Summary
Who’s in control of your life? Who calls the shot?
Can you honestly answer that it’s you? Or is it another person in your life? Your boss perhaps? A significant other? It may not even be a person at all – it could be alcohol or television or envy itself.
Many of us sleepwalk through our lives because we don’t feel like we are truly in control. We have plans and goals, but still find ourselves somehow carrying out someone else’s agenda for what our priorities should be.
Ironically, we may even prefer to think of ourselves as answering to someone else or an authority figure. Deferring to another person or force effectively lets us off of the hook and gives us someone to blame for not following our dreams.
The day to begin assuming control of your life is today. There are steps we can all take today to begin to assert control over our daily decisions and the path we will travel. Read on to learn more about how you can gain control of the steering wheel again.
Transcript
The yearning to be free and independent is deeply ingrained in our psyche and popular culture. And yet we all too often find ourselves deferring to those we perceive as our bosses or authority figures. Obviously many organizations and institutions require a hierarchy of some type in order to function effectively. But too often we fail to question the employee mentality, even when we are far from the office. We find ourselves continuing to seek permission and blessings from others on the decisions we are making, rather than accepting autonomy and responsibility for what it is we want to do.
How many of us allow our fear of the unknown or our anger at changing conditions to keep us in situations that we know are wrong for us? How many of us have stayed in the wrong relationship, the wrong job, the wrong community because we didn’t feel empowered to take a leap and leave? Every time you allow inertia to be your default response to challenge you are effectively choosing to control yourself as well – choosing to remain trapped.
Control Is Something You Take
The only way to gain control over your life is to assert it. You cannot wait for anyone’s permission or dutifully pass the time until it’s your turn. There will always be an abundance of people in your life more than willing to make decisions about how you should best be spending your time. Drowning out those voices and following your heart is a necessary step to launching your way on the correct path.
The course that your day unfolds on does most decidedly often hinge on factors you can’t control. Weather, logistics, the desires of others – there are many forces out there that might impinge on everything from your daily commute to how productive your workday unfolds. What you can decide, however, is how you choose to respond to challenging conditions. Nobody has the ability to alter your moods or control your thoughts – how you respond to adversity is entirely within your purview.
Think of the analogy of a rainy day – there is surely nothing you can do about precipitation on a day when you had planned a picnic or an outdoor excursion. But you can control how you respond. Do you complain about the injustice of it all and sulk indoors? Or do you open your umbrella and jump in the puddles? There’s no mystery why the ones who get on in this world are the ones you’ll see out in the storm wearing bright yellow rain jackets, undeterred by the unexpected.
There is a lot about the world that is out of your control. But there are lots more that you can ensure is entirely within your authority. There are a range of exercises that you can implement on a daily basis to exert more mindful awareness and control over your day.
Strategies To Take Control
You can start by making a concerted decision to set yourself up for success each day. You can do this by removing yourself from harmful or toxic environments. This can often involve specific people as well. It can be a painful process to come to the realization that some relationships, even of long-held friends, are doing more harm than good to your plans and personal growth. Accept that time changes and sometimes requires you to grow out of old sets of relationships as well.
You may also want to consider avoiding making impulsive or brash decisions. Take time to think and reflect before you leap into an action or decision you may ultimately come to regret. The biggest mistakes we make usually happen in the blink of an eye. By taking a moment to breathe and reflect before choosing a given option, you are reducing the odds that you will look back in regret later on.
An easy way to exert more control over what happens to you is to simply get more sleep. By resting well and giving your brain a chance to fully process the events of each day, you will be able to meet the challenges of the next day with all of your talents fully flexed and ready to go.
Experiment with systems and tracking mechanisms that work for you. As the adage goes, what gets measured gets done. If you are serious about committing yourself to, say, healthier living or a more productive side venture, track how you are using your time with ruthless scrutiny. You may even be able to use an Excel spreadsheet or other tool to help you track just where the heck all those hours of the day have been flowing. You can then adjust accordingly and ramp up your efforts in areas where they are more sorely needed.
A big aspect of getting the shape of your life under control involves managing your budget properly. If you are reading, odds are that you are keenly focused on maximizing your financial prospects. While maximizing your talents and doing work is obviously the most important factor in generating big financial returns, the other side of the equation is just as important – the part that involves living within your means and not living a lifestyle that isn’t conducive to your budget. As the saying goes, you can’t have champagne tastes while living on a beer budget.
The power of visualization can also help you enormously in setting your goals. Use visual aids and mental reminders to keep you on track toward meeting your ambitions. It can be very hard to stay motivated and focused if you lose sight of what it is exactly that you are working so hard to attain. So if you aspire to a new house or a boat in terms of material possessions, you might hang up photographs of the ones that you want in your office to help you keep you motivated and in control during those long nights and days of toil.
A key to avoiding distraction and getting thrown off of your target track is staying focused. You may be tempted to multitask and do a number of priority activities all at the same time, but I urge you to resist this desire. You will find that the net effect is that you just do all of these items less effectively. If you are prioritizing carefully and cutting needless time sucking activities out of your day (such as mindlessly watching television or watching the internet), then you should be capable of directing more concentrated attention to achieve one single task at a given time.
You Have The Power Within
It can certainly be scary on some levels to exert total control over your life, or to even begin to realize that this power rests in you. Many of us are innately more comfortable with crediting blame and credit to others in our lives, taking direction from them. Even if we complain about it, ceding authority to others lets us get off the hook and avoid accountability. Changing this mindset is the single biggest step you can take toward taking control of your life. Remember that you are the one you have been waiting for – there is nobody coming to step in and lead you onto the right path. The control and the power is all up to you.
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