The 5 Things You Genuinely Control
Spoiler Alert: They’re all within you.
For the most part, control is an illusion. Yet many people strive for it, demand it, push it, force it, and worse. Whether it’s something tangible or intangible, lots of people have issues with control.
Some control outside of yourself is genuine. If you’re behind the wheel of a car, you’re controlling it. Holding a gun, sword, bow, spoon – you’re controlling what it does. Notice what these both have in common – you are wielding them.
Other people? You have no control over them. What other people think, feel, or do, you can’t, don’t, and won’t control. And frankly, despite the many messages to the contrary, that’s a good thing. Why? Because nobody wants someone else to control them.
Guiding, instructing, directing, advising? Sure, people seek people for these. But full-on control? Nobody wants anyone else to control them. There is nobody who wants to cede their self-sovereignty to others, no matter what they promise.
In the end, when all is said and done, there are really only 5 things that you and I genuinely control. That control, for the record, is via active conscious awareness. That’s because only the conscious mind allows us to look within ourselves to see the things we can control.
They are your thoughts, feelings, intentions, approach, and actions.
Taking that control via mindfulness is both relatively easy and simultaneously an effort. But it’s worthwhile because that’s how you control your life experience.
First, I’ll explore each of these, then show how you can gain control of them.
Thoughts
Thoughts dominate your mind. They are nearly constant companions. Thoughts take on many forms. They can be ideas, concepts, inspirations, notions, deep, shallow, useful, useless, and more. For the most part, they’re neither good nor bad. It all depends on what you do with them.
The average human has thousands of thoughts per day. Some come from experiences and interactions with the world around you. Most, however, are internal, some conscious, some subconscious. They can make you crazy when they bombard you. It’s not hard to be overwhelmed with thoughts about this, that, or the other thing.
Ultimately, you choose how and where the thoughts you have take you. But thought is just 1/5th of your inner mindset/headspace/psyche self.
Feelings and control
Some of the most convoluted, complex, and confounding things we all have are feelings. Part of what makes them so crazy is that they’re all made of 2 components. Feelings have both a what and a how.
What you feel is the name of the feeling. Happy, sad, excited, horny, and so on. How you feel is the form they take. Happy can feel like warmth in your heart, a hug, a color, and more. Anger can be hot, cold, dry, and more. The what and how of feelings vary depending on circumstances.
Feelings can stir memories both good and bad; drive you to make choices and decisions emotionally and irrationally; and can be so complex as to leave you stunned. They can be incredibly difficult to describe because you, and only you, know what and how they are, for you. That’s why one person’s anger involves screaming at others while another’s is a silence that can drop the temperature in a room ten degrees.
Feelings tend to get combined with thoughts. Together, unchecked, they can lead you to places where you find yourself uncertain, distressed, and feeling as if you have no control. But you can control them.
Intentions
Intentions are the direction of your thoughts and feelings. They’re the formation of emotions and can be incredibly complex.
Intentions are the heart of goals, purposes, and chosen directions. This is often where thought and feeling are combined to intangibly set the initial direction you’re going.
One thing about intentions that’s unique is that they only exist in the now, as part of the conscious mind. You can look back at the past and explore what you had hoped to do via intention, but not truly set or see it. Likewise, the future is the result of intention, so it’s not visible there.
Also, intentions are wholly under your control. They only exist when you consciously develop them.
Intentions are the gas pedal. They’re what propel you forward.
Control your approach
Approach is threefold. Neutrality, positivity, and negativity. While you can choose not to take a positive or negative approach to something, neutrality is often a cession of control.
Another key here is that approach never guarantees an outcome. Ergo, you can take a positive approach but wind up somewhere negative. But it’s important to know that where you take your intentions, thoughts, and feelings will be colored by your approach.
The best way to explain this is: Let’s say you’re about to visit a person. You can see that visit as something positive, to look forward to, and approach it that way. Or you can see that visit as something negative, to slog through and endure, and approach it that way. A neutral approach cedes that to the whimsy of the Universe’s randomness.
Approach, like intention, is a function of conscious awareness. You can see what your approach was like in the past but only control it in the now via mindfulness.
Which brings us to the ultimate control we have.
Actions
Actions are what you do. Some are performed via rote, routine, and habit, subconsciously. They just are. But when you control them via choices and decisions you make, you take control.
The outcome is always an unknown. That’s because the future is unwritten. But when you don’t make choices and decisions and take actions consciously, you cede your power. Might as well be asleep at the switch and let the chips fall where they may.
What you do is wholly under your control. Nobody can make you do anything you don’t desire to do. They can coerce you, cajole you, push you, but not control you. That is ultimately on you.
Hence, inaction is a choice. Deciding not to make a decision is an action.
Action is how you control your life’s direction. It’s where you combine thought, feeling, intention, and approach to make something manifest. Granted, that something might be tangible or intangible, but it’s still yours to control. Action is doing, and doing is how you move yourself and the world around you.
This is why so many messages out there are designed to disempower you and make you believe actions lead to pain. Certain people and entities think they can control you and me. But they can’t and don’t. Even when you cede your power, you’re still choosing, ultimately, action or inaction.
So how do you control thoughts, feelings, intentions, approach, and actions?
Mindfulness for control
You are of 3 minds. The unconscious mind, which is your bodily infrastructure and not at all in your control. Your subconscious mind, where memories, rote, routine, and habits live alongside your beliefs and values. While mostly a sponge, you can take control of this via your conscious mind.
Your conscious mind exists entirely right here and now. It’s a product of the present. The conscious mind is where your mindset/headspace/psyche self lives. It’s how you interact between your inner being and the outer world in this moment, right here and now.
To actively work with this is a matter of mindfulness. Yes, this means being “woke.” Given that the opposite of woke is asleep, I know what I prefer. But when you practice mindfulness, you can gain control of your life experience.
How does this work? All it takes is to focus, be present in the here and now, awake and aware, and ask these questions:
- What am I thinking?
- What am I feeling?
- How am I feeling?
- What are my intentions here?
- Is my approach positive or negative?
- What am I doing/what actions am I taking?
These questions can only be asked and answered right here and now. But when you ask and answer them and focus on that, you are here, now. This ultimately gives you control and opens you to change the answers if you are dissatisfied with them.
If your thoughts are dark, you can choose to lighten them. If you are feeling down, you can find something to raise your mood. You can set an intention if you have none, and turn a negative approach positive. This will ultimately put you in control of your actions and what you do and don’t do.
The power is yours
Yes, this takes work. No, you needn’t choose and decide it all – it’s okay to leave some things to your subconscious. But if you desire to be empowered and take control, practicing mindfulness lets you control these 5 things that ultimately make up what your life is.
Nobody can empower you. They can guide, assist, instruct, and help. But ultimately, you choose to empower yourself. Taking control of your thoughts, feelings, intentions, approach, and actions does exactly that. When all is said and done, this is how you choose and decide who, what, where, how, and why you are.
The meaning of life is to live it; to experience it, good and bad. Controlling these 5 things is how you do that to the fullest, rather than letting life live you.
Do you prefer to be in control of what you can be in this life?
This is the seventh-hundred-seventy-second (772) exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – applying mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.
I share my philosophy because I desire to make a difference in the world and help as many people as I can to find their empowerment with conscious reality creation.
Thank you for joining me. Feel free to share and/or repost where it might do good for you and others.
The first year of Pathwalking, including some expanded ideas, is available here.
Also, please check out my author website for the rest of my published fiction and nonfiction works.
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