Ask yourself the question “who’s in charge?”
If you can honestly answer that you’re in charge of your life – you can skip this, though I urge you to read on to be sure.
Think about what you do day to day. If you’re like most people, you have a job, you have a family you spend time with, you go to the gym a few days per week, and occasionally you go outside the box and try something new.
You also might feel like something is missing, or like you have more to give and you feel stuck in this vicious cycle. Your days look the same and you’ve seen minor progress toward your goals.
You quickly realize that you’re living your life by a script and all of your habits and routines have taken over.
Here’s the truth though, you are in charge..of your decisions. Everything you do is a decision. To sleep in, to eat the cookies, to skip the workout, to ignore the good things in your life.
Once you decide to do something else, you are in charge.
How to Own Your Life
Owning your life starts with the belief that you are in charge, and then making decisions every day that help you work toward improvement in the areas of diet, sleep, stress, exercise, and personal goals.
Creating new beliefs
Many people identify by what they do, and who they were in high school. Except things change. Aside from all the things you get to learn and experience over time, technology changes, your environment changes, even your body. In fact, you’re completely different from who you were just 5 years ago, never mind high school!
The things you once believed to be true may no longer hold any value, and instead your holding on to the beliefs because well…you’re human. Human beings are creatures of habit, and memory.
However, you can create new beliefs through intention and mindfulness. Want something to be true? Make it so. You do it every day! One day you might decide “I want to drive a Ford F150”, and so you begin the research and contact a dealer. Then you get an F150. You manifested this to be something that is true because you decided, committed to it, then took action.
Want to be in charge of what you look like, how you feel, how you react, etc? Get out of your own way.
Be decisive
Indecision is a curse and plagues people throughout their entire lives leaving them with regret and dissatisfaction. Want to do something? Do it! Make a decision. Do it or don’t do it. Instead people dance around the decision making in fear of who knows what and end up with a bag of regrets to unload on their death-bed. “I wish I had taken more risks” is (probably) the most repeated statement by people nearing the end of life. I’d bet on that.
Own the things you can control
Often, people will go out of their way to try and change things that are far out of their control, ie. other people. Even worse, they’ll take it personally when things don’t exactly go their way.
There are so many things outside our control. Leave those alone. They’re still going to be there after you do the real work. And when you’re ready, you’ll look at them with a whole new perspective.
What are some of the things in your control?
- Health
- Your “inner circle”
- Your mindset
Simple, yeah?
It could be simple. Except you’re very likely allowing other people to control all of these things. Can you relate to any of these?
- Your health is on a decline because you gave into instant gratification or wanted to take the easy way out. You sleep poorly, eat too much refined sugar, and live off coffee and alcohol.
- Your closest friends are the same people you’ve spent time with for the last decade and they have equally stressful lives, with equally mundane routines. You remain unchallenged, and fall into the same patterns. Your inner circle controls you, not the other way around.
- Your mindset is fixed, and you believe that who you were 15 years ago is who you’re going to be for the rest of your life, including all the skills, knowledge, and personality traits you had. This of course is not true.
These limits are self imposed and totally breakable, with practice.
How
Start with self awareness. Check in with yourself by answering some questions:
- How am I in control of my health?
- In what way is my health out of control?
- Who are the friends or people I’d like spend more time with?
- What skills and knowledge have I gained in the last 3 years?
- What are my positive personality traits?
By answering these questions you can open up a lot of opportunity for yourself.
Owning your life is all about opportunity. When you own your life, you see all problems and worst case scenarios as a chance for you to learn, improve, level up, be happier. When you own your life you recognize all the good in your life, instead of the bad. There is a domino effect, and the discipline you have will carry over into all areas of your life.