Letting Go of Control: How to Embrace Uncertainty and Live in the Moment
In this 30‑minute personal‑development talk, Aaron Doughty explains why people habitually try to control their lives and how that drive stems from the ego’s need for familiar, familial‑type energy patterns formed in childhood. He illustrates the concept with vivid personal anecdotes—dieting obsessively, micromanaging YouTube production, and a traumatic childhood under a controlling step‑mother—showing how these experiences create a metaphorical “box” or fence that feels safe but limits freedom. Doughty argues that the unknown is the source of magic and freedom, and that true surrender requires recognizing and releasing attachment to outcomes, people, and the past. He links this process to healing masculine and feminine wounds, rebuilding trust with a higher power (God, source, or the universe), and forgiving parental figures. Practical guidance includes becoming aware of familiar childhood dynamics, feeling fear as a signal of expansion, and deliberately stepping into the unknown despite discomfort. The talk concludes with an invitation to a live transformational event, “Activate Your Highest Timeline,” where participants will practice these principles through meditations, group work, and teachings.
Chapters
Are you tired of feeling anxious and stressed about the future? Do you feel that the more you try to control your life, the more out of control you actually feel? In this video, I'm gonna show you the negative side effects of trying to control your life. I'm gonna show you the positive benefits of letting go of control and how embracing uncertainty is the key to happiness, presence, and actually feeling safe in this moment now. The first thing to understand about letting go of control is why are we actually controlling anyways? Why do we wanna control what's happening in our reality? Why do we wanna control what other people think about us? The reason we are controlling aspects of our life is because our ego wants to survive. Our ego wants to remain in familiar energy patterns that it learned growing up. And the challenge is that then as we grow up and things in our life change, we many times will fight to keep similar childhood dynamics in our life that recreate that sense of familiarity. Now look at this, this is something that's very interesting about it. The word familiar actually has within it the word familial, like familial, that's the root word of the word. Which means family. So in a way, when we're fighting for familiar, we're fighting to recreate similar energies that we experienced growing up. There's a familial energy there, familial, family. Now, when it comes to letting go, this is, I wanna share a little story with this too of something I realized recently with doing a certain type of somatic transformation energy like, you know, being in the body and releasing energy, there was something that came up for me that made me realize why I have struggled in my life to let go of control. And this is gonna sound a little bit interesting, but it's gonna wire in this understanding that we create and we are addicted to the familiar. Now think of it like this. This is a box that is around our ego. This is our ego, this is our body. We have this box around it and we have within this box certain rules that keep us within the known or familiar. And these rules are the way reality should work, the way people should respond to us. And it keeps us in this metaphorical box. Now, outside of this box, we have the magic, the unknown. They say that all magic happens in the unknown. Yet there maybe could be something even more magical than we could possibly imagine that could come into our life if we embrace the unknown. But sometimes the familiar feels more safe. It feels more like something that we're used to and the ego just wants to survive. The ego doesn't necessarily wanna thrive. Now, freedom is also outside of this box of the known, of the familiar. Now, one of the realizations I had in my own life was actually energetically connecting to my body, feeling present in my body, and realizing that there was a certain memory that came up for me that made me aware of why I control certain aspects of my life. And lemme just give you an example of this. Like sometimes I've had tendencies to where if I'm dieting or something, want my physique to look a certain way, I'll micromanage the calories I eat and become like neurotic about it where it's like a game. I'm in my Fitness Pal just like concocting up exactly what I can eat for the day 'cause I also love food and it becomes something where I'm just overly controlling it. Think awareness is powerful, but you can overdo anything. There's times within my business that I become controlling, too controlling about how everything can be. I know that when I even first started on YouTube for the first like year and a half, I edited every single YouTube video that went on YouTube because I couldn't trust someone to edit. They're not gonna edit the way that I want to, the way that I wanted it. And eventually I realized, wait, I'm spending so much time editing. It's such a basic thing that like, my editing was so simple. If you go back to my older videos especially, it was literally like just me talking. There were no cuts and there was an intro and an outro and like an intro and outro music. Like it was so simple. For some reason I couldn't let go. Of that. I had these beliefs that somebody else, if I give it to somebody else, it's gonna crumble and die. No one's gonna value it as much as me. But that kept me having to work very hard in order for, like, to keep me feeling safe within my business. Now, this memory that I had when I was working with a somatic coach, I was going into my body and I was feeling different, kind of like energetically going to certain times of my past. In childhood to like kind of heal the past version of me. And I had this very specific memory that I remember where I, it was more of just an image of a metaphor. But from 7 to 15, I had the whole ex-stepmom thing in my life where my ex-stepmom was controlling, manipulative. My brother and I weren't allowed to have friends. We weren't allowed to like watch TV. We weren't allowed to really do anything but yard work. A lot of times we were locked out of the house. We like weighed 110, 120 pounds each. And then after the divorce happened when I was 15, I gained like 30 pounds within a month. So very malnourished in many ways. But the reason I share that is 'cause there was an intense amount of control in our lives. It was like having an army sergeant as a stepmom. And then what happened though was something interesting. My dad divorced her when I was 15. All of a sudden there was all this freedom. And what I remember is I remember this very specific moment where a couple, like a week after the divorce started, all this freedom came up. My brother and I, we moved to my grandma's house with my dad, and it was my dad, my brother, my grandma, my grandpa. We were all these people stuck in this very small house, but we had freedom. We could watch TV, we could eat enough food, we didn't have to like slave outside all day, and it was like this whole new world. And I remember at one moment going back to the old house to get some of our stuff with my ex-stepmom there and her mom, So my ex-grandma, I guess. And there was, it was this big dramatic moment where like they were throwing clothes and it was big drama, throwing our clothes on the floor in the dirt and stuff. And I remember feeling in that moment that even though we had all this freedom now, we could watch TV, have friends, all this stuff, there was something scary about that. And there was something that felt very familiar that even though there was so much control, In my life from 7 to 15, there was something that felt safe about it. There was something that I could, I could like relax. There wasn't that anxiety. They call that Stockholm syndrome. And I always remember that moment. And eventually, you know, I moved through it, but I kept recreating similar familiar childhood dynamics where I kept attracting people like my ex-stepmom in my life to control me because that felt safe. That felt like how we relate. That's how I relate. And specifically to women for a while, it was like woman in my life, there was always a woman in my life up until I forgave my ex-stepmom that was reflecting back that level of control where I had to fight for my freedom. It was either an ex-girlfriend when I was like 18 years old that was kind of jealous, was very jealous and controlling. And then there was, after that I broke up with her within a week, somebody else, I got transferred to a better shoe department at Nordstrom's. Which is where I worked at the time, selling women's shoes, better shoe department where I got paid more, but the manager of that department was controlling and manipulative and pretty much the same archetype as my ex-stepmom. And then she was in my life for 3 or 4 years until I had my spiritual awakening and I forgave my ex-stepmom. Within a week, she got fired. It was crazy. But we subconsciously recreate similar familiar childhood dynamics so that we can learn certain lessons And if we're trying to control things in our lives and we wonder, why are there people in my life that are like this? If we're not aware of the unconscious force and that energy within us, then we continue to find ourselves in similar experiences. Now, the experience that I had and what I realized is the epiphany that I had when I'm telling that story about how I felt safer with the, I felt like more relaxed when I was being controlled than when I had the anxiety of being able to play video games and have friends and like eat whatever food I wanted. I wanted, there was this image that came to me where I imagined that I was like in a big grassy field. Imagine a huge grassy field. And then I'm in the middle of it and I have this little fence around me. And it's this fence that goes around, it's a gig fence and it feels, there's something about it that feels safe. Now all the magic, all the amazing experiences I could have, All the freedom to run, to do whatever is outside of that fence. But when the ex-stepmom went away, I created my own fence around me and that fence was my own version of control. Someone else isn't gonna control me? Okay, I will control myself. It feels safe for me to control myself. I gotta give myself a strict schedule. I gotta work really, really hard in order to be enough. In order to be loved? Even when I started on YouTube, I remember at one point on YouTube, I was making 7 videos a week. I was writing 6 emails a week. I was making 1 Instagram video a day, and I was going live almost every day on Instagram at my peak of how much action I was taking. And I felt like I had to in order to keep the machine going, in order to be enough. It was like this, I couldn't let go of that control. If I skipped a day of making an email, I would feel like something was wrong. But then I was outputting so much that eventually I got burnt out. I did that for like a year, it was crazy. It's amazing what the ego can do to stay within the realm of what it deems as safe and familiar. So one of the first insights and epiphanies I wanna give, or I wanna invite you the invitation to look at within yourself is in what ways in your life are you imposing control? Are you imposing and fighting for the familiar? What are some familiar childhood dynamics that you may have when you were a kid that you're recreating now? It could be you're attracted to the same type of people that replay the same dynamics from when you were a kid. It could be that you control aspects of your, you believe maybe you're not worthy and you have to control what people think about you or you need to control how much energy you put into different areas of your life so that you can just be enough. And understanding this concept as well has been the game changer for me. That is that one of the reasons all magic happens in the unknown is because when you're fighting for the ego's desire and for the ego which wants to survive, You're fighting for the limited self. There's a higher power or an energy that you can connect to. Some people call it God, some people call it the universe, some people call it source, some people call it many different names. But when you only trust your ego, that's survival. When you can let go and surrender to a power greater than yourself, that's when magic can begin to happen. I have this theory too that I'll share in this video. Didn't know I was gonna share this, but I'll share it because I believe it's this thing that I'm realizing recently that a lot of people who have, at least in my own life, and even in my own life I've experienced this to a certain level, but some form of masculine wounding around the masculine, around dad. What can happen with masculine wounding is what I believe is I believe A lot of times the masculine can represent our purpose. It can represent the masculine stillness in our reality, whereas the feminine is more like the love and nurturing. And what happens is, is I believe a lot of times people that don't trust the universe have trouble trusting dad. So it's almost like maybe they couldn't trust dad growing up. Maybe dad was emotionally unavailable or wasn't present. And then there's a belief that God's not present, that I can't trust God, I can't trust the universe. And what I found to be very powerful is healing and forgiving dad in this life now, but also finding a connection into a higher source of power, God, source energy, connecting to the stillness of the universe, which then allows you to trust yourself more. But the more you put yourself out there into the unknown, especially with the intention of helping other people or adding value, it creates so much magic in life where then it almost, the energy carries you. You don't have to do as much. Like right now, I've been making YouTube videos on YouTube for like 6 years, 5 years now. I'm now moving into live events. Got my first live event in a week. And by the way, if you wanna join, I'll be doing a live event here in Austin, Texas on January 28th. It's an all-day transformational event called Activate Your Highest Timeline. You can join in person or virtual, and you can click the link below or go to aarondoughty.com/events and check that out. But this is just in general, the reason I feel called to do that is I'm stepping into the unknown. I mean, I've ran live events before, but this year I'm like going all in on live events. I'm like not doing, nearly as much as I used to do with my online internet stuff. I'm more so doing live events and streaming it because I feel like the more I'm able to add value in the world in a new way that's exciting to me, the more it's gonna ripple out. And the way the universe works is we're all connected. So the more you have the intention of surrendering to something larger than yourself, it's like the more magic can come to you anyways. But the more you try to control everything, the more limitations there will be. So this is simply about the awareness that what you believe when you're trying to control is you believe that if you can, if the, you believe that if you can control the external, that then you can feel safe. That's the false belief. A lot of times people are also afraid to let go of control because they say, if I let go of control, then I'm not gonna get what I want. When in fact what attachment is, is attachment is resistance. Control comes from attachment to outcome, attachment to a person, attachment to an event happening, attachment to the future, attachment to the past. And when you let go of attachment, you allow a greater force of energy to flow through that can actually be way more magical than the limited ego perspective. It could be way more magical than the little ego trying to control everything and trying to manage the similar familiar childhood dynamics. So what I would highly recommend you do if you want to learn to let go of control and to embrace the unknown, it's to not put all your stock in your ego. Your ego just wants to survive. Your ego just wants to remain in familiar energy. And when we become aware of what that fear is, because this barrier right here, by the way, is also the edge of fear. When you start getting close to the edge and close getting to the unknown, fear will come up. The fear is literally just telling you, you are expanding your identity. You are expanding your sense of what you know. And people see that fear and they say, I need to stop. I need to stop because the fear is there. When in actuality, the fear, the key is not waiting till the fear goes away for you to jump in the unknown. The key is you're gonna feel it, but you're gonna, you're gonna jump anyways. You're gonna jump into the unknown when you know it's connected to your heart, when you know it's connected to your passion. That's when magic really happens. If I would have, at the moment I started making videos in 2017, saw my first negative comment, felt fear, and said this means I need to stop because I feel the fear, then I would never be where I'm at today. I really cared what people thought about me when I first started my channel. My friends, my family, some of them thought I was nuts for making these videos. What's the purpose? It's not going anywhere. Got told many times like, "Oh son, if this doesn't turn out well, then just know you can always fall back on your job." I was like, "No, this is not an option. I'm going all in." And I would feel a little like maybe he's right. And he meant well, of course, but that was the energy that I had to really feel within myself. Some people are wait, like I'm now doing these live events and before it's like, I know YouTube, I know how to do online 21-day challenges, I know how to make courses, I know how to do live coaching, I know how to do all these things online. So easy for me. Don't even have to really think about it. But running live events, it's like I was waiting at one point, oh, just wait till it just feels like it's the perfect time. And I waited and I waited and then the thing happened in 2020 that happened and then it put things on a, Or would it wait a little bit longer, wait a little bit longer. Then eventually this last couple months I'm like, why? There's nothing to wait for anymore. There's never gonna be a perfect time. I need to let go of the familiar and step into the unknown. And the key is you're gonna feel the fear, step in anyways. Don't wait for the fear to go away. The fear is there just to keep you safe in the familiar, familial, familial, familial family energy. So the key is this awareness of an energy greater than yourself and understanding that as you begin to make the choice and you realize that there's so much pain that comes from staying in the known, there is so much pain that comes from fighting for the same familiar childhood dynamics, but there is magic that happens and freedom that happens when you step into the unknown. And even now I'm breaking in certain areas of my life, I'm breaking through a big, having a big jump right now. And what I can feel is with this freedom, just like back when I was 15 years old and I felt that freedom and it felt like anxiety, I'm having to learn to sink in and to feel that anxiousness, which is just the unknown and start to redefine it as freedom. Let it be good. 'Cause some of us haven't let things be good, haven't let ourselves feel high vibration, haven't let ourselves feel excited. And then we filter excitement through a negative belief system that says, that's what anxiety really is. Anxiety is excitement being filtered through a negative definition or a negative judgment, and normally an attachment to the future. So when we're attached to the end result, that's when it's hard to let go of control. The key is letting go of the end result and realizing life is more of a play, that one of the constants in our reality is change. Things are always gonna be changing, There is no perfect end result. Understand that as you become aware of the attachments you have and you believe that being attached to these things is gonna bring you safety just 'cause of the childhood dynamics and the familiar energy of the past, you can then realize that it doesn't bring you happiness, that attachment only causes suffering. Then what you could do is you can begin to, instead of believe that the external must be a certain way, focus on letting go and surrendering control to a higher power other than yourself. More so God, the universe, this higher connection. Forgiving your mom or your dad can be a very powerful way to reestablish trust with an energy greater than yourself. Instead of focusing on maybe, you know, like, forgive your dad, forgive your mom, to knowing they did the best they could with where they were and that there's a positive benefit in whatever you experienced and that it made you more spiritually aware. And then as you— that you can then create higher senses of those energies. So for example, if you have a mom wound, you connect to Mother Gaia. Mother Gaia could be your mama. You ground yourself in grass, experience the nurturing of Mother Nature. For your dad, you connect to God, source energy, a higher power. And as you do, and as you reestablish a trust and a connection to that, it's much greater than any human connection. And you'll find that then things happen in a much easier way. You don't have to do as much, and you can trust your ability to step into the unknown and embrace uncertainty. That's when presence comes, that's when magic happens. And by making the choice, it changes everything. Now, if you wanna wire in more of this, at the live event on January 28th, this is exactly what we're gonna be doing. There's livestream tickets you can get. There's gonna be replays of it as well if you can't watch it live on January 28th. But the virtual ticket as well, there's gonna be Zoom breakout groups so that you can have a very similar experience that we're gonna be doing live. but it's an all-day transformational experience that includes guided meditations, group work, lectures, and different teachings that we're gonna be going through together. So if you wanna check that out, click right here, join and activate your highest timeline in 2023, and let's do that together.
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