Take Over the Reins of Your Own Life

Most people expect to wake up and have all their problems solved, as if by magic. Although this would be ideal, it’s not a functional way to think. Therefore, the best thing you can do is take over the reins of your own life.

How many times have we said things like “One day everything will change for the better”? For a strange reason, when life doesn’t go our way, we tend to think that some external factor will change it. We believe that something will suddenly change the way life is going and everything will improve.

It seems like we’re convinced that all of our problems will solve themselves. However, things don’t actually work that way. Thus, it’s important you remember that your life depends entirely on you.

A great secret

Another great secret is that life’s problems don’t just solve themselves. If we want to take over the reins of our own life, we have to put in the work. Many people want to leave their partner or get out of an uncomfortable situation but just can’t get around to making the decision.

Some people also complain over and over again about how terrible their life is going but aren’t capable of seeing that they’re partly to blame.

Victimization means that we consider ourselves victims of everything that happens around us. We aren’t conscious of the power that we have over our own lives in order to change our situation.

We often blame other people for everything that goes wrong in our life. This is, without a doubt, one of the most damaging things we can do.

We get to choose who we want to be

If we keep doing this, we’ll become passive agents in our life. We won’t be able to take any action over it. Phrases like “Only bad things happen to me” aren’t constructive mantras.

Everyone goes through difficult situations they must overcome. Sometimes, we even experience positive situations back to back and other times negative situations back to back.

A large part of our life depends on how we decide to deal with our situations, no matter how negative they may be. Some people always smile through their difficult situations and others only complain and act negatively toward themselves and others during those difficult times.

The best part of all of this is that you  can choose what type of person you want to be. You have the power to choose serenity over anxiety over every little thing that happens in your life.

Let the change begin

In Buddhism, there’s a term that describes the law of cause and effect known as karma. According to karma, if you plant positive seeds, you’ll reap positive fruits.

What does this have to do with making changes in our life? Well, those who want their lives to change have to take action. Nothing will save you from yourself. All that energy you waste dreaming of a better life you could invest in actually taking steps toward a better life.

In other words, you can take over the reins of your own life. Thereby, if you start to plant your change, that change will come.

Change isn’t easy. It requires effort and not everyone wants to work for it. However, w e can’t pretend to change our lives without changing the way we act.

Behavioral patterns are the enemy

We tend to act a certain way because of the patterns we’ve gathered over the years. What does this mean? It means that we try to solve our problems by repeating the same behaviors. We do this despite noticing that it’s not the correct way to solve our issues.

Have you ever had a classmate who, despite spending all their day studying, fails their tests? Most of us know someone like that who insists on repeating the same methods despite not reaping good results. They believe that they just don’t work hard enough. However, that isn’t the problem. The real problem lies in their methods.

We should focus our effort on that point. We should work on changing the methodology that isn’t giving us the results we want.

First steps to follow to take over the reins of your own life

The first step we should take to be able to take over the reins of our own life is to analyze those things we want to change. It’s important to be sincere with ourselves.

We tend to lie to ourselves often with the objective of avoiding having to identify our faults. This is a big mistake. Sincerity is something we’ll apply internally and we don’t need to express these things to anyone else if we don’t want to.

The next step is to analyze the things we’ve done so far that have led to our current situation. What strategies have we applied? Why do we always end up in the same situations? How can we create a change in the direction we want?

We must analyze our actions and see if our strategy consists of repeating the same thing over and over again. If this is the case, it’s time to change.

What to do next?

The third step to help us take over the reins of our own life is maybe the most important one. This step consists of leaving our fears behind. Fear is a primary emotion that’s necessary for our survival in dangerous situations.

However, it can be a problem if it becomes part of our everyday life. This emotion tends to paralyze us and trap us in our comfort zone. We prefer our bad situation over trying out something new simply because we fear what may happen if we change things. We’re also scared of letting go of certain things in our life.

Instead of sitting on the couch waiting for something to change our life, we should take action. Acquire some self-confidence. Once you do this, you’ll start to see results you never imagined possible.