Taking control of your life doesn’t mean you control everything that happens. It means confidently moving forward with your goals and priorities while embracing change as an inevitable part of life.
But how do you get that feeling of confidence and control when it seems like nothing is going right?
By making small changes that, over time, have a huge impact on the direction of your life.
The strategies outlined below are aimed at helping you get super clear on who you are and what you really want out of life.
When you’re clear on who you are, you stop getting sidelined by other people’s priorities and become more flexible and resilient, especially when things don’t go as planned.
So with that in mind, here’s how to start taking control of your life, one piece at a time:
- Clarify Your Core Values and Beliefs
- Identify Internal vs. External Motivations
- Create a Vision
- Believe That You Can: Overcome Limiting Beliefs
- Take Personal Responsibility
- Let Go of What You Cannot Control
- Respond Instead of Reacting
- Unpack Emotional Triggers
- Make a Plan of Action (With Tiny Steps)
- Implement a Daily Planning Routine
- Know When to Take Breaks
Originally published on February 8, 2021, this article was republished on March 4, 2024.
1. Clarify Your Core Values and Beliefs
We’re constantly bombarded by all kinds of messages about what success means. Open up Instagram or any other social media platform and you’re immediately shown:
- The successful entrepreneur crushing their new venture
- The empowered working mother raising two perfect children
- The digital nomad working from a beach in Bali
- The driven social worker making a positive impact in their community
What Do You Want From Life?
Chasing everyone else’s dreams will pull you in a million different directions. But taking back control of your life requires you to get clear on what you actually want.
That’s where your core values come in.
But why are core values important in the first place?
Simply put – they shape who you are. They’re the ground you stand on to build a sense of self. When you discover your core values, you can live your truth. You can connect to your truest version and start living unapologetically.
Studies confirm that having a clear idea of your beliefs:
- Gives you clarity on how to make decisions around pursuing passions, long-term career goals, and relationships.
- Leads to stronger social connections.
- Encourages a higher pain tolerance.
- Makes you less likely to engage in destructive thought patterns, like comparing yourself to others.
- Allows you to know when to say “yes” and when to walk away.
Your recipe for happiness and meaning will not look the same as someone else’s. You may consider family, service, and community the most important parts of your life. Someone else may prioritize things like freedom, adventure, and spirituality.
2. Identify Internal vs. External Motivations
To get back on track, it helps to differentiate between your internal motivations and reconcile them with external influences.
Internal Motivators
Internal motivators come from within – those heart dreams that fill you with passion and purpose. These types of desires are personal to you; they’re determined by your own values and goals.
External Motivators
External motivators come from outside of yourself. They refer to the goals and expectations set by your parents, partner, friends, or community. External motivators can also mean standards set by society that you feel pressure to live up to.
Sometimes our internal motivations and external motivators come into conflict.
For example, you want to leave school and travel the world, but your parents expect you to finish that law degree. You want to quit your job to pursue your passion, but you have a family to feed.
Taking back control of your life doesn’t mean neglecting all external motivators. But it does mean finding a balance that allows room for both. This isn’t selfish – it’s necessary.
You must nurture your relationship with yourself, dive deeper, and find out what’s driving you. This might mean learning how to set boundaries so you can focus on what truly makes you happy.
3. Create a Vision
When I feel like I have no control over my life, I take a step back to reconnect with my vision.
Visualization Is a Powerful Tool
Visualization is similar to meditation, but instead of emptying the thoughts and chatter in your mind, you fill it with the experience of what you want your life to become.
A survey of 1100 people and 500 small business owners conducted by TD Bank found that 67% of participants felt that pictures of goals improved the odds of achieving them. Those who imagined their financial and business goals felt twice as confident that they could accomplish their dreams versus those who didn’t visualize their goals in some way.
Try these prompts to help you visualize:
- What does success look like to you? Do you picture a healthier lifestyle? Do you envision yourself surrounded by specific people? What kind of career do you see?
- What does this version of you and your life feel like?
- Think of your greatest aspirations, the extraordinary life you’ve always dreamt of.
You can also create a vision board – a collection of images, photos, words, and phrases that reflect your dreams.
Place the vision board in your home office, on your vanity mirror, or somewhere in your line of sight. This reinforces your direction, to help bring your dreams to life!
4. Overcome Limiting Beliefs
Most people have an internal dialogue. This inner speech is linked to a wide range of psychological functions, like reading, writing, planning, memory, self-motivation, and problem-solving, according to research published in Psychology Bulletin.
What is the flavor of your self-talk? Does your internal voice say things like:
- “You’re not good enough.”
- “You can’t do it.”
- “That won’t work.”
Beware of Negative Self-Talk
Many times, this limited thinking comes from an earlier part of your life. It’s that voice of a parent who didn’t give you enough praise, or that kid in school who was always waiting for you to mess up.
Taking control of your life means you no longer allow limiting beliefs to hold you back.
Get into the habit of managing your internal dialogue. To do this, take a week to track your thoughts and write them down. Identify where these voices of self-doubt come from. Do you notice any patterns?
Actively nurturing positive self-talk is a powerful tool for increasing your confidence and curbing self-doubt. When you find yourself thinking something negative, take a step back and remind yourself, “Oh, that’s my father talking.”
Respond with something positive instead: “Actually, that’s not true. I am good enough. I can do this.”
Learn how to trust yourself and be your own cheerleader!
5. Take Personal Responsibility
Regaining control of your life means finding the balance between what you can and cannot control. This means understanding what you can control and taking 100% responsibility for those things.
You may need to take a hard look at your actions and make some changes going forward.
Give Yourself a Dose of Reality
Are you partially responsible for this situation? This isn’t about punishing yourself but looking for the pieces that are within your power to change.
From time to time, take inventory of your life and ask yourself honestly:
- Am I fully present in my work and family life?
- Am I getting enough rest?
- Am I eating properly?
- Am I managing my time wisely?
- Am I sticking to my budget?
Also, remember to be forgiving to yourself. Everyone falls short sometimes, so it’s important to give yourself a break and remember that life is a learning experience. We grow as we go.
Take responsibility, own what you can control, and make better choices going forward.
6. Let Go of What You Cannot Control
Not long ago, I returned home from walking my dog to find an envelope on my doormat. It contained a medallion inscribed with the serenity prayer:
Serenity Prayer
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.
It came from a client who was let go as the general manager of a company because of health reasons. Instead of despairing, he was very relaxed about the situation. I asked him how he was keeping his composure in the face of a setback like this.
He said, “It’s the things you’ve taught me, Lyn. I’ve realized the difference between what I can control and what I can’t. So I’m giving you this medallion.”
This was an eye-opening moment, showing the power of making this simple shift to knowing what you can and can’t control. This client was stepping into a huge transition, and yet, he stayed calm.
You can’t control everything. Even when you prepare and plan, some things still won’t go your way. So why waste your time and energy on the things you cannot change?
Rather than overthinking and anticipating the worst-case scenario, you can develop coping strategies to better manage fear of the unknown, such as mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness meditation brings awareness to the present moment. With practice, you can feel more at ease.
Focus on what you can control and what’s in front of you right now.
7. Respond Instead of Reacting
Of course, you can’t control everything. But you can control how you respond, shifting from a place of reaction to response. This means being aware and knowing how to control your emotions, without allowing them to dictate your actions.
Reacting is emotional. Responding is emotional intelligence. Here’s the difference:
Reaction
When you say or do something based on beliefs, biases, and prejudices. A reaction happens immediately in the unconscious, without thinking. It is survival-oriented and often a defense mechanism.
Response
When you process your initial emotional reaction before taking action. You observe your instant reaction, then ensure your actions remain in line with your core values.
Feeling out of control can often occur within ourselves. This happens when you react to situations and let your emotions get the best of you. If you’ve ever lost your temper or felt overwhelmed with life, you can surely relate to this feeling of losing control.
We are emotional beings. It’s normal and healthy to feel emotional. But you don’t want your emotions to run the show. If you can sit with the emotions for a minute, they become milder. You can respond calmly. This is called emotional sobriety.
When you feel intense emotion, take a moment to sit with that experience. Maybe you need to yell out loud to yourself, go for a run, or cry for a bit. Feel that emotion. Let it happen. This will release the intensity, so you can experience how to feel in control.
8. Unpack Emotional Triggers
When you want to loosen the grip that emotions have on you, start by understanding where they come from in the first place. Think of emotional responses as breadcrumbs, leading you back to places that need your attention.
Many of our emotional reactions are learned. They can result from experiences during childhood. For example, if a parent leaves you at an early age, you may have an extreme fear of rejection later in life.
Taking back control means addressing the underlying conditions that have made us choose the actions, healing from those events, and rewriting your story going forward, moving beyond your past self.
Healing from trauma involves an unraveling:
- Notice an emotional reaction
- Bring awareness to those emotions. Ask yourself: What am I feeling? (Studies show that simply identifying emotions and putting them into words can help to lessen their grip)
- Now it’s time to unravel: Where do these emotions come from? Can you draw a line between what you feel now and something you experienced in your past? Do you still need to heal in some way?
If you are having difficulty with strong emotions or past trauma, you may benefit from professional support to work through it.
Self Awareness
Self-awareness will help mitigate emotional reactions the next time they come up. When you know your fears and can identify the situations that make you feel anxious, it won’t feel so surprising when it happens.
9. Make a Plan of Action (With Tiny Steps)
Many people get stuck talking about their dreams, without ever doing anything about it. Often we’ll wait until we feel inspired to take action. The truth is that inspiration often comes through action.
Inspiration Comes From Action
If you want to move forward, you have to start somewhere. Imagine this big dream of yours. Then trace yourself backwards to where you are now.
What small steps do you need to take to achieve your goals?
A goal will seem more attainable when you break it down into bite-sized chunks. Slowly start working toward those steps.
This can mean working on your book for an hour at a time or starting to exercise for 20 minutes a day.
Those small efforts will pay off in the long run, and each small success will give you the confidence to keep going.
10. Implement a Daily Planning Routine
If your schedule is all over the place, you’ll easily feel unorganized and confused. Taking control of your days, just by creating a bit more structure, adds up to a sense of control in your life.
Daily Planning
Daily planning helps you stay focused on what matters to you. It keeps you on track, removing opportunities for getting caught up in unimportant tasks.
Create a routine around your priorities, and structure your day to optimize your energy levels.
Are you a morning person? Then wake up early and carve out the first part of the day for your most important tasks. If you feel more alert in the afternoon, block off that time instead.
Here are a few more tips:
- Make time for a weekly planning session
- Sit down on a day-to-day basis and prioritize what’s important
- Design a morning ritual, to set the right mindset for the rest of your day
- Remove distractions. Work in a quiet area, and put your phone away
- Schedule time each day for rest and movement
- When you feel in a rut, switch things up a bit. Work outside of your normal office. Change up your routine. Take a different route to work. This change can inspire new ideas.
11. Know When to Take Breaks
Control doesn’t mean cramming in as many tasks as possible in one day. Doing so will only cause stress in the mind and body. Ultimately, you’ll crash.
Strike a Balance
You need to create a balance, rather than overexerting yourself. By doing this, you’ll produce better quality work and maintain good physical, emotional, and mental health.
To perform at their best, professional athletes need to take breaks and recover during their off-season. Similarly, you need to take breaks from the relentless pursuit of your goals.
I worked with the CEO of a global company who couldn’t make up her mind. Rather than push through, she decided to take a week off and do something creative. This helped her come back to the drawing board with a clear head.
Acknowledge the steps you need to take and stay committed. Check in with yourself and know when you need to take a break. When you return, you can set a new direction with renewed energy, ideas, and focus.
Regaining control of your life can take time. It can involve major lifestyle changes that may not happen overnight. When you are lost, it can feel daunting trying to find your path again. But you’ll get there by taking one step at a time.
Are You Ready to Finally Take Control of Your Life?
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