Last updated on August 30th, 2023.
Taking stock of your year so far, how do you feel about your life?
Do you feel proud and excited by your results?
Or do you feel unsatisfied, unfulfilled and lost in your life?
If you’re feeling that you’ve somehow lost control and let life happen to you, don’t despair: here are a 3 tips to get you back into the driver’s seat and take back control of your life.
1. Switch off the auto-pilot.
We may not like to hear it, but most of us are programmed: we live on auto-pilot.
We have been programmed by our parents, our schools, our countries, our peers, our TVs, our music, our movies, our celebrities, you name it…
Our subconscious mind sucks everything we are exposed to like a sponge and this becomes part of our being.
Unless we break this transe, we are controlled by a set of cues that tell us what to do, what to wear, what to watch, what to sing, who to emulate.
Sounds harsh but you may have noticed this:
A few magazine headlines promote the maxi skirt and within a few days they all fly off the store racks, even though nobody paid them any mind before.
A few celebs start sporting bangs. And soon enough everybody starts channelling Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction.
That’s the programming in action.
Unless we break this transe, we are controlled by a set of cues that tell us what to do, what to wear, what to watch, what to sing, who to emulate.
In a way, this is good as it allows us to connect with each other.
That Amy Winehouse or that Nirvana song you used to listen to ties you to people of a certain generation who shared the same experience at the time and it creates a feeling of belonging to something.
Through common references you get a sense of social identity.
However, trouble starts when things get taken so far that you become a blank slate, fully malleable and completely oblivious to your own inner motives and drives.
Just because fashion says ‘mustard is the new black’ this season, it doesn’t mean that you really like mustard or that mustard even suits you.
If you were to follow fashion blindly, you would go against your own best interest.
Probably not a bit deal when if you end up wearing the wrong color for your skin tone, a lot more problematic when you enter a career or start a business without giving it full thought just because it sounds good or you want to impress your peers.
While it’s not exactly pleasant to wake up one day feeling that you’ve been sleep-walking through your life, it can actually be quite empowering as it puts you in the driver’s seat, in the position to make the necessary changes to create a life that actually lights up your soul.
So, as painful as it is, you’ll probably find it very beneficial to take a hard look at your life and identify what thoughts and ideas actually belongs to you and which ones are acquired, socially conditioned tastes and beliefs.
With my clients, we spend quite a lot of time on this as it’s a crucial step to become more empowered, make sure to take your time there.
2. Don’t get stuck in your head.
At this point of the process, it’s easy to fall into another trap and get stuck in your head.
What does this look like?
When you start questioning your life and instead of gaining more clarity you actually get more confused by the never-ending flow of questions fusing in your head.
– What’s my purpose?
– Do I really enjoy engineering or was I just trying to prove that women are just as smart as men?
– Am I really interested in becoming a yoga teacher or is it just my way to escape this hellish law firm?
A great trick here is to get out of your head and connect with your feelings.
Connecting to your feelings is great way to reconnect with yourself when you're stuck Click To TweetThe body is pretty amazing.
In its own way, it is always communicating with us although most of us are not that good at listening and we prefer silencing it.
Often our aches and discomforts are actually signals that let us know something is off.
So for instance, next time you feel a sudden headache at the end of a long meeting, instead of popping a pill right away, a good way to reconnect with your body’s insights could be to first ask yourself: ‘What is this feeling telling me?’.
You may just realize that as much as you try to convince yourself that you can handle frequent late evening work meetings because that’s the way you build a successful career, your body doesn’t really enjoy it.
And, its way of letting you know is a splitting headache!
Don’t ignore your body and your feelings, they’re guiding you back on track!
3. Embrace the silence.
Now, if you can manage, an even more powerful way to rebuild this connexion with yourself is to spend time in silence.
This is probably going to be a tough one if you live the regular crazy-busy modern Superwoman life.
But it’s extremely efficient.
If one of the main reasons our lives go off-course is that we’re distracted and programmed by societal influences, the solution is simple although quite radical: cut down on the distractions and on the external influences.
This way you can actually get to hear yourself and see who you truly are once you remove the external triggers.
Ideally, a self-discovery retreat to unwind, relax or meditate would be the perfect way to reset yourself, but if that’s not an option there are ways.
You can start by leaving your phone at home for a couple of hours, go on a walk without earphone, or avoid checking your emails first thing in the morning.
You can also shut down some browser tabs and avoid multi-tasking.
Generally speaking turn the TV off (or get rid of it …), abstain from movies and series for a couple of days, spend a few hours without music, avoid social media.
As mentioned before, your subconscious is highly suggestible so everything you expose yourself to will become part of you, that goes for fictional characters, movie plots, song lyrics.
If you want to discover your own thoughts, stop feeding yourself other people’s thoughts.
If you want to discover your own thoughts, stop feeding yourself other people's thoughts. Click To TweetBe more present in your day to day life.
By doing this you will be able to hear your thoughts and reconnect with that voice that’s truly yours.
And once you’ve reset yourself and tuned back into your own self, you will be more empowered to take back control of your life.
This is the end of part 1 of this article. In part 2 I’ll talk about you can get back on track now that you have pressed the reset button on your life.
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