Who controls what you believe? Who has the final say about anything in your life? Are you at the mercy of your circumstances or are your circumstances at the mercy of the greatness within you? Here are some powerful and simple principles to increase your personal power and strengthen your mindset for a kick ass year.
1. Focus on those things that are in your control
“Nothing has any power over me other than that which I give it through my conscious thoughts.” – Tony Robbins
There are so many things that are outside of our direct control. The weather, the political climate, the economy, other people’s moods, and what other people think about us (Incidentally, we would be surprised if we knew how little people do think about us, and when they do, they’re probably thinking about what you think about them). The only thing that we can ever truly control is ourselves – our attitudes, thoughts, words and actions. And that is truly all that you really do need to control anyway. The better we get at realizing this resource and using it, the stronger it grows and the stronger our personal power becomes. Some of the biggest challenges we face come from mixing up the two – trying to change things outside of our control and ignoring those things that we can control.
Nobody and nothing can make you feel a certain way, it’s a choice, albeit an unconscious choice at times, but it’s still a choice none the less. We have practiced reacting to events instead of consciously responding to them, and we’ve gotten so good at it as a society that it’s become second nature. Rarely does a strong mindset just show up out of the blue, it’s something that has to be nurtured and trained. And since our mindset is the result of our continuous habits of thinking, habits can be changed and improved, and we can respond differently.
What other people think or are doing is not what matters, what matter is what you think and what you are going to do. It’s not the events of our lives that determine how things work out, it’s our chosen response to those events.
2. Trust the process
When you drive down a road how can you know for sure that some crazy person might not drive into you? We don’t know for sure, we just trust the process, knowing that should a challenge occur we will focus on what we can control (ourselves) and respond to that challenge to the best of our ability.
When an archer fires an arrow all they can do is focus on the target, manage their breathing and the tension of the bow. After they release the string, whatever happens to the arrow is beyond their control. The wind could blow it off target, the target could fall or something could obstruct the target in the moments before the arrow hits it. All of those things are beyond the control of the archer (You see where I’m going with this?). The archer can only focus on what he or she can control and just trust the process regarding those things that are beyond you control.
We can’t control the outcome, but we can control the process. Focus on your diet and exercise, and the weight will take care of itself. Focus on being a disciplined and meticulous student, and the grades will take care of themselves. Focus on watering and nurturing the garden, and the flowers will bloom when they are ready.
3. Expect Nothing, Appreciate Everything
If the first cause of most of our upsets is from focusing on things beyond our control, then the second cause is from events that don’t live up to our expectations. We create a picture in our minds of how things are supposed to be then get upset when things don’t work out that way. To a certain extent this is unavoidable – a large part of the human experience and history is about creating nothing out of something. This is how we plan, invent and make progress. The challenge is not in things not working out, the challenge is in getting upset and obsessed over it, where we keep ruminating over it to the detriment of the present moment.
Embrace uncertainty
A tree needs water and sunlight in order to grow. We could say it has an expectation about the rain coming. But it does not know when exactly it will rain, just that it will, eventually. So it has a general expectation that things will work out eventually, it just does not have a specific expectation about when and how. Those factors are beyond it’s control.
We can’t place our emotional well-being on things that are beyond our control, that’s just a recipe for disappointment. The best thing we can do for ourselves is to relax with uncertainty. Learning how to comfortably tolerate it without making any judgments about how things should be.
The Stoics would call this expecting nothing and accepting, or better yet, appreciating everything. Regarding things beyond your control expect nothing – then you won’t have anything to be disappointed about. Why create an expectation about the weather then be disappointed when your expectations don’t match reality? The weather (environmentally and socially) will always be outside of your direct control. If you do create an expectation (which to some degree is unavoidable) then do so with the reserve clause that the only thing you can control is yourself and the process, the result takes care of itself. And when things work out otherwise, accept that it has happened, because whining about it and moping over it won’t change the fact that it has happened.
Accepting everything is not helpless indifference, it’s just accepting that there are things you can and can’t control, and what better way of strengthening the one thing you can always control by choosing an empowering response?
Summary
- You decide what things mean to you and what you are going to do
- Focus on those things that you can control
- Embrace uncertainty as an opportunity to grow your mindset
Zen Transformation Coach 