One of the things that myself and Brian do every single day is that we do our best to get people to become aware of the control that they can have over their mind and their lives. This month I want to talk about the notion of control.
In the world we live in, we are often faced by challenges, challenging people and tough times. In such moments, how we deal with them reveals what kind of person we are in terms of the kinds of decisions that we make. The way successful people deal with problems has usually one thing in common. Their response is in the form of the question ‘How can I solve this problem?’ When they meet a challenging person the most successful communicators respond in the form of the question ‘How can I best deal with this person?’ When they face a disappointment or tough time they respond in the form of the question ‘How can I make the most of this and learn from the experience?’ These questions serve to tune our brains to what to do about situations rather than the unfairness, difficulty or stress of a situation.
This is where we uncover true control. We often feel out of control of our life because the world is such a big place and so many events happen so quickly, but we always have the control to respond and this freedom is a freedom which must be appreciated. Far too often, we hide behind our own excuses and the limitations we allow ourselves to have… that we do not enough time, money or we are not smart enough, tall enough, thin enough, good enough.
We hide behind such excuses or we blame the outside world for our lack of fortune or lack of resources. The truth is though that we are generally all the resources that we need most of the time. The most important resources are our beliefs about ourselves, the world and what’s possible for us to do. They are also our own ability to generate powerful and resourceful states of mind and feelings which we can do by creating thoughts inside our head.
You see, we can control our thoughts by becoming aware of what our present thoughts are and then deliberately changing them to more useful thoughts. We can take pictures we make that don’t work and replace them with those that do work. We can take control over our internal voice and shut it up from saying negative things and start talking to ourselves with compassion, respect and encouragement. Then we can learn to generate great feelings inside ourselves and the more we practice the better we get and the more naturally we feel happier and happier, better and better.
Next, we can control our lives by deciding to create a future that we want and setting our goals. Once we are clear about making our goals well formed and we imagine them vividly, we can decide how we are going to go about and achieve them. We can look for what we need to do so and we can set ourselves time targets. In our careers, we often set ourselves targets and always reach them because that is what the job is about. When you start to do that with your own life, wonderful things can happen.
You also take control over your attitude by choosing the think about what happens to you in a different way. By looking for the good in every situation and asking the most useful questions like those three outlined above, you learn to control your attitude towards the universe and that gives you even more freedom. You also develop the freedom to enjoy every moment more so that you can create more fun and joy in your life. This again is accomplished by accepting the control you have over what to focus on.
We all have far more control over our lives than we credit ourselves with. It’s all about deciding to take that control and do something with it. Then with the right questions, with the right thoughts, with the right actions and the right plans, you can begin to master your life in ways you wouldn’t even have dreamed. You will soon discover the universe is set up to reward you.
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