One of the leading contributing factors to anxiety, stress, and overwhelm is feeling as though you do not control your situation.
Not surprisingly the events that have occurred and that have been reported extensively including the financial crisis, mass killings, higher unemployment, corruption, etc…all feed into the bucket of making us feel less in control of our lives.
As you can see, this quickly turns into a vicious cycle of feeling this loss of control, behaving in negative ways and actually losing more control because of that negative behavior.
How do we stop the cycle?
In many ways, it comes down to taking back control, putting the focus on what we CAN control when today we tend to obsess over those things we CANNOT control.
What can you control?
1. Time – while you may not control the majority of your time in a day (the time you work, demands from family, etc…), there is time you DO control. You want to be conscious of that time (even if right now it only seems as though you control 1-hour of your awake time, you still control the time you sleep and that 1-hour). Re-focus on how much control you have over that 1-hour and that you will strive to turn that into 2-hours over time…etc…
2. Your thoughts, beliefs and goodness...these are yours, and cannot be controlled or changed unless you allow them to. Since your beliefs and thoughts control your behavior which controls your situation you ultimately DO have complete control over the foundation of your life. Any control you have lost is either due to misguided perception or a temporary occurrence that can be changed under your own control
3. Your response to life. While you cannot control all aspects of life around you, you can 100% control your response to what happens around you. This is a big mis-perception that leads to considerable anxiety and overwhelm, thinking that we cannot withstand the worst life may throw at us. Think about a fear of public speaking, fear of success, fear associated with expanding beyond our comfort zone or being embarrassed – these are all misguided fears that come from doubting our own ability to handle events around us. If we instead have confidence in our ability to bounce back by controlling our response to any situation life throws at us we can significantly lower the anxiety and fear in our life.
We control so much in life yet we focus on the relatively small piece that we cannot control leading to needless overwhelm and anxiety.
By simply changing our thoughts around what we do control we can achieve great breakthroughs in life, ending fear and anxiety and achieve all that we ever dream and more.
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