Letting Go and the fear of losing control

Image by Lawrence Sinclair via FlickrI've had a bad case food poisoning the last two days with dashes to the bathroom every hour.  Its a pretty rotten feeling to not be able to control your bowels.  I got the cold sweats and the feeling of diarrhea.  I almost messed my pants at work I had to rush out of my job and head to the john to do my business. 

I remeber somewhere in psychology that this function of controlling our bowels serves as a guide lines to how we live our lives.  This is were the terms Anal retentive and Anal expulsive come in.

The term anal retentive (also anally retentive), commonly abbreviated to anal, is used conversationally to describe a person who pays such attention to detail that the obsession becomes an annoyance to others, and can be carried out to the detriment of the anal-retentive person:


An anal expulsive personality is broadly defined as exhibiting cruelty, emotional outbursts, disorganization, self-confidence, (sometimes) artistic ability, generosity, rebelliousness and general carelessness

What I learned about myself is that I tend to do a lot of forward thinking, worrying, and a lot of research to avoid failure.  Yesterday I had a photoshoot and the week before that I had spent many hours on flickr looking at different photo examples.  I even went out and bought some cheap props which I never even used and the photo ideas i got online,  I never used as well.

When I got there I simply adapted to the environment, my subjects and use my equipment to the best of my ability with the skills and knowledge that I have gotten from previous experiences.   My photolocation was a small bedroom with large mirror and an windows with large maple tree outside.  It was a gray cloudy day and the lighting was not that bright so i had to mix flash with natural light and also had to slow down my shutter a bit too much but also had shake reduction in the camera.  These are all the real life situations that I responded to.
In the end I think I got some really good shots and I hope they will like and enjoy them.


I realized what a waste of time and money it was to try to avoid a negative outcome by over studying.  Sure one might say that well maybe it helped some but in the end you just have to trust yourself and get in there and do it the best you can and stop trying to compare yourself to others.

This is hard because no one wants to fail but if you just let go things will take care of themselves.  Realize that you really have no control over that outside stuff, heck many people don't even have control over the inside stuff.  My letting go you let go of trying to win, of a previously conceived idea of what the prize or end looks like and you become open to infinity possibilities.