What are you counting ?

Life is full of surprises! Obstacles and challenges will come up no matter how well you plan, and they challenge your expectations of how things should be. Self-control gives you the ability to assess these challenges and think outside your normal thinking ruts to come up with the best solution. Otherwise, you automatically react the way you always do. These same actions lead to the same results!

What counts can’t always be counted 

and what can be counted doesn’t always count. 

~ Albert Einstein

Understand that your life experience is created through a series of choices. Your ability to choose gives you control. While you can’t always choose your actions, you can always choose how to interpret and experience an event. This ability to choose gives you the ultimate control, the ultimate personal power. Even the wrong choices give you power and control.

Choosing well, or choosing the right course of action, means being aware, being flexible in your perceptions and being true to your values. But... the ego gets in the way of this! Choosing any other course of action than the one we’re used to, takes a lot of courage. Often we would prefer to be right than happy - that is the ego writing the story. In my case, I would prefer to be happy than right. If you find yourself in a situation where you have a choice between being right and being happy... choose happy. 

Your body speaks volumes when you are making choices. Be aware of the “red flags” and “green flags” that guide you. These come in the form of emotions and physical feelings, intuitive hunches and “gut feelings.” Trust these more than you trust your eyes. We each see what we want and expect to see, not necessarily what really “is” - the filters of our beliefs and perceptions; listening to intuition rather than pure logic helps you see from new perspectives.

When choices aren’t obviously black and white, what should you do? Be very attuned to your feelings. If something seems right on the surface (like taking a high-paying job because you need the money) pay attention to vague uneasiness, anxiety and other indicators that maybe this job is all wrong for you because it goes against your core values.

One uncomfortable aspect of control is taking full responsibility for your life experience. You have been making all these choices, all along, and they’ve gotten you to where you are now. Don’t beat yourself up for choices that resulted in unwanted circumstances. Take them as lessons. As empowerment. As a guide in how to take control of your life.

Control helps you accomplish what you want. “If you don’t want to do something, you’ll find a million excuses why you can’t; and if you want to do something, you only need one reason why you can.” I’m not sure of the source of this quote, but it makes sense, doesn’t it? Lack of self-control makes it easy to give into rationalisations about why “it’s not the right time, I can’t, it won’t work” and other nonsense. Self-control helps you focus in on what you want, and gives you the willpower to see it through to the end. Throw out your excuses. Hold yourself accountable by being in control of your thoughts, emotions, words and actions.

You cannot control the universe nor can you control other people. If you are not happy with a situation then change what you are doing. If you are not happy, but you are doing the same thing how could you expect the outcome to be different? Sometimes we need strategies or just inspiration from a pair of outside eyes to see where we are going off the path. It is always easier to see the situation clearer from the outside. 

Most of us have been in a situation where a friend or family member is really struggling and can they can not see the forest for the trees. We may be able to see things the person can not yet and we might think the solution easy. It is often easier from the outside.

Having self-control gives you amazing self-confidence, too. Yes, there’s a direct correlation! If you control your fears, you can do whatever it is that scares the hell out of you. If you control your thoughts, you can manage stress and anxiety. If you control your words and actions, you can create better results - set and uphold boundaries, ask for what you want and need, take bold, inspired action, say no in a respectful and compassionate way... and more. If you have control, you have personal power - the ability to commit to your core values.

Control also helps you create better relationships because your communication is based on the truth and a desire for a win-win situation. Learn to get to the truth from the right way, that is, using and choosing words that do not offend.

While planning is important, some things left alone just pan out to the perfect solution. Trust your inner guidance, yourself to act in the correct way. The signs are there and sometimes trying to control a situation or event blocks the natural energy. In fact, letting go of control and going with the flow brings the energy back and situations will work out. Perhaps it is not the way you first envisioned it to be. It may be different. However, different is neither good nor bad, it is just different. The tag of good or bad is the perception or label we put on the situation.

The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.

~ John Powell