The wonderful thing about life is you have the ability to re-create your life at any given moment. All you need to do is to make the decision to do so. It really is as simple as that. There’s a saying that states it the best, “If you don’t like where you’re at, move. You’re not a tree.” Although that may seem simplistic, it is the truth. If you want to change your life, then do so. You, and only you, have the power to create the life you want. All you have to do is decide you are going to do it and then make it happen.
However, you may be in a situation that seems hopeless and you feel stuck. Honestly, is the situation truly hopeless? In most cases, no, it is not. We are the ones who put the chains on ourselves. We tell ourselves out of fear and low self esteem that we cannot reach our goals. Although we have seen ordinary people accomplish amazing feats, we somehow believe they had better breaks or they are just plain better than us. J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series who is now richer than the Queen of England, was once a single mother on welfare. Harlan Sanders, a sixth-grade dropout, did not start his famous restaurant chain, Kentucky Fried Chicken (now KFC), until he was 65 years old. Anna Maria Moses spent her entire life farming and embroidered for pleasure. At the age of 76 she developed arthritis, forcing her to give up her beloved hobby. However, not to sit around and feel sorry for herself, she started a new pursuit – painting. At the age of 78, an art collector discovered the fruits of her new hobby. A year later, Grandma Moses (as she is now better known) saw her paintings put on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. She lived to be 101. All people have hardships in their lives at some point. It is how one responds to those times that can lead to better, or worse, lives.
Many people are like the hornet that ran incessantly into a closed garage window trying to go outside. Over and over it charged with all its might to flee the garage through the window, but to no avail. Eventually it died on the sill of that window. The ironic part of the hornet’s attempted escape was the car garage door was wide open. All the hornet had to do was turn in another direction and have flown out. However, its focus was on that window and there it died, although with a simple change of plans, it could have easily been free. Are you unwittingly trapping yourself like the hornet? Do not become so fixated on only one path you believe will get you to your destination that you never examine alternative paths.
BE AWARE THAT EVERY CHOICE TAKES YOU IN A DIRECTION
C.S. Lewis once said, “Isn't it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back, everything is different."
Understanding that statement is the key to transforming your life. To change your life, you don’t need to do something drastic like quit your job or walk out the door on your spouse, although sometimes that may be necessary. In general, to turn your life in a new direction, you need to start making the choices that will get you where you want to head, and the sooner you start doing this, the sooner you’ll end up with a new life.
Whether you like it or not, we are faced with numerous choices daily. The choices you make, over time, will take you somewhere. There’s no getting around this. For every action there is a consequence. It is up to you to make the choices that will get you to where you want to go instead of where you do not want to be. For example, every day you may buy a cup of coffee at the local coffee shop. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s a little pick me up in the morning, and you may meet friends while you do so. That’s a daily choice you may not think that much about. It’s only a couple dollars, right? However, if you chose to make that cup of coffee at home instead, you would save roughly $730 a year. With that $730, you could join a $30 per month health club. Now instead of drinking a cup of coffee in the morning, you could go to the gym and start losing weight, eventually getting to your goal weight. After a year, you would have saved $370, be at your goal weight, and most likely have met new friends or dragged your old ones with you. Your life could be completely transformed by changing one simple choice – not buying a daily cup of coffee. Think of what can be done if you become conscious of all your choices.
IMMEDIATELY START TAKING FULL RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR LIFE
Most people go through life blaming others or situations for their misfortunes instead of looking within themselves. They look to external sources to fix their lives, when in truth the only place to seek change is from within. You are where you are because of the choices you have made. Now you may think you didn’t cause your situation. For example, let’s say an arsonist burned down your home, causing you to lose everything you own and leaving you with nothing. True, that was not your fault. However, how you respond to the situation is your responsibility. What you do now is up to you. You could sit in the ashes and wallow in self-pity, or you could rise like a phoenix and renew your life. It’s all up to you. Grandma Moses picked another hobby when arthritis stopped her being able to embroider. This led to a new career in her late 70s that lasted another 25 years.
The arson scenario is a far-fetched example, and, yes, there are situations out of your control. However, how you react to those situations and the choices you make regarding those events are one hundred percent your responsibility. Yours. The minute you take ownership of your life is the moment where your life will begin to change. If an individual is intentionally preventing you from moving forward, you have to keep trudging along despite his or her efforts. You’ll eventually get through the muck.
Are you overweight? Unless there is a true medical reason, the reason you are overweight is you do not exercise enough and eat too much of the wrong foods. There’s no magic pill. It’s not because you were born in the wrong family. It’s the choices you make. No one else is putting that food in your mouth. You are. You are the one who chose to go through the drive through instead of taking five extra minutes to go into the adjoining grocery store and buy a salad. Here again, two different choices result in two different outcomes. Everyone on this earth has the same amount of time, yet some people choose to exercise while others choose to watch television or spend an extra hour sleeping. It is all in the choices.
Having financial troubles? At some point, most people hit a financial snag. Some people face the problem head on and solve it, while others do not. Have credit card debt? Tear up the credit cards and create a plan to pay them off. Perhaps you could consolidate them. Don’t make enough money? Find a job that pays more. Can’t find a job that pays more? Learn the skills necessary to get a higher paying job, start a part-time business on the side, or get a second job. If you are saying, “I can’t do that” then you are not taking responsibility for your life.
Take ownership of all aspects of your life, including those caused by external factors. It is your responsibility to create the life you want. Yours and yours only. You will be amazed at how liberating it is when you start to live this way.
CREATING THE LIFE YOU WANT
Take some time alone to complete the following exercise and commit three months of your life to tackle your life obstacles. You’ll be pleased at the direction your life will soon start taking. The following process will help you examine alternative solutions to your problems, release your limiting thoughts, and come up with a plan to create the life you want.
Most likely you are reading this because you are unhappy with an area of your life or possibly your entire life. Before you can start transforming, you must pinpoint exactly what is making you unhappy.
1. Take out a piece of paper and write down everything in your life that is causing you stress and making you unhappy. Write down everything. Hopefully, this should not take more than five minutes.
2. Once you are done, group and arrange the list by those that are most important to you. Usually, one problem is greater than the others. Put that at the top. The other problems may pale by comparison, and you may realize that by tackling the biggest problem your other problems may not seem as significant.
3. Now focus on each problem and take full responsibility for it. Own it. Write down how you participated in its creation and maintenance. Be honest.
4. Once you have completed step 3, read over your answers. If you blamed others for the problems in your life, you are not taking ownership of your life. For each instance where you blamed external factors, go back and take out the blame on others and outside circumstances. Examine only the role you played in its creation or in its maintenance.
5. Now go back and look at what is holding you back. Could it be laziness, anger, negativity, procrastination, irresponsibility, low self-esteem, distractions, fear, jealousy, or pride? It is important to recognize how these factors formed your present situation. If you answered pride, your ego got in the way. Try for the next three months to check your ego at the door when dealing with others. Practice humility. If you would rather play on social media for a half hour than walk the dog for the same amount of time, you may have chosen laziness. If you find you are jealous of others, it is you, not them, that is the problem. They are where you want to be. Instead of disliking them, use these people as role models to emulate. Look at what they have that causes your jealousy and work to bring these positive traits into your life.
All the negative emotions stem from one base emotion: fear. Work on letting go of the fear-based emotions, such as anger, worry, and jealousy. You are the one creating these and they, in turn, are blocking you from moving forward. The opposite of fear is love. Choosing fear, unless, of course, you are in a life-threatening situation, will always serve as an obstacle to a happy life. Choosing love will take you in the right direction.
6. The next step is to take your problems and replace them with a solution or goal. For example, you may have written “in foreclosure.” A reasonable solution to replace this problem would be to “own home outright.” It does not have to be the home you are living in now. It could be a smaller home. It could be a home in another part of town or the country. It also could be the same home. Remember the story of the hornet killing itself to get outside by not looking at alternatives. You do not need to go into detail of how you will get to your goal. Just write the goal on an index card or a piece of paper. Close your eyes and visualize your life with that outcome every morning and every night for five minutes. This will train your mind to start making the choices that will bring you that outcome.
7. You will need to create an action plan, but before you can do that, you must let go of what you cannot control. It does no good to worry over things out of your control. So take the original problem, write it on a piece of paper, and burn it, throw it in the trash, or put it in a faith jar. A faith jar can be a jar or a box where you put your problem and leave for it the universe, God, or your version of a higher power to handle. Have complete faith it will be solved and release its hold on you.
8. Now it’s time to attack the problem head on. Do not ignore it hoping it will go away. Get out another set of index cards or a piece of paper and write your solution on the top of it. Then write the FIRST step you need to take to make it a reality. You do not need to write out an entire plan. That can be overwhelming and limit future opportunities. Just write down one step. Then do that step. Once you are done with that step, write down the next step, always keeping the end in mind. Complete that step, and repeat the cycle. Remember, little steps over time will get you to where you want to be. Believe strongly and have faith that you will create your new situation, and you will get there.
Finally, be at peace with where you are in the present moment. Be grateful for all you have. There are people out there praying to have what you have. Be appreciative of that. Remember life is a journey, not a destination, and enjoy the trip.
However, you may be in a situation that seems hopeless and you feel stuck. Honestly, is the situation truly hopeless? In most cases, no, it is not. We are the ones who put the chains on ourselves. We tell ourselves out of fear and low self esteem that we cannot reach our goals. Although we have seen ordinary people accomplish amazing feats, we somehow believe they had better breaks or they are just plain better than us. J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series who is now richer than the Queen of England, was once a single mother on welfare. Harlan Sanders, a sixth-grade dropout, did not start his famous restaurant chain, Kentucky Fried Chicken (now KFC), until he was 65 years old. Anna Maria Moses spent her entire life farming and embroidered for pleasure. At the age of 76 she developed arthritis, forcing her to give up her beloved hobby. However, not to sit around and feel sorry for herself, she started a new pursuit – painting. At the age of 78, an art collector discovered the fruits of her new hobby. A year later, Grandma Moses (as she is now better known) saw her paintings put on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. She lived to be 101. All people have hardships in their lives at some point. It is how one responds to those times that can lead to better, or worse, lives.
Many people are like the hornet that ran incessantly into a closed garage window trying to go outside. Over and over it charged with all its might to flee the garage through the window, but to no avail. Eventually it died on the sill of that window. The ironic part of the hornet’s attempted escape was the car garage door was wide open. All the hornet had to do was turn in another direction and have flown out. However, its focus was on that window and there it died, although with a simple change of plans, it could have easily been free. Are you unwittingly trapping yourself like the hornet? Do not become so fixated on only one path you believe will get you to your destination that you never examine alternative paths.
BE AWARE THAT EVERY CHOICE TAKES YOU IN A DIRECTION
C.S. Lewis once said, “Isn't it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back, everything is different."
Understanding that statement is the key to transforming your life. To change your life, you don’t need to do something drastic like quit your job or walk out the door on your spouse, although sometimes that may be necessary. In general, to turn your life in a new direction, you need to start making the choices that will get you where you want to head, and the sooner you start doing this, the sooner you’ll end up with a new life.
Whether you like it or not, we are faced with numerous choices daily. The choices you make, over time, will take you somewhere. There’s no getting around this. For every action there is a consequence. It is up to you to make the choices that will get you to where you want to go instead of where you do not want to be. For example, every day you may buy a cup of coffee at the local coffee shop. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s a little pick me up in the morning, and you may meet friends while you do so. That’s a daily choice you may not think that much about. It’s only a couple dollars, right? However, if you chose to make that cup of coffee at home instead, you would save roughly $730 a year. With that $730, you could join a $30 per month health club. Now instead of drinking a cup of coffee in the morning, you could go to the gym and start losing weight, eventually getting to your goal weight. After a year, you would have saved $370, be at your goal weight, and most likely have met new friends or dragged your old ones with you. Your life could be completely transformed by changing one simple choice – not buying a daily cup of coffee. Think of what can be done if you become conscious of all your choices.
IMMEDIATELY START TAKING FULL RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR LIFE
Most people go through life blaming others or situations for their misfortunes instead of looking within themselves. They look to external sources to fix their lives, when in truth the only place to seek change is from within. You are where you are because of the choices you have made. Now you may think you didn’t cause your situation. For example, let’s say an arsonist burned down your home, causing you to lose everything you own and leaving you with nothing. True, that was not your fault. However, how you respond to the situation is your responsibility. What you do now is up to you. You could sit in the ashes and wallow in self-pity, or you could rise like a phoenix and renew your life. It’s all up to you. Grandma Moses picked another hobby when arthritis stopped her being able to embroider. This led to a new career in her late 70s that lasted another 25 years.
The arson scenario is a far-fetched example, and, yes, there are situations out of your control. However, how you react to those situations and the choices you make regarding those events are one hundred percent your responsibility. Yours. The minute you take ownership of your life is the moment where your life will begin to change. If an individual is intentionally preventing you from moving forward, you have to keep trudging along despite his or her efforts. You’ll eventually get through the muck.
Are you overweight? Unless there is a true medical reason, the reason you are overweight is you do not exercise enough and eat too much of the wrong foods. There’s no magic pill. It’s not because you were born in the wrong family. It’s the choices you make. No one else is putting that food in your mouth. You are. You are the one who chose to go through the drive through instead of taking five extra minutes to go into the adjoining grocery store and buy a salad. Here again, two different choices result in two different outcomes. Everyone on this earth has the same amount of time, yet some people choose to exercise while others choose to watch television or spend an extra hour sleeping. It is all in the choices.
Having financial troubles? At some point, most people hit a financial snag. Some people face the problem head on and solve it, while others do not. Have credit card debt? Tear up the credit cards and create a plan to pay them off. Perhaps you could consolidate them. Don’t make enough money? Find a job that pays more. Can’t find a job that pays more? Learn the skills necessary to get a higher paying job, start a part-time business on the side, or get a second job. If you are saying, “I can’t do that” then you are not taking responsibility for your life.
Take ownership of all aspects of your life, including those caused by external factors. It is your responsibility to create the life you want. Yours and yours only. You will be amazed at how liberating it is when you start to live this way.
CREATING THE LIFE YOU WANT
Take some time alone to complete the following exercise and commit three months of your life to tackle your life obstacles. You’ll be pleased at the direction your life will soon start taking. The following process will help you examine alternative solutions to your problems, release your limiting thoughts, and come up with a plan to create the life you want.
Most likely you are reading this because you are unhappy with an area of your life or possibly your entire life. Before you can start transforming, you must pinpoint exactly what is making you unhappy.
1. Take out a piece of paper and write down everything in your life that is causing you stress and making you unhappy. Write down everything. Hopefully, this should not take more than five minutes.
2. Once you are done, group and arrange the list by those that are most important to you. Usually, one problem is greater than the others. Put that at the top. The other problems may pale by comparison, and you may realize that by tackling the biggest problem your other problems may not seem as significant.
3. Now focus on each problem and take full responsibility for it. Own it. Write down how you participated in its creation and maintenance. Be honest.
4. Once you have completed step 3, read over your answers. If you blamed others for the problems in your life, you are not taking ownership of your life. For each instance where you blamed external factors, go back and take out the blame on others and outside circumstances. Examine only the role you played in its creation or in its maintenance.
5. Now go back and look at what is holding you back. Could it be laziness, anger, negativity, procrastination, irresponsibility, low self-esteem, distractions, fear, jealousy, or pride? It is important to recognize how these factors formed your present situation. If you answered pride, your ego got in the way. Try for the next three months to check your ego at the door when dealing with others. Practice humility. If you would rather play on social media for a half hour than walk the dog for the same amount of time, you may have chosen laziness. If you find you are jealous of others, it is you, not them, that is the problem. They are where you want to be. Instead of disliking them, use these people as role models to emulate. Look at what they have that causes your jealousy and work to bring these positive traits into your life.
All the negative emotions stem from one base emotion: fear. Work on letting go of the fear-based emotions, such as anger, worry, and jealousy. You are the one creating these and they, in turn, are blocking you from moving forward. The opposite of fear is love. Choosing fear, unless, of course, you are in a life-threatening situation, will always serve as an obstacle to a happy life. Choosing love will take you in the right direction.
6. The next step is to take your problems and replace them with a solution or goal. For example, you may have written “in foreclosure.” A reasonable solution to replace this problem would be to “own home outright.” It does not have to be the home you are living in now. It could be a smaller home. It could be a home in another part of town or the country. It also could be the same home. Remember the story of the hornet killing itself to get outside by not looking at alternatives. You do not need to go into detail of how you will get to your goal. Just write the goal on an index card or a piece of paper. Close your eyes and visualize your life with that outcome every morning and every night for five minutes. This will train your mind to start making the choices that will bring you that outcome.
7. You will need to create an action plan, but before you can do that, you must let go of what you cannot control. It does no good to worry over things out of your control. So take the original problem, write it on a piece of paper, and burn it, throw it in the trash, or put it in a faith jar. A faith jar can be a jar or a box where you put your problem and leave for it the universe, God, or your version of a higher power to handle. Have complete faith it will be solved and release its hold on you.
8. Now it’s time to attack the problem head on. Do not ignore it hoping it will go away. Get out another set of index cards or a piece of paper and write your solution on the top of it. Then write the FIRST step you need to take to make it a reality. You do not need to write out an entire plan. That can be overwhelming and limit future opportunities. Just write down one step. Then do that step. Once you are done with that step, write down the next step, always keeping the end in mind. Complete that step, and repeat the cycle. Remember, little steps over time will get you to where you want to be. Believe strongly and have faith that you will create your new situation, and you will get there.
Finally, be at peace with where you are in the present moment. Be grateful for all you have. There are people out there praying to have what you have. Be appreciative of that. Remember life is a journey, not a destination, and enjoy the trip.
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