How many times have you felt out of control and powerless in your life?
It’s a horrible feeling, isn’t it? I remember growing up under a Communist regime in Poland and these feelings were a constant in my family and community.
I lived with my family in a tiny 550 square foot apartment. We couldn’t travel anywhere, speak up for ourselves or own much. Everyone had a curfew and any money we made went to the government.
Giving everyone equal access to all resources sounds great in theory, but it doesn’t work in practice. One of the reasons being that it makes you feel out of control and powerless. It’s because you don’t have a choice in anything you do, including the work that you do.
According to Susan Weinschenk PhD, we all want to feel like we have a sense of control over our own lives. It’s linked to our survival. When we feel a sense of control, we feel powerful and that we have what we need to survive. Having choices gives us a sense of control and power.
If you take away the choices in your life, you feel out of control and powerless.
Multiple studies have shown that when we’re given a choice between the easy way where things are handed to us and the hard way where we have to use our skills and wits to get to the same goal, we’ll choose the hard way because it gives us a sense of control.
Unfortunately, if we keep choosing the hard way, we won’t get very far and we’ll burn out quickly.
One of the keys to fixing this problem that I teach in my coaching, oddly enough, is making the right kind of choice.
My mother reminded me of a time we were going for a walk in Poland when I was a young girl. Having little of our own and living in a tiny apartment didn’t stop me from having that child-like wonder we all have growing up. My perspective on life was fresh and unmuddled.
We walked past a modest, 2,000 square foot house, where someone in power lived. I looked up at my mom and said, “One day, I’m going to own a house like that.”
I’m sure my mom didn’t know what to say at the time.
It didn’t matter to me that I didn’t know how I was going to get it. I just knew I wanted it and I was going to figure it out. I stood so firmly in that decision that I made sure everything I did would line up with fulfilling that dream. My determination to figure it out made it happen.
I now live in Canada, in a house a bit bigger than the one I saw and I love it. When my grandfather visited from his tiny apartment in Poland, he thought it was a palace.
When you decide a dream of yours is important enough to you, you can make the right choices. When you firmly decide you want it, you’ll make it happen and figure it out.
That doesn’t mean you have to do it all alone. Just that you’ll pull the resources together and take the necessary steps to apply them.
What do you want for yourself in the future?
Right now, you can firmly decide to make it happen and figure it out bit-by-bit.
You’ll start feeling waves of control and power over your life wash over you. The more you can do this with conviction, the better you’ll feel and the more endless motivation you’ll have to make it happen.
This is a part of what I teach through my Dream✧Plan✧Do coaching method to accelerate your business results and achieve anything you want.
In my new Business Results Accelerator program, I teach all this including everything you need to know to be successful in everything you do (business & life).
For now, try this out and notice how it makes you feel. I’ll share more tips on where to go from here to keep this momentum going in my next post.
If you try this out, let me know about it. I’d love to hear from you.
Until then, be well,
Maggie
