Life has a way of moving really fast when we are not paying attention. One day you’re walking across your High School auditorium stage accepting your high school diploma, and the next, you’re sitting at your kitchen table freaking out about the bills, your own kid’s graduation, and your parents’ move to assisted living. You may wonder who is really in charge.
But guess what, it’s you. You are in charge of your own life, and you can make choices that rock the world if you want to.
If you want to make a change, or start a new venture, or even improve the path you’re already on, the fact that you are the one in control is an important factor to accept. It does not mean that you haven’t had struggles, or you’re overly privileged, or even that you’re not.
It just means that you can make choices and take action that leads you to the lifestyle you desire or take you away from it. To help change your mindset to accept your control, let’s think about a few ideas to help you move forward.
- You’re a Work in Progress – Whomever you think you are today, and whomever you want to be tomorrow, is not really finished. You can decide to be different when you learn new things about yourself and the world. Maybe you never heard of the career or business you want to start until you were 40, that doesn’t mean you can’t do it. You may not be able to, but you should research it and figure out if it’s feasible or not before you give up.
- Try New Things – You cannot know for sure what you want from life if you have no idea what is out there. Most of us never travel much further than our state’s capital and rarely leave our hometown unless it’s for a job, and then we stick around there too. Even if you can’t travel, read a wide variety of books, try new things, and dip your toe into new ideas so that you can figure out what you want to do. Take some risks and let yourself be uncomfortable.
- You Can Create Positive Habits – Most people think of habits as bad, but you can develop positive habits that lead to your desired results. Figure out what you want to accomplish and study what others have done before you to succeed. For example, if you want to become a baker and open a bakery, you need to learn how to bake first, which means you need to add baking to your daily routine.
- You Can Learn Goal Setting – Honestly, one of the best things you can learn for yourself is goal setting. There is a specific method of goal setting that works for most situations. Look up and study SMART goal setting and then implement it in every area of your life, including your business.
- Learn to Self-Reflect – Self-reflecting means that you are careful, honest about who you are, what’s happening around you in and out of your control, and how you affect what’s happening. Everything you do going forward should be judged by what you can do differently or better or even what you did right and not what others are doing, have done, or could do. All you can do is control yourself. That’s it.
- Practice Makes Perfect –You don’t need to be perfect, but this is a saying that most people relate to. If you want to accomplish something, you need to keep doing it until you accomplish it. If you want to become a fantastic painter, even if you’ve never picked up a paintbrush, you can. You just have to start practicing now and keep practicing as often as possible.
When you fully accept that you are in control of your decision making, that means you’re in control of your life. This doesn’t mean that outside influences can’t mess up things for you, but it does mean that with good planning and thoughtful introspection, you can figure out what you want and how to get it, then take the steps to see it through.