Take An Honest Look At Your Life
There is so much to see every day. The barrage of information we face daily is enough to make our eyes turn in a two-week-notice.
It seems like we thrive on this information overload. We see everything, hear everything, and have an opinion about most everything. But in all of these, we do not know the singular most important thing that we should: self.
When was the last time you took a look at yourself and the life you’re living? I am not referring to an inpatient evaluation you did just for the sake of it. I mean, honestly, looked at yourself and all the elements in your life. Are they aligned? Does your life have a meaningful pattern? Are you living a controlled life, or is it a pressure ball of chaos with no direction?
The first step in changing your life, or anything really, is to know that a change is needed. And this knowledge can only be gotten by evaluation.
Does your life look like you want it to look?
Are you living a life that is yours? Is the picture of the reality of your life the same as the one in your dreams? Does your life make sense to you? Are the dots connected?
Are you living for you, or you’re living for someone else? Competition is good when it’s healthy. It keeps us on our toes because we realize that even when we are good, there is better to aspire to be. But this spirit of competition becomes poisonous when it forms the basis of our every decision.
Too many people are living lives that modeled after other people. In chasing the noise that exists around us without a filter, their life has gotten away from them. Now, every day, they go around mechanically doing the same things and going through the motions. You’ll probably not have any inkling if you were around them; they have mastered this art.
Are you happy when you think about your life? Not the kind of happy that panders to popular opinion and expectation but rather the type that blooms from somewhere deep inside you at the knowledge that you’re exactly where you should be, doing what you’re doing.
Take some time to decide how you want your life to look.
If I asked you what the most precious commodity of today is, what would your answer be?
I can imagine the possible answers you might want to put forward. The most precious commodity of today will be time. Regardless of whom you are or what your story is, time is the one field we all come to with equal hands; there are the same 24 hours in a day for us all.
We spend this time on productive and unproductive things alike. Deciding what you want your life to look like can seem very simple, and maybe it is. It can also turn out to be the most critical decision you’ll ever make.
The only way you can work towards an end goal is to know what the end goal even is. Once you have that knowledge, you can then take the daily steps that put you on the path to creating the life you truly want.
I firmly believe that every one of us has the capacity to change our lives and the lives of people around us. Sometimes, the big picture comes pretty quickly. “I want to live a successful life that impacts others.” That sounds nice, but it is also vague. What are the things you need to do that will ensure you lead a successful life that impacts others?
Here, the bits and pieces that make the big picture come to play. Set goals, but beyond setting goals, give yourself a timeline and action plan to ensure you’re setting smart goals that have a chance of becoming a reality.
In the journey to a better you, you need to evaluate your life up to this point carefully. Chances are you have goals that are things you have had in mind for a while. What has kept you from achieving them?
Is it you?
Is it the people around you?
Is it the influence of your environment?
If you don’t know what the hiccups are, then you’ll be like the person doing the same things over and over again and expecting a different result. It’s not going to happen.
What kind of conversations do you have with yourself? Before a thing manifests on the outside, it must have taken root on the inside. You will not gain control over your life if you do not even believe in the possibility of gaining control over your life. Are you a “there is no way I can do it” person or an “I know I can figure it out” person? These differences in outlook make all the difference.
Who is in your inner circle? Who are the people you trust enough to share your goals, dreams, and struggles? Are they people who are invested in your living the life you desire, or do they pull you down with words incessantly?
Know who you are, what you want, and then begin to tailor your life in that direction. Too many people are too busy going nowhere. They are always busy, frantic, and occupied. They seem always to have one project or the other in the pipeline, but there is no substance and no control. They have a lot of activities going on, but there is no direction; they are on a speeding train to nowhere.
Imagine if you could lay yourself wholly bare and had access to everything in your heart and the innermost part of your soul; what would you do with that information? Imagine you know the unnecessary things you are doing that keep you bogged in activity without direction; what would your reaction be?
Often, you hear people sad after taking a wrong turn saying if they had known, they would have done it differently. But you can know. This does not imply that your life will be a series of happy turns, but it does mean that even when things do not work out according to plan, you know where you missed it and can find your way back.
How Do You Change Your Stars?
How do you get access to this information? It’s simple, really: talk to yourself. Rise above the noise and the constant grind of activity around you. You can visit the park, find a quiet spot, and commune with nature. You can take a walk at a time where not a lot of other people are out and about; this could be early in the morning or later in the evening.
Give Yourself The Gift of Time. Spend Some With Just You.
Explore the options you have fun with and take out time to be with nobody but yourself. Ask yourself honest questions and give answers to them. It is funny how most of us attempt to run away from the one person we can’t run away from ourselves.
Become still, meditate and ask yourself what you want in your life. What are your values? What is important to you?
Be still, meditate and ask yourself what you want in your life. What are your values? What is important to you? These questions are simple enough, but the result is unquantifiable. The things that are important to you and your value will go a long way to determine the path you choose to tow in accomplishing your goals.
Picture Yourself Five Years From Now. What Do You See? Then At Ten Years. What Changed? What Remained?
Close your eyes, picture yourself five years from now, what do you see? Hold that picture and then imagine yourself ten years from now; is the image similar? What changed? What remained the same?
Now imagine yourself ten years from now; is the image similar? What changed? What remained the same?
This is not an exercise to make you feel fancy. This is a practical exercise that is a need, something you must-do if you want to be in the driver’s seat of your life and avoid activity without an end goal.
So do it regularly. Like any other thing in life, practice makes perfect. You might not get a picture good enough to use the first time you do it. You might even feel a bit silly and question yourself. Stick with it, put yourself through the process and it will get easier.
The Similarities and the Differences Will Help You To Find Your Course and To Make the Adjustments Needed to Refocus on Your Goals and Your Destination.
The end of the year is usually a time where a lot of us are hit with mega-sized motivation to do better. You can harness all this positive energy and go through this process at the end of the year. It will help you go into the New Year with an idea of the things you need to let go of and those you should not release from your life.
This is not to say you can only have a conversation with yourself at the end of the year; far from it. This is a process you can replicate as much as possible, but if for some reason, you can’t do it often, at least carry it out once annually.
The results are not tangible, but I can tell you they have the capacity to change your life. You only have to take the first step.
Got a Question or Comment? It is always good to learn things and to hear what others think. We would love the chance to know what you think about this post.
Disclaimer: You may or may not agree or like what we said. We may or may not like your opinion. Those things are okay. We promise to be cool about it and hope that you will be too. Disagreeing doesn’t have to lead to anger, especially if it begins with respect.
To protect anyone that swings thru here from disrespectful content, not disagreeable only disrespectful, we monitor the content. We will remove, from public view, anything that is hateful or appears to be an attempt to stir up anger or troll.
We will attempt to contact the author of any comment that is removed for two reasons. We will try to ascertain the original intent, in case we removed something that did not deserve to be removed. The other purpose of contacting the author is to allow them a chance to voice themselves in a “more private” arena. This will help us get to know them, and hopefully, the dialogue will help us better understand each other.
So start dropping that knowledge below. Thanks Agragape.
Regardless of how life is currently going for you, I believe that we are all in control of our own life. Even when things don’t go as planned, we get to decide how we handle those setbacks. Just a simple thing like changing your mindset can have a huge impact on your life. Thanks for sharing this helpful blog post writer.