Your Life Is In Your Hands

You can only be happy when you’re alone if you like the person you’re alone with. I think today’s society has taken away from alone time.

I am a big believer in taking 100% responsibility for our lives because there are great advantages to holding this mindset throughout life. As my dad would say: "Your life is in your hands. You can do whatever you like with it.".

Taking responsibility helps gain control of our emotions. It keeps us feeling in control of our lives. It gives us a path forward during any difficulty that arises.

It makes sure we don’t give away our power in life. We all can control our thoughts and actions. We all can make decisions throughout our lives that impact the direction of our lives.

While the benefits are enormous, the consequences of doing this are minimal. If we take 100% responsibility and it turns out that external factors made the difference in success or failure, we didn’t lose anything. Those factors would hurt us either way. At least when we take responsibility, we choose our response to those factors.

But this isn’t normal. Most people do the exact opposite. Instead of taking responsibility, they come up with reasons why things are not their fault. They say that others are the reason for their suffering and unhappiness.

Photo by Mathew MacQuarrie on Unsplash

Instead of taking control and working to improve, they hold a complacent attitude. They think, “what difference does it make if I am going to fail anyways.”

One of the biggest hurdles if you want to change your attitude to being responsible for your life is to realize that you have choices. These are presented to you on an ongoing basis. Whether you realize it or not YOU are the one making the decisions.

The reason this is an obstacle is because those options are not typically good ones. We don’t have the option of some easy, simple, successful choice versus one that is an obvious failure. Instead, everything looks similar. And most of the time, they all look bad.

I wonder how much more productive we would be if we didn’t talk about how productive we could be. I wonder if it would be easier to ‘find our purpose’ if there weren’t thousands of blogs and people telling us how we should find our purpose. And I wonder if everyone would be happier if we didn’t over analyze everything to the nth degree using the myriad of social media and blogging outlets.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a hater. I have a blog. I use social media. And I definitely over analyze everything. But there was a time I toild a student of mine who was an online addict and told her to take a break from everything. I told her to stop talking and start doing. And here’s what she said after a month: "First, I found that I was lonely." Why do you think she was lonely? It is simple: We are so accustomed to our ego being stroked by the people we surrounded ourselves with online that we have forgotten what it was like to be alone. Someone once said: You can only be happy when you’re alone if you like the person you’re alone with. I think today’s society has taken away from alone time.

Even when we’re alone, we’re still communicating; be it on Twitter, Facebook, blogging, google + or the next “big thing”.

Moving on, she said:"I was productive. I wasn’t writing about 'getting out of my comfort zone'; instead, I was working to push myself out of my comfort zone. I found work to challenge myself and enveloped myself in it."

I could remember the time I took a long break from online activities as well. I had time to speak with my families – to find out how their days were – and to just talk about something…or nothing at all…and while we may all feel like our “tweeps” or the people who read our blogs are our friends – I would say that they are a new “type” of friend…but not the type whose house you can go to at 4 AM when something is wrong.

Most importantly, I was doing.  I wasn’t talking about what I WOULD do, or what I DID do.  I just did.  And I realized that while talking on WhatsApp and social media and all of these other communication tools are great to market oneself; they also take away from the concept of self.  All of the sudden, people need positive reinforcement for writing a blog post or building an audience.  I would ask, are they ‘doing’ for themselves?  Or so they can receive the positive feedback their egos crave?

I wonder when this movement of talking about oneself will end.  I wonder if it will end.  We naturally think we’re interesting; and by that we inherently want to be liked, to be noticed.  But most importantly – I wonder what would happen if we all just stopped talking about what we are doing, or did, or going to do – and just started doing.

Photo by Terry Vlisidis on Unsplash

So I plead with you to discipline yourself.  Be honest with yourself.  Take some time alone and find the real reason you are seeking constant communication, approval, or even disagreements.  Could it be that you, too, have forgotten how to be alone?  And you’ve forgotten how to “do” without talking about it?  Take a step back.  You’ll be amazed at what you find.

But having a choice between bad options is still having control. You still have the ability to choose your path forward. You may have to choose the best of a bunch of bad choices, but you still choose. And you choose how you proceed.

We all have control in our life but too often we give it away. We imprison ourselves because we don’t feel the options are fair. We want better options. But those usually only come after making other decisions.

We may want a better job. But we don’t want to go back to school. So, we say we don’t have an option and have to feed our family. We may even half-ass our approach to work because we don’t think it is fair. But that limits our chances of getting promoted.

I remember my doctor telling me that my health has deteriorated, and I should stop all unhealthy stuff like sleeping more and less stress. I do not feel it is fair because I thought I needed to make some sacrifices which can only be done by having less sleep. But I still have choices. I can ignore his advice and do whatever I want and face the consequences. I can start to change my sleeping habits. And, the choices I made to that point are the reason why I am getting the advice in the first place. In other words, WE are the ones responsible here. We can take control. We can decide, even though we don’t like the options.

To gain control in your life, start to learn to see the choices you have. Understand that the choices usually start as a bunch of bad options. But if you continue to make choices that improve your future you will soon have better options. But work through those early decisions to slowly start yourself on the path of improvement.

Sorry for the long break……I guess I am back.