personal development on Controlling Others

Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.

So how can we form deep Christian convictions without dividing the church? Let’s take a deeper look at convictions themselves. Convictions are like light: they come in many colors and form across a sp...

Whatever controls us is our lord. The person who seeks power is controlled by power. The person who seeks acceptance is controlled by acceptance. We do not control ourselves. We are controlled by the ...

With the New Year comes resolutions. But are your resolutions an attempt to assert control over your life, rather than submit to God's transformational plans? Alan Fadling offers his wisdom as a p...

Lord Jesus—the same yesterday, today and tomorrow, and the author of change, who’s constantly doing “a new thing,” which makes us sit up and take notice. We admit, we’d be more comfortable with a pred...

In their excellent book Invitation to a Journey , M. Robert Mulholland and Ruth Haley Barton describe the foundation of life as being spiritual in nature. This means we are constantly be “formed” s...

Not being able to govern events, I govern myself.

Let’s state the obvious, because the obvious is easy to take for granted and forget. You are not other people. You are you. You have no control over other people. You have no absolute control over wha...

We all go through desert seasons and have the opportunity to determine how we will respond. The cyclical frustrations I faced in regard to my desire for control, fear, and the longing to feel chosen w...

Lord of all, you are in control. We live under the illusion that we have control, yet all life is sustained by you. We live for our own purposes, we try to become gods over our own lives. We unjustly ...

[I]f to govern realms belong to few, Yet all who live have passions to subdue. Self-conquest is the lesson books should preach, Self-conquest is the theme the stages should teach.

Fearful people live within restrictive boundaries…. People who live in fear feel compelled to remain in control. They attempt to control themselves and they attempt to control their world. Often despi...

Discipline yourself and others won't need to.

Freedom in Christ allows you to control the desires that once controlled you.

Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies subject to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their f...

Meekness is power under control.

Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself.

The conclusion is straightforward: self-control requires attention and effort.

Lord, though you should guide us, we inform ourselves; though you should rule us, we control ourselves; though you should fulfill us, we console ourselves. We think your truth too high, your will too ...

You stay alive in the practice of leadership by reducing the extent to which you become the target of people’s frustrations. The best way to stay out of range is to think constantly about giving the w...

If we want to turn in the direction of what is life giving, we are going to have to let go of Winter. “’Let go’ of the dark, which you wrap yourself in like a straitjacket, and let in the light. Stop ...

We delude ourselves into believing that if we can just get everything done, if we can only tie up all the loose ends, if we can even once get ahead of the crush, we will prove our worth and establish ...

The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.

The way most of us serve keeps us in control. We choose whom, when, where and how we will serve. We stay in charge. Jesus is calling for something else. He is calling us to be servants. When we make t...

Uncontrolled temper is soon dissipated on others. Resentment, bitterness, and self-pity build up inside our hearts and eat away at our spiritual lives like a slowly spreading cancer.

The insight that we can exercise some control over our thoughts and feelings is deep in Christianity.

As a writer, my great interest is human nature, and in particular, the subject of happiness. A few years ago, I noticed a pattern: when people told me about a “before and after” change they’d made tha...

Anyone can become angry—that is easy; but to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, and for the right purpose, and in the right way—that is not within everybod...

There’s some debate about the nature of self-control. Some argue that we have a limited amount of self-control strength, and as we exert it, we exhaust it. Others counter that willpower isn’t limited ...

Manipulation is the use of influence to control others for personal gain. It is the dark side of influence. … While manipulation is inherently evil, influence is the best way to lead and move others t...