You and Your Life Is the Best Place to Start
Your life is the only place you have any real control.
Spend any time on social media, watching the news, or even interacting with people, it looks like the world is going mad. So many crazy, bizarre, distressing things are happening in the world, across the country, and probably among people you know more intimately; it can all feel utterly out of control.
For some, getting involved and organizing protests, leading boycotts, driving people to polling places, and the like, makes them feel good. That gives them purpose and a sense of control. For others, participating in the above makes them feel the same connectivity. But even these actions have limitations, in that you have ZERO control of what impact/outcome they might produce.
Control is a fraught topic. This is largely because most control is utterly artificial or fleeting. Even in the midst of the current fascist leadership, which is all about artificial control, the pendulum can and will swing the other way. It might come with pain, it might be ugly AF, but history shows that the so-called control these people have will end. It always does.
Yet people have a personal need, a desire, a longing for control over their life experience. All too often, the focus for getting that is placed externally. But, in truth, the place to focus is within, not without.
The best place to start, to gain any genuine control, is with you and your life.
Look within to take control
There are some important facts we need to accept here. First, and maybe foremost, change. Change is the one and only constant in the universe. It can, will, and does happen. Most change simply is and happens outside of your control. A great deal of why the world is the way it is comes down to change and the inability of many to understand and cope with it. Then, various assholes weaponize that and take us to the current place of uncertainty, division, and derision.
Second, the only person in your head, heart, and soul, is you. Only you are inside your mind, body, and spirit. Ergo, you, and only you, can see your inner mindset/headspace/psyche self. Beyond this, only you can look into your subconscious to know your current and outdated beliefs, values, and habits, plus all your memories.
How do you gain control of your inner being? Active conscious awareness. Mindfulness. To do that, all you need to do is ask questions that can only be answered here and now, in this present moment, like:
- What am I thinking?
- What am I feeling?
- How am I feeling?
- What am I intending here?
- Is my approach (to this, that, or the other thing) positive or negative?
- What am I doing/not doing?
When you ask and answer these, in the present, you see inside yourself. That opens you to know yourself and then apply changes.
Applying changes, when the answers are not as you desire them to be, is how you take control. That puts you in charge of yourself, and from there you can make new choices and decisions to determine and create who, what, where, how, and why you are.
This is why you and your life is the best place to start.
You and your life is the best place to start
When it comes to taking what little control exists in this world, you and your life are the best starting point. Since you alone know what’s in your head, heart, and soul, you alone know what you need/desire.
At least, in theory, this is so. The problem is that all sorts of forces outside of you tell you to look without, not within. Blame that group, those laws, these circumstances. Give your time and attention to all sorts of things that you have little to no control over. Why? Because when we turn attention inwards, we get empowered.
Do you know why too many politicians, business leaders, and religious leaders dislike empowered people? Because swaying, manipulating, and influencing them gets extra challenging. Empowered people start from within before looking without, so they know better what they are truly and genuinely after. If you’re empowered, you need less assistance and guidance.
Note – not zero assistance and/or guidance. Nobody knows everything. We all need to turn to others to learn new things. The difference is taking it in and processing it before applying it versus accepting it blindly and going with it.
Since you alone know what makes you tick, what you genuinely desire from life, you and your life is the best place to start to gain any control at all. And, really, most, if not all the control you can and do wield is from within, not from without.
Learning who, what, where, how, and why you are often requires getting consciously aware in the here and now, then digging into your subconscious. In that way, you can uproot, change, and alter beliefs, values, and habits that are not you anymore. And that, right there, is the truest, most genuine control you can and do have in your life.
This is not at all selfish
There are, at present, far too many examples of selfishness, narcissism, greed, and corruption in the world. Or, more specifically, they are getting an awful lot of attention. Many, to avoid emulating them, lessen themselves to not appear selfish.
However, the truth is, real selfishness involves malice of forethought. It’s acting in ways that you know do hurt and harm to others. Setting boundaries, making time for self-care, and caring for your own mental, emotional, physical, and/or spiritual health, wellness, and wellbeing is not selfish. Real selfishness is doing things that harm others from a place of fear, lack, and/or scarcity.
Taking control of what you can, in you and your life, can and might cause others to question you and tell you that you are selfish. When you stop being a doormat, don’t put yourself last to your own detriment, and say no when you don’t want to say yes like you did before, that’s the impression some can and will get. Is that true selfishness? No. It’s not you causing them harm. This is about you guarding, protecting, and caring for your own health, wellness, and wellbeing first.
When all is said and done, you get only 1 chance to live this life. So why not make choices and decisions to live the life you desire? So long as you practice kindness, compassion, and empathy, both for yourself and others, you are not being selfish. Selfishness is unkind, uncompassionate, and doesn’t give a rat’s ass about anyone else.
You are worthy and deserving of experiencing life as fully as possible. To take what control you can, you and your life is the best place to start. From there? Who knows what good you can do for the world?
Starting with you and your life to find/take/create control isn’t hard
It’s all about practicing active conscious awareness (mindfulness) of your thoughts, feelings, intentions, and the positivity or negativity of your approach to direct your actions.
When you recognize and acknowledge that the majority of what you have control over starts from within, you can work with mindfulness to learn what that is, and change it if it’s not who, what, where, how, and why you desire to be. Knowing that you’re the only one in your head, heart, and soul, you can make active choices and decisions, mindfully, here and now, to take control of yourself and your life experience. From that, you can impact the world positively both for you and the greater collective good.
This empowers you. When you’re empowered, that can, in turn, empower others around you.
Consciously choosing your approach to life towards positivity or negativity — from the vast cylinder that exists between them — shifts life in ways that open you to more potential, possibility, and the like. From there, you can recognize, explore, and share where you are between the extremes and how that impacts you in the here and now.
The better aware you are of yourself, here and now, the better you can choose and decide what, how, and why your life experiences will be. When you empower yourself, it can spread to those around you and empower them, too. That is an amazing conduit to help reason overcome fear in the collective consciousness.
Thank you for coming along on this journey.
This is the six-hundred-forty-second (642) entry of my Positivity series. I hope that these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, reblog, and spread the positivity.
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