Control Yourself and Change Your Life

It's funny - if that's the right word for it - so many people get so frustrated because they feel that they're not in control of their own lives. And the irony is that almost none of these people will take control of the one thing in their lives over which they can exercise absolute and total control - their own state of mind.

A couple of important points before we talk about state of mind. First of all, you're not in control of your life and you never will be - there are just too many variables at play for you to be able to control them, to say nothing of the fact that you cannot control anyone else at all. Secondly - and this is the really important point - you can influence others and greatly influence the course of your life but only if you're in control of your own mind. It's not hard to understand why most people become so frustrated!

If you're normal - and there's an overwhelming chance that you are - your mind is all over the place. From the normal ordinary distraction from which the average mind suffers every day, to the more deeply-rooted ravings and wanderings of the subconscious mind (you're not aware that it's going on - but it is - it's subconscious!) the normal mind is completely and utterly out of control. If you're not in control of your own state of mind you have no chance whatsoever of influencing the course of your life - except, perhaps, from the perspective that you could make it worse than it already is!

If you want to influence the course of your life, if you want to change your life for the better, you're going to have to grab control of the levers of power in your own head - you're going to have to start pushing your own buttons and turning yourself on! At the moment, you're switched off - your subconscious is idling in the past, thinking that it's the present, your conscious mind is idling in the future, worrying that what it doesn't want to happen will actually happen - there's very little of you focused on living your life at all.

Gaining control of your own mind means that you will be able to decide to, say, take some important action in your life without your mad mind showering you with dozens of excuses and reasons why you cannot take that action. You'll be able to wave bye-bye to worry - because worry's only a thought that you, because you're not already in control, have decided to focus on. Stress will pack its bags and be on the same flight as worry! Stress is only you thinking that you're stressed! And all your feelings of inadequacy will be stripped bare are recognized for what they are - a load of useless thought that you've been dragging around with you all of your adult life. Your inadequacies are perceptions that you've chosen to believe because, once again, you haven't already taken control of your mind.

Think of the liberation - think of what you'll be able to do - think about how much more fun life could be - think of the carefree life that you'll be able to live. No, don't think about it - do it. Take control of the one and only thing that you can control in your life and everything else will fall into place. To control your mind you need to understand that it makes sense of your world and who you think you are by using your five senses. However, what you see, feel, hear, smell and taste is filtered through your 'stored knowledge' - the view that you have of you and the world that has been dragging you down for years. This filtering process has been ruining your life by warping reality into what now passes for your normal life. This filtering happens automatically - but you can stop it because, once upon a time, you lived, loved and laughed without that filter in place - when you were a young child.

You've got to become childlike - in the clear state of mind that you were in as a child, when you had no baggage, didn't see life through some dirt-encrusted filter - when you were all there, fully alive. What you have to do is stop your filtering process and see, feel, hear, smell and taste your life today for what it really is, not what you think it is. When you stop filtering you start living - you begin to realize that life is, in fact, full of potential upside, not overwhelmed with downside. You begin to understand that there are things that you can do that you never believed possible - because your beliefs were based on false, out of date, personal baggage.

So, come to your senses. Start putting time aside, every single day, to simply focus on what you see, feel, hear, smell and taste. Start re-training your mind to pay full attention to what's real and, in doing so, pay no attention at all to the unreal world of your habitual useless thoughts. Once you drop your filter, once you take control, everything in your life will change - you'll become the director of your own orchestra, the creator of your own life - a life that's really worth living.

About The Author
Willie Horton has been a Personal Development expert since 1996 - working with top leaders in major organizations. An Irish ex-accountant, ex-banker, published author and keynote speaker, he travels the world, from his home in the French Alps, enabling people "live the dream". All his work - including his acclaimed Personal Development Workshop - is now online at http://www.gurdy.net