Losing Control, Finding Serenity: How the Need to Control Hurts Us And How to Let It Go

Daniel A. Miller, JD, is the author of the best-selling Losing Control, Finding Serenity, a Foreword Reviews Book of the Year Award Finalist, and The Gifts of Acceptance, a Library Journal Best Wellness book of 2018, Benjamin Franklin multiple award winner, and 2018 Forward Reviews Book of the Year Award Finalist in Family and Relationships. Like most compulsive controllers, Danny was always driven to succeed. He graduated from UCLA with honors in business administration and finished in the top 5 percent of his class at the UCLA School of Law.

While still in his twenties, he became a popular real estate instructor in the UCLA extension program, and in his thirties he wrote a critically acclaimed, best-selling professional book, How to Invest in Real Estate Syndicates (Dow Jones-Irwin, 1978). He later founded the California Institute of Real Estate Education, which offered state-licensed seminars to thousands of real estate professionals.

Financial success came early to Danny. Celebrities and other wealthy people entrusted him with large sums to invest on their behalf. By his midthirties he could afford to live in the exclusive Old Bel Air section of Los Angeles.

But for all his achievements and success, Danny had no sense of inner peace and serenity. He was imprisoned by his fears, anger, and anxieties—all bedfellows of controllers—and thus not open to the joy and wonders all around him.

After suffering a series of traumatic events and financial setbacks that he could not control—no matter how hard he tried—he finally began a new life journey based on letting go of control and accepting people and things as they are. He surrendered to the ups and downs and twists and turns of life instead of resisting them and trying to control people and events.

Over many years, he learned effective tools and strategies for letting go of control and accepting “what is” with his family and friends, as well as in sports, creative endeavors, and the workplace. In the process, he became an artist, a published poet, a successful businessman, a champion senior tennis player, a happily married man, and a much wiser parent—all while cutting his work time by more than half.

Thus, through letting go of control and embracing life as it is, Danny found a different and more gratifying kind of success—an internal, core sense of well-being. He now writes and speaks about the profound benefits of letting go of control and practicing acceptance. His website www.danielamiller.com features over 145 of his blog posts on the control and acceptance dynamics, his poetry and paintings, and keynote speaker information.