to prove or convince you of anything (except of course your innate worth). I wrote this book as a way to sit shoulder to shoulder with you and our messes, with warm mugs in hands, as together we raise our gaze upwards and marvel in the light of shared universal truths. Now take a deep breath. You’re not alone. Along with your inner guide, we’re gonna get through this mess together.
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Part 1 CONTROL
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CONTROLLING YOUR BODY O n e r u n s t h e r i s k o f we e p i ng a l i t t l e , i f o ne l e t s h i m s e l f b e ta me d . - T h e L i t t l e P r i nc e Each one of us is in a relationship with our own body. You may love certain aspects of your appearance, but chances are there are other aspects that you don’t. And almost certainly, you spend the majority of thought devoted to the latter. With an ideal in the mind’s eye, control will undoubtedly grab onto it and attempt to force it into existence. Critiquing, wishing, willing our body to look differently, move differently, wear clothes differently, perform differently. (It’s my body, after all. Why shouldn’t it conform to the ideal in my mind?) Growing up, I never thought of my body as an entity in of itself - I always identified with it, so there was no separation between what was ‘me’ and my body. Without realizing the distinction, it 16.
never even occurred to me that I’d turned into a bully. ONE TRACK MIND I wanted kids. That much was clear. The timing of when my husband would be ready to start a family, however, was muddy at best. I, overflowing with nurturing energy, was desperate for a place to put it. He relented in small ways over the years, and patiently allowed me to collect critters instead. For a time, each pet gave me an outlet. Yet every year or two, I felt like I was staring at a big, fat gaping hole in my heart and rather than examining that, I would try to patch it with another pet. It started in college and ten years later, we were up to our eyeballs in animals and their accoutrement. Three cats, two dogs, and zero kids. Until I wasn’t the only one ready to turn that zero into something more. If you haven’t noticed yet, I’m a numbers gal. One plus one equals two. But in my first real lesson with control, math didn’t add up the way I thought it should. As it turns out, it takes more than two willing participants to make a baby. The question of infertility hung on me like one of those heavy hooks they use to store meat. Will I be able became a dull, everpresent ache of unknown. I grew up with the vision of being married with two kids (maybe three) by the time I was 27. Again, numbers gal. Yet, there we were - in our thirties and counting years of marriage on more than one hand. These facts justified my obsessive thoughts about the future. Surely, if I chew on it enough and pray for it enough, a baby will happen for me. Like the earth to the sun, my longing was so deep and wide that my entire existence revolved around it. Somewhere along the way to becoming an adult, we confuse roles and concepts external to ourselves with life purpose, and in doing so we shift away from making soul-based decisions into ones driven by ego or society. I just had to be a mother. Had to. There were no other options. 17.
THE ILLUSION OF CONTROL Secretly I despised seeing in-the-know friends and family members who’d joke and say things like “You’re in that D.I.N.K. sweet spot - dual-income, no kids” or “This is the fun part of marriage,” because it was turning out to be anything but. Instead of enjoying the process, I created myself a living hell. We’d graduated to a specialist and had both been poked and prodded like lab specimens. We rushed samples in brown paper bags up to the doctor’s office and marked days and temperatures on charts. We tried IUI and daily, long-needled injections in my hips and belly. I’d reached a new level of cruel and unusual as I took meds that bloated me up to the appearance of being with child and the imagined discomfort of a second or third trimester, without knowing if I’d ever get to my first. Without the knowledge of a little pro growing and outweighing all that con, the whole idea that I was unable to get pregnant weighed on me. We did all of it month, after month, after month. Motherhood felt so close, I could almost taste it. I felt something just out of my reach and drove myself crazy trying to control it. I tightened my grip on it in my mind’s eye. There was this inner critic always pushing, judging, critiquing my attempts to fill this gaping lack. What good am I if I’m not a mother? What if there’s no point to any of this? I couldn’t stop it because I didn’t even realize it was playing in the background. Conversations distorted like those grown ups on Charlie Brown. Food became a means to an end with a carefully curated menu, but no appreciation for taste (which was a big change for me because I really love food). No more happy dancing at the sight of my meal headed towards the table. My musical playlist was either pissed off or morose, if I felt like listening to anything at all. I moved gingerly from one task to the next, both my back and heart aching. My attention was fully on what I didn’t have and what my body wouldn’t do. Decades of achievement taught me that maximum effort equaled maximum payoff. How dare my body betray me like this with what I wanted most in this world? During a painful education of follicular calendars and hormones, 18.
pregnant women appeared all around me. I may have found the mass quantity of baby bumps I saw during this season of my life humorous if just one of them had been mine. Even Disney movies triggered feelings of maternal injustice. I cried at my kinship with Mrs. Jumbo, as she watched all the storks drop babies everywhere but her lap. That is, until she received her darling Dumbo. Then she was just another one of the lucky ones. Bitch. I put what little faith I had left in drugs. Sure, they were approved and prescribed, but still each dose came mixed with a lifetime of fear and a hit of control. For the time, Clomid and Progesterone became my would-be saviors. THE EGO’S GAME When our focus is on what we think we’re lacking, we’re uncomfortable even shocked, by someone else’s creativity simply because we’ve forgotten our own. Looking back, I see the weight of both the larger scope of my crazy and many smaller, more intense bouts. We do this in relationships with our children, our romantic partners, our parents, our careers, and with our bodies. It’s completely human, but also utterly unnecessary. Seeing others having what we don’t challenges us with the tension between these surface-level desires, and our impatience to getting them. When we think our reason for living is what we’re supposed to get from a particular relationship, we’ve bought into a belief that we’re incomplete until we get it. We think that thing will make us happy once and for all. Ego says: GAME ON. You think you can challenge me? I’m in control here. I’ll cling, cry, fight, fling, claw my way into getting what I want. Giving someone or something the power to control your perspective will always bring with it some disappointment because the expectation itself is flawed. This kind of control is ego-based, not of the soul, so it will always fall short of fulfillment. In the meantime, you’ll drive yourself a little (or a lot) crazy clinging to the outcome ego wants. Occasionally this long-carried envy of what others have but we don’t, makes us insane. 19.
FEAR KEEPS SCORE Which leads me to the next fun stage (insert eye roll here). I’m pumped full of meds. A combo that produces a long list of side effects: mood swings, hot flashes, bloating, joint pain, breast tenderness, visual disturbances, headache, and nausea. Tonight I have them all. But a voice inside says We made plans, so you better suck it up and act social. I was so used to pushing my truth into a corner. But like wild animals, you cage truth up too long with jealousy, and one’s going to eat the other. No sooner do we get into our friend’s car, does she announce “We’re pregnant!” In either empathy or restraint, my husband squeezes my hand. I know, I know. Everyone else’s life doesn’t start and stop by my IVF calendar, so I’ll just shove down the shock of my pain back here. “I’m only 6 weeks, but we just couldn’t go to dinner with you guys tonight and not share it with you. You of all people know just what a blessing this is!” I can’t breathe. “Of course, I’d love to have a margarita with you to celebrate, but no more drinking for me for awhile.” An explosion of giggles punches me in the gut. Make it stop. A din of absence erupts from my seat in the back. She chatters all the way to the restaurant, taking no apparent notice of my silence. And why should she? She’s been blessed with the one gift that fills the emptiest of boxes. Have you ever felt something come out of nowhere and simultaneously realize it’s been there for years? This bubbling, just-beneath-the-surface kind of yearning that demands to be 20.
expressed? An ocean of fear-weathered moments flood in with an intensity too massive to bear and suddenly, it’s all too much. I look over at my husband just as the dam breaks. The car’s sliding into a parking space but I’m already unbuckled and opening the door. I fly out, bodily aches and pains forgotten. Everything twists up inside. Logic obscured by emotion, my mind has disconnected from my heart. The whole world’s disappeared beyond a veil of pain and fury. What’s wrong with me? Why can’t it be me? Haven’t I been good enough? My whole Goddamned life, haven’t I done everything right? “I’m on fire.” I spit-growl. “Tell them whatever you want, but if that bitch keeps talking all night about this, you’re gonna have to bail me out of jail.” I turn to run inside, leaving my husband with no semblance of social grace to even make an excuse with. I must look like a rabid dog as I bob and weave my way through the crowded restaurant, oblivious to anything or anyone else but my own pain. The voice is screaming now. You idiot. You’re only making it worse for when you get back out there. What’s wrong with you? I push my way to the ladies room and am swallowed by someone I don’t recognize. The mariachi band’s brassy clangor spares me the embarrassment of the whole restaurant hearing me screamtantrum from behind the stall door. Fear’s keeping score again. Cory 0, Others 1,238. How did I get here? How is it I started this life a bundle of joy and am now losing my shit in a Mexican restaurant? Both my throat and heart are raw. I need a miracle. ROCK AND A HARD PLACE The story of my past biological failings taunts me into believing that I’m not worthy of bringing new life into this world. And if I can’t make a baby, I must not have a purpose. My subconscious 21.
resistance to this fed my ego’s desire for control.
Ego implies that there will be a winner and a loser
and therefore we must control outcomes to win this human race. To prove ourselves worthy of our dreams and desires. Ego says that to be worthy of love, we must strive to earn it. Wanting to make sense of things is a basic human desire. Yet it’s the fear-based ego that lies in wait for shadow feelings and spins stories about what they mean. When our fears are triggered, we’ve bought into the false assumption that we must pick our poison, fight or flight. Resist or retreat. Do or die. But life’s not about the doing. It’s about the being. We don’t need to make miracles happen - we need to be open to receiving them. We may get what we want, or we may not. The miracle is not the outcome. Within the process itself, the miracle is the willingness to embody love. This is the moment when grace steps in as if to say: This rock and hard place are all in your mind. Wow, that must be a tough place to be. Are you ready for something different? My doctor suggests a regular practice of acupuncture and breathing. Being the good rule follower I am, doctor’s orders make it easier for me to prioritize the appointments, whereas thoughts of taking even one mental health day off work just stress me out more. So far though, it feels like a lot of nothing to me. “Light.” My acupuncturist says. “Follow the light.” I have no idea what she’s talking about, but I lay back and close my eyes, skeptical. Tiny needles are placed at points all over my body, while I lay and do absolutely nothing. How could something this simplistic solve a problem so massive? Instead of seeing it as a structure focus on clearing my mind, I still think it’s supposed to be a means to an end. For several appointments, I’m resistant. At the end of our sessions, just before the final implantation procedure of the IVF process, I feel awkward and strange, but I’m out of ideas. I’m just about to ask her if there’s anything I can do to help the process but before I form the words, a thought whispers into my mind. Your body isn’t defying you. And you can’t control 22.
everything. So stop trying to. Everything about this rattles me, but for the first time since we started the baby making process, something feels right. I relax into the unknown. As she places the first needle, I imagine light entering through it traveling from the crown of my head down to my heart. I let myself feel the weight of the possibility that pregnancy may never happen for us. I realize how tired I am from not letting myself go there. From there, I let myself imagine the light moving down to my ovaries and then to my uterus. I let myself imagine light healing and creating space within me. I silently ask for something, anything, new. I pray to be released from this hell I’ve created. Whatever will be, will be, I just want a new way of looking at my life. A few weeks later, I’m staring at yet another home pregnancy test. But this time, it’s positive. FEAR OBSCURES THE TRUTH After a brief celebration upon seeing that magic double line, my Control Freak flag flies again. The very outcome I’ve been waiting for, praying for - the one I’d been trying desperately to control and make happen - replaces outdated fears with fresh ones. What if there’s been a mix up and I’m not actually pregnant? What if I lose this chance? What if I don’t? What if my husband realizes this would be easier with someone else? I’d believed that my whole life led up to the ultimate goal of becoming a mother, and now that this role is actively forming, I feel fear’s insatiable appetite nipping at my heels. Fear is hell-bent on leading us astray from truth, because it needs to sustain itself in order to exist. What’s buried underneath surface level fears are layers upon layers of psychological illusion. We have to dig deep down under fears about outcomes, or experiences, or appearances, to get to the root cause of them. When you get deep enough, there’s always a fear of not being loved (or being alone, which is still about not being loved). So we damn ourselves to proving ourselves worthy of love. At the 23.
expense of being, we focus on action. We strive. We keep score. We tally. We burn out. Ironically, it’s the very idea that we can fill a void with something external to us, that drives us insane. My personality was so intent in pushing me into motherhood that I had long ignored the soul pull towards making peace with what I could not control. Embedded in that experience, was an invitation to mother myself with grace. When I was met with resistance to getting pregnant, my daughter had already taken on the role of teacher, a role she still carries for me today. I needed to go through that infertility struggle, but at the time I would’ve sold a foot not to go through it. However, because I did ultimately get what I so badly wanted, it was easy for me to ignore the lesson and keep seeing things through the lens of control. To keep you safely within the comfort of the known (how you’ve perceived the past), fear drowns out the truth of who you are becoming. Whether it’s creating a baby, a book, or a business, everything slows down so you can learn. In this way, the allknowing, all-loving Universe provides us with opportunities to heal our perceptions of lack. Fear is loud, but love doesn’t play
that game. It waits patiently for you to surrender and ask for guidance.
Giving into the temptation to compare ourselves to others or to our own expectations, on a spiritual level, blocks us from the power of our own creativity. Jealousy, rage, sorrow, frustration, disappointment. These are all cues that we’ve locked onto the fear of lack. Scarcity is a really scary place to hang out. When we let love lead, we learn from the process, and even allow ourselves to appreciate the present moment for the enlightenment we receive when it doesn’t meet our expectations, or doesn’t turn out as we planned. We may get what we wanted, we may not, but that doesn’t mean we must cling to the pain of our expectation. When we let soul lead, we speed up the healing process. We open up to the opportunity to receiving love in a more lasting way and outcomes are even better than what our ego clung to in the first place.
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YOU ARE NATURALLY CREATIVE While pregnancy gave me a mandate to take good physical care of myself, the lesson to be compassionate towards my body was lost for the time being. With the intensity of a pro athlete afraid to get cut from the team at any time, I refocused my determination on having the ‘perfect’ pregnancy. I ate all the right things, I did low-intensity exercises at just the right intervals, and I even put on classical music during my commute for our baby to listen in utero. I read obsessively each book I could get my hands on, staring at the diagrams of the estimated size of our little fruit. Each anxious thought steering me to look away from myself to what I thought I should be doing to prove myself worthy of her. I’d never been happier or more freaked out. Luckily, life’s teacher waits for us at every turn. With each high and low, love waits for us. Because spirit desires nothing more than to love us into wholeness, into the vast, wide reaches of our wildness. She stands there patiently waiting for our ear with each opportunity to heal. It’s not in the getting, it’s in the holding of the questions brought by resistance that we learn what we truly value at a soul level. Until we feel the full lesson in our bones, we ignore our innate creativity. You can always create a new perspective, a new attitude. So, if we get to choose our own mindset, I say why not one where we’re loved, supported and cared for no matter what? I like to imagine spirit as my inner guide, and no matter what kind of attitude I have, she lays in wait for me. Bring it on, girlfriend. I’m not going anywhere. With a rebel yell, she cries: more, more, more.
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