How
To Achieve Greater Control Over Your Life
By David Amerland, Author
INTENTIONAL: HOW TO LIVE, LOVE, WORK AND PLAY MEANINGFULLY
Here are two unquestionable truths: Our
life, no matter how long it ends up being, is relatively short and so is our
memory of the world. Each of us only has a tiny window of time and opportunity
to achieve happiness, enjoy good health and create wealth.
Given these two truths you’d think we’d
be raring to hit the ground running from birth, soak up all the skills and
knowledge we can and develop every talent we have in order to make the most of
what we can possibly be. None of these things happen however. And even if they
do, they happen haphazardly, with greater effort and over massive obstacles.
Why?
Mainly because the world around us is
not geared to help us do any of this. If we do try, and if we do succeed it is
always a story of triumph over adversity, a tale of success in overcoming great
hurdles placed in our way. Intuitively you know this already. It is the reason
we love reading and listening to success stories and why we love rug-to-riches
tales. They remind us of what is possible rather than the difficulties we
perceive around us. They stop us from feeling trapped by opening up cracks in
the walls around us through which glimmers of hope shine through.
But how do we go from seeing those
glimmers of hope to actually experiencing the kind of change that can transform
our life? This is where Intentional can help. Being intentional in life
means being in control. This is not the same as having control of everything
and everyone or being controlling.
Psychology sees a sense of control as
having freedom to choose and a sense of agency. Neuroscience regards control as
having “neuroanatomical correlates of the sense of control: [with] Gray and
white matter volumes associated with an internal locus of control”. Whether you
personally feel that the brain and mind are separate or that the duality of
mind and body exists is immaterial here. The fact remains that when it comes to
taking responsibility over your choices and control over your direction in life
you will need to experiment to find what works best for you.
In order to experiment you need
confidence, grit, perception, a sense of direction and the willingness to trust
in yourself. You have to believe in your values and be able to formulate your
action plan and strive to make your vision come true. All of these things
represent modular, personal attributes and skills which create, for lack of a
better description, our operating system.
If we had a team of neuroscientists,
behavioral psychologists and life coaches training us, none of us would ever
fail at anything and when we did it would be a blip in a life that, from the
outside in, would appear to be destined for greatness.
Unfortunately, we all know this is not
how the ‘real world’ works. Not only we don’t have anyone of merit rooting for
us but most of our daily interactions with people appear to be designed to
grind us down and keep us in our place. This is not intentional, or at least it
is not pre-meditated. The world, as a whole, is a system that is blind to our
personal needs and unaware of our plans, needs and dreams. We try to work out
how to best operate to fit in it so we can get something of what we hope to
achieve, done.
It is a struggle that wears us down. In
the end we find it easier to just chug along blaming our lack of success to
external factors we couldn’t control. The truth is that we can never really
control factors outside our self. But we can control the way we respond to all
of the difficulties we face. We can control whether we clearly formulate our
ambitions and whether we adequately plan for what we want, and we can control
how hard we work to achieve something because we truly feel we want it.
This deliberate, studied approach is
what we mean by being intentional. Because it changes our perception it changes
our reality. A changed reality offers different options to what we would
normally see or have access to. Different options and opportunities change the
outcomes we get from the actions we engage in.
It all sounds easy when it’s broken down
like this. It is not. There is an energetic cost to this mode of behavior we
need to be willing to accept. It’s a little like the saying “You have to be in
it to win it”. Without an acceptance of the effort required we are unlikely to
feel anything beyond the fatigue it generates. A focus on the personal cost to
us will only keep us from reaching our goals. Raise your sights just a little,
however. Feel, inside you, where you need to get to and understand why and then
the effort involved appears immaterial.
Dreams can be achieved. Visions of
success can be made true. But it needs an alignment of purpose and effort,
inside us first. That starts with us being intentional, in our thoughts and in
our deeds.
David Amerland is a Chemical Engineer with an MSc. in quantum dynamics in laminar flow processes. He converted his knowledge of science and understanding of mathematics into a business writing career that’s helped him demystify, for his readers, the complexity of subjects such as search engine optimization (SEO), search marketing, social media, decision-making, communication and personal development. The diversity of the subjects is held together by the underlying fundamental of human behavior and the way this is expressed online and offline. Intentional: How to Live, Love, Work and Play Meaningfully is the latest addition to a thread that explores what to do in order to thrive. A lifelong martial arts practitioner, David Amerland is found punching and kicking sparring dummies and punch bags when he’s not behind his keyboard.For More Information
How To Achieve Greater Control Over Your Life
By David Amerland, Author
INTENTIONAL: HOW TO LIVE, LOVE, WORK AND PLAY MEANINGFULLY
Here are two unquestionable truths: Our life, no matter how long it ends up being, is relatively short and so is our memory of the world. Each of us only has a tiny window of time and opportunity to achieve happiness, enjoy good health and create wealth.
Given these two truths you’d think we’d be raring to hit the ground running from birth, soak up all the skills and knowledge we can and develop every talent we have in order to make the most of what we can possibly be. None of these things happen however. And even if they do, they happen haphazardly, with greater effort and over massive obstacles.
Why?
Mainly because the world around us is not geared to help us do any of this. If we do try, and if we do succeed it is always a story of triumph over adversity, a tale of success in overcoming great hurdles placed in our way. Intuitively you know this already. It is the reason we love reading and listening to success stories and why we love rug-to-riches tales. They remind us of what is possible rather than the difficulties we perceive around us. They stop us from feeling trapped by opening up cracks in the walls around us through which glimmers of hope shine through.
But how do we go from seeing those glimmers of hope to actually experiencing the kind of change that can transform our life? This is where Intentional can help. Being intentional in life means being in control. This is not the same as having control of everything and everyone or being controlling.
Psychology sees a sense of control as having freedom to choose and a sense of agency. Neuroscience regards control as having “neuroanatomical correlates of the sense of control: [with] Gray and white matter volumes associated with an internal locus of control”. Whether you personally feel that the brain and mind are separate or that the duality of mind and body exists is immaterial here. The fact remains that when it comes to taking responsibility over your choices and control over your direction in life you will need to experiment to find what works best for you.
In order to experiment you need confidence, grit, perception, a sense of direction and the willingness to trust in yourself. You have to believe in your values and be able to formulate your action plan and strive to make your vision come true. All of these things represent modular, personal attributes and skills which create, for lack of a better description, our operating system.
If we had a team of neuroscientists, behavioral psychologists and life coaches training us, none of us would ever fail at anything and when we did it would be a blip in a life that, from the outside in, would appear to be destined for greatness.
Unfortunately, we all know this is not how the ‘real world’ works. Not only we don’t have anyone of merit rooting for us but most of our daily interactions with people appear to be designed to grind us down and keep us in our place. This is not intentional, or at least it is not pre-meditated. The world, as a whole, is a system that is blind to our personal needs and unaware of our plans, needs and dreams. We try to work out how to best operate to fit in it so we can get something of what we hope to achieve, done.
It is a struggle that wears us down. In the end we find it easier to just chug along blaming our lack of success to external factors we couldn’t control. The truth is that we can never really control factors outside our self. But we can control the way we respond to all of the difficulties we face. We can control whether we clearly formulate our ambitions and whether we adequately plan for what we want, and we can control how hard we work to achieve something because we truly feel we want it.
This deliberate, studied approach is what we mean by being intentional. Because it changes our perception it changes our reality. A changed reality offers different options to what we would normally see or have access to. Different options and opportunities change the outcomes we get from the actions we engage in.
It all sounds easy when it’s broken down like this. It is not. There is an energetic cost to this mode of behavior we need to be willing to accept. It’s a little like the saying “You have to be in it to win it”. Without an acceptance of the effort required we are unlikely to feel anything beyond the fatigue it generates. A focus on the personal cost to us will only keep us from reaching our goals. Raise your sights just a little, however. Feel, inside you, where you need to get to and understand why and then the effort involved appears immaterial.
Dreams can be achieved. Visions of success can be made true. But it needs an alignment of purpose and effort, inside us first. That starts with us being intentional, in our thoughts and in our deeds.
David Amerland is a Chemical Engineer with an MSc. in quantum dynamics in laminar flow processes. He converted his knowledge of science and understanding of mathematics into a business writing career that’s helped him demystify, for his readers, the complexity of subjects such as search engine optimization (SEO), search marketing, social media, decision-making, communication and personal development. The diversity of the subjects is held together by the underlying fundamental of human behavior and the way this is expressed online and offline. Intentional: How to Live, Love, Work and Play Meaningfully is the latest addition to a thread that explores what to do in order to thrive. A lifelong martial arts practitioner, David Amerland is found punching and kicking sparring dummies and punch bags when he’s not behind his keyboard.
For More Information
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