The Real Key to Freedom: Letting Go of Fear and Control

Hey!

What is up?

So, you want to be free…

If you really want to be free—truly free, not just comfortable here and there—you need to demand that every single moment of your life be the highest moment you’ve ever had. 

Think about it: Why aren’t you soaring through life, so high that you can’t see straight from the joy of it all? There’s only one reason—fear. 

Fear is the root cause of everything you do to protect yourself, to make yourself feel safe. It’s that simple. Whether it’s a person, place, or thing, fear drives your actions. You’re afraid something’s going to go wrong, that you’ll get hurt, that someone will do something to upset your fragile sense of security. 

Because of that fear, you spend your entire life trying to reduce it, trying to build a life where things feel safer, more controlled, more predictable.

And if you ask me what people do out of fear, I’d say just look around. Every single thing that 99.9% of people are doing, they’re doing out of fear. They’re trying to find a way to live that’s more comfortable, safer, more controlled. They surround themselves with friends, family, finances, jobs—all in an effort to be okay, to keep things from going wrong.

But let me tell you: You don’t want to live your life in defense mode. You don’t want to spend your days trying to make sure things don’t go wrong. You want to be okay—genuinely okay—and then go out and enjoy your life. You don’t want to live your life not okay and constantly fighting with life to make it okay. That’s a losing battle. If there’s any particular way that life has to be for you to be okay, then by definition, you are not free.

And I want you to generalize that statement. Any particular way that anybody or anything has to be for you to be okay means you’re trapped. Why? Because life isn’t going to conform to your desires. 

You have very specific ideas about how things should be for you to feel okay. But guess what? Life doesn’t work that way. You’ll have to manipulate people, situations, and circumstances to get them to be the way you want. And that’s a lot of work. It’s exhausting, isn’t it?

Think about it. You have your needs, but so does everyone else. And we’re all looking at the same world, needing different things from it. She needs that person not to be here tonight; someone else needs that person to be here. Who wins? That’s how conflicts start—because everyone has their own idea of how things need to be for them to feel okay.

As long as you have any particular way that life needs to be, you’re not free. You’re a prisoner to your own needs and desires. You’re constantly working, struggling, and worrying about keeping things the way you want them. 

And even if you manage to get things just right, you’re going to worry about losing them! 

The harder you work to get someone to like you, the more you’ll worry that they’ll stop.

Because deep down, you know it didn’t just happen naturally—you manipulated it, and now you have to keep it going.

I once heard this saying: “You touch it, you own it.” And it’s true. 

The more you try to control, the more you have to keep controlling. You’ve touched so much, tried to control so much, and now you own it all. But what’s the result? 

Anxiety, fear, and worry. 

How about focusing on things other than what you should be creating.

You distract yourself from your purpose on earth of creating something with anxieties about control and fear.

You’re either afraid of not getting what you need or afraid of losing what you’ve managed to get. 

Either way, you’re trapped.

But here’s the good news: There’s another way. 

There’s a way to live that doesn’t involve trying to control everything. A way to be okay, genuinely okay, no matter what happens in your life. And it all starts with letting go of the idea that the outside world has to be a certain way for you to be okay.

So why aren’t you okay? 

What is it inside of you that’s not at peace, not in harmony? Don’t justify your lack of well-being by saying that things outside are or aren’t a certain way. Always remember - That’s a total lie. Your state of well-being has nothing to do with what’s happening outside. The outside world is just going about its business. It’s you who’s decided that things need to be a certain way for you to be okay. But that’s not true.

Instead of trying to control the world, why not work on what’s inside of you? Why not figure out why you’re not okay in the first place? What are you afraid of? Because fear is what’s driving your need to control, your need to make everything a certain way. And as long as you’re trying to solve your inner problems by controlling the outer world, you’ll never be free.

You have to get to the point where you say, “It doesn’t matter what happens outside. I’m going to be okay anyway.” That’s real freedom. 

Let’s extrapolate that.

Real freedom is equal to:

• It doesn’t matter if I don’t get the house I want, I’ll still be okay

• It doesn’t matter if I don’t get the amount of followers i want, I’ll still be okay

• It doesn’t matter if I don’t make the money I want, I’ll still be okay

• It doesn’t matter if I get the partner I want, I’ll be okay

And on and on…

Think of the thing you want the most in your life right now.

Now tell yourself, even if I don’t get that, I will still be okay. In fact, I’m okay right now not having it.

Wow.

Freedom.

Right here, right now.

You can live in a mansion or a shack, be surrounded by wealth or barely scraping by—none of it should affect your inner state of being. Because it’s not about where you are or what you have. It’s about whether you’re okay inside, no matter what’s happening outside.

Now, don’t get me wrong—it’s not easy. But it’s also not easy to live your life constantly trying to control everything and everyone around you. Think about how much energy you spend trying to make life conform to your desires. What if you took that same energy and focused it on being okay, no matter what? I’m telling you, that’s how long it would take. The moment you decide to be okay, no matter what, you’re free.

But you can’t be 99% okay. You have to be 100% committed to being okay, no matter what. That means every time something happens that challenges your okayness, you let go. You let go of whatever it is inside of you that’s not okay with what’s happening. You don’t participate in the game of trying to control life so that you can feel okay. 

You let go, relax, and allow life to unfold.

And as you keep letting go, as you keep relaxing and refusing to take a stance on how life should be, you’ll find that things start to change. You’ll find that you’re free. Free from the need to control, free from the fear of what might happen, free from the anxiety of trying to hold it all together.

It’s like the ripples in a lake. If something drops in the lake and creates ripples, you don’t need to jump in and try to smooth them out. They’ll come back to their own harmony on their own. That’s how life works. When you let go, life finds its own harmony, and you find your own peace.

So here’s the challenge: 

Can you let go? 

Can you let life be what it is, without needing it to be any particular way? 

Can you set the world free and, in doing so, set yourself free?

This, I have found, is the real work of spirituality. It’s the opposite of what most people are doing. Most people are saying, “I’m not okay, so the world needs to change.” But the yogi says, “I’m not okay, so I need to change.” And the only thing that needs to change is that I’m not okay.

Once you get that, once you understand that your well-being has nothing to do with what’s happening outside, you’ve taken a major step toward true freedom. You’ve started the real work—the work on your inner state. And as you keep letting go, as you keep releasing your grip on life, you’ll find that everything you’ve read about, everything you’ve heard about, is true. You’ll experience it for yourself.

So take a bold stand. Relax, release, and let go. When you feel fear, let it go. When you feel anxiety, let it go. When you feel the need to control, let it go. Don’t participate in the game of trying to make life be a certain way. 

Instead, let life unfold as it must.

And as you do, you’ll find that you’re okay—truly okay—no matter what happens.

And that, my friends, is the key to true freedom.

If you’d like to delve deeper into these ideas, I encourage you to apply to join The 8AM App. With the intent of ensuring and keeping up the quality of our community as we grow, we have decided to make the 8AM app an application only community. Through my IG story posts we’ve received a heavy influx of applications and are a bit backed up… But as a loyal member of the 8AM newsletter, I am giving you the private code to skip the waitlist for the 8AM app.

The private code is ‘88’ and you can put it here in the application. This will jump you right to the top of the list.

Best,

Arlin

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