How To Get Control Of Your Life
How To Get Control Of Your Life
How to get control of your life. Many folks come to our clinic asking questions about how to gain control of their emotions or their habit patterns, their sense of anxiety or depression that’s going on in their body or in their brain. And I’m gonna give you one strategy for that. If you can imagine in life we have this sphere of task, of things that we actually can control in your life right now, what can you control, right?
And then typically, surrounding that is a sphere of things that we have some influence over. But our influence, and Stephen Covey talked about this 27 years ago, our influence rarely expands much greater than our circle of control. And so folks who have poor habits, who can’t manage their thoughts, who can’t manage their emotions, their sleep, substances,
Their sphere of control was very small and very likely their ability to influence others then is very, very limited, right? Because they can’t follow through, they can’t model the behavior, there are lots of obstacles there.
Many times clients will come to us and their thoughts are focused mostly on components of life that are completely out of their control. And in doing so, that sphere of what we control starts to shrink. Because why? Because we’re wasting our juice, so to speak. Our life energy is going out toward…
a world that we can’t do anything about. And this is becoming an epidemic in the world we live in. How so? Our cell phones, TV, computers. We are constantly exposed to a world that pulls us into drama. Drama about what’s going on with politics, drama around the world. It could be businesses. All sorts of ways that we begin to use our life energy, our mind and our focus gets sucked.
way outside of our world of control. Meanwhile, we’re wasting that life juice, not nurturing this body and this mind over which we can develop more skills, more discipline, better emotional control.
So the key is this.
If you feel like life is spiraling out of control, notice how often you’re focused and thinking about things that you can’t do anything about. It could be, again, anything outside of your work.
Because as you do that, do every moment, think about this, here’s a moment, a moment, a moment, right? So let’s just think about all the moments that start to add up where your attention is going outside of your sphere of influence, right? Your sphere of control. You have no influence there, you have no control. So if we want to be able to feel stronger to get more in control of our life, we have to make a…
firm decisions is first step is not the only thing but the first critical step is that we gotta start investing our life energy toward something that we can control something we can actually have some capacity to change right and so I could I could stare at my neighbor’s yard and and complain about what she does or he does and how this or that I can’t do anything about that
How much time am I spending in my yard? Like that’s the key. Same thing with other people’s behavior. Complaining about their behavior, how they act, what they do, maybe how much they drink or eat or whatever. But how much attention do I give to my habits, my mind? Because the only way we can begin the process of self mastery is through learning to focus our attention
on the one brain slash body that we have some control over and that’s this one, right? Interesting of course, what’s interesting is that when we gain mastery over some aspect of our body or our brain, we learn some area and then our skill begins to develop, we start to have more influence, right? Because what we control, whether that’s…
through developing a business skill or maybe we became a don’t know a bodybuilder maybe we became an athlete and we can coach others but we are able to share our skills make a difference and have influence only when this brain body gets better and the only way that can improve and enhance is by bringing our attention back
to this core area where we have the capacity to execute some control. And then it takes time. We have to nurture the capacity to build better thoughts, to build better habits, to build business acumen, to go back to school. But to waste our time, to waste our energy dealing with the drama in other people’s lives or in politics or in…
the community or our neighbors, wherever that’s at, to waste our energy talking about the things we can’t do anything about. It’s simply a way we give up our happiness. We give up our control. We give up everything about a joyous life that we were meant to have, which is to take care of this first and then see what you can do to make a difference and inspire and nurture and help others along the way. Right? So
The first key piece in getting control of your life then is to take whatever steps necessary to bring your attention back home to this body, this brain, this life, and to start to build those skills there. Some of you may be listening and maybe you have even physical pain, right? And so it doesn’t, in a sense, change. There’s nothing to be done about physical pain.
Focusing on that pain only makes it worse. That is a given. Good research supports this. So you do whatever it takes to get your attention and energy moving forward to focus forward to what you want to feel, to what you enjoy, to what you appreciate. Anything that you can do, and this would be a general rule as well, anything that you can do to improve how your brain is feeling,
will improve how your brain functions. Anything that you can do to improve how your brain is functioning improves typically how you feel. So things like sleep, for example, or no brainers. Exercise, no brainers. Lots of water, no brainer. Healthy food, no brainer. Cutting out almost all the phone and Facebook and drama on TV, no brainers.
Invest your time and energy in you, your thoughts, your intentions, your meditations. Learn to develop an inner space of quiet and ease. Do those take time? Yes, they do. If you happen to have a very dysregulated brain because of trauma or history or genetics or whatever, those skills can be very difficult to learn and to master.
You may want to consider a consult with me and look at whether or not something like neurofeedback may be helpful for you because it gives you a way to help regulate those thoughts, to focus better, to be able to sustain your efforts better. helps you sleep better, reduces anxiety. Neurofeedback is the dominant focus of my clinical practice now. But it is essential that we talk about this issue of where you focus because when
My new clients come in and they’re spending all their energy and time. They’re getting ready to do neurofeedback. They’ve done a QEEG. They’re all prepared for a game plan to change their life. But they don’t want to give up their phone. They don’t want to change their video gaming habits till two in the morning. They want to keep eating junk food and all these simple carbohydrates. There’s certain things that we’ve got to do to bring our attention back to this body, this brain, this life.
in order to gain control. And a lot of times it is by eliminating the options that suck our attention outside, beyond our control, and to start the process of becoming interested in what thought can I think? What can I focus on that’s an incrementally better feeling thought? People who are feeling me crappy, they want to feel joyful. I get that.
Everybody gets that. But it doesn’t work like that. The brain just doesn’t shift like that. So the goal is then what’s the incrementally, what’s the better feeling thought? And you work on that today and you work on that tomorrow and you just keep working your way into what feels a little better to think about. Same thing would be true with habits. What habits do you have? Well, what’s a habit? Not the perfect habit. It’s not doing everything all at once.
What one habit, know, based on looking at other people, reading, perhaps your own experience, if I start this habit, even if I start small, it’s gonna create a better feeling state a week, a month from now. You start those habits, right? So the key is to start investing in habits of thought and physical habits that feed and nurture you to feel better.
What’s going to create a little better feeling? What if I turn this off? If I focus on this? If I read this book? If I listen to more of that versus getting into people’s drama and things that we can’t do anything about? You want to wake up call. And this is a good way to find out where you’re at is really just keep a pad around and just notice how much time are you on your phone? And out of that time, how much energy is spent?
reading the news, looking at drama, thinking about drama and talking to people about drama.
How much is it watching shows that have drama? Versus, if, and again, if and only if you want to get control of your life, then invest that time in the only human being that can really do something about it, and that’s you, my friend. All right, yeah, I’ve rambled on quite a bit here. If you’ve tried all these things and again, you find it’s not working, your brain is just dysregulated, give me a call.
Let’s chat about whether neurofeedback is a path for you. Otherwise, take everything here that I mentioned as an opportunity to step into a world where you begin to exercise control of your life with a few simple steps by focusing, by eliminating all the distractions that involve things outside of your control, focus on what you can control, and watch that sphere begin to build.
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