In order to take control of your life, you’ll first need to be in the seat of your true power. You won’t achieve this through external means (the old definition of power), in which you try to dominate the people and situations in your life. Rather, you’ll do so through your development of a strong inner centre, at the core of your being. Here you’ll find true empowerment and self-mastery. This is the first lesson in your self-empowerment. It’s the foundation of all the strategies for self-mastery that I teach my clients. You’ll also find it at the heart of all the ancient spiritual teachings.
How You Lose Control of Your Life
Your loss of power occurs when you lose your centre and come out of being. This is the norm for many people today. When you’re outside your centre you’ll inevitably become drained, scattered, distracted, reactive, confused, disorganised, and in conflict with yourself and others. You’ll lose control of your life. Why? Because your mind’s reactive thinking runs the show. Overthinking and automatic thinking are classic manifestations of being stuck in thought in this way.
Being out of your centre leads to destructive behaviour patterns, unresourceful states, and mental and emotional afflictions. Remember those times when you felt like you weren’t yourself when your reactive thoughts took over? Such as when you felt that rage or lust or fear of losing something or someone. Being out of your centre causes your life to go out of control because reactivity is what then controls you.
While it’s important to let go of the reactive mind, the mind itself is neutral. Its non-reactive expression can play a positive role in your life development. When you align, centre, and focus your mind with mindful attention, you can optimise your life strategies and bring yourself back into balance and authentic fulfilment.
But thoughts themselves aren’t the source of your power. To take control of your life, you’ll need to go beyond the thoughts and contents of your mind, and to be fully present in being. That’s the second lesson in your life mastery, and a lesson you can easily miss.
Learning How to Control Your Life Can be Challenging
Learning how to control your life can be challenging, especially if your life (mind) is stressful. For example, you may:
- have too many pressures and inner conflicts
- make your happiness dependent on your expectations being fulfilled (particularly by other people)
- feel stuck in a rut that you can’t seem to get out of
- be addicted to a certain pattern of thinking, feeling, or behaving
- blame your situation on others, your past, or your genes
- think that the world is against you, and that everything is a struggle
Any of this sound familiar? The good news is that you can change all of this at any time – if you genuinely commit to your growth and follow the teachings of this article. The commitment, while challenging at times, is well worth the effort. I believe it’s the number one lesson in your life.
How to Take Control of Your Life
With the right tools you can take control of your life by coming back to your centre, and back into being. Here you’re most free and most in touch with your authentic power. Here in your centre you stand outside of your limiting patterns and can clear them most effectively. So just how do you ‘come back to your centre’ and slay the dragon of your reactive mind?
You’ll need to commit to a practice of mindfulness and self-development that eventually becomes your way of life. This is stepping into full consciousness, or living your life from your centre. It’s what I help people to do in my Inner Wellness Sessions.
While mindfulness is a fantastic tool to use to become more present, you’ll still need to do something with that presence to take control of your life and steer it towards your true life purpose, where you’re fully embodied in your centre and feel at your best. In my sessions I guide clients into greater mindfulness to do just this, and incorporate liberating, consciousness-raising techniques to strengthen their embodiment in their centre, clear their reactive patterns, and illuminate their being. You’ll achieve peak happiness from this place, and the power to take control of your life and change it for the better will be at its best. You’ll have the full support of your true nature that’s no longer obscured or weakened by your reactive mind and a life of distraction and fixation. This is the next level of practising mindfulness.
An Example of How to Take Control of Your Life
A common way your life may run out of control, or be poorly controlled, is when you allow limiting thought patterns to control your mind. These patterns won’t support your health, happiness or authentic fulfilment. For instance, if you have patterns based on low self-worth, you’ll either be stuck in patterns of people-pleasing, or patterns of narcissism. Because self-sacrifice and narcissism are reactive patterns of dependency that limit your ability to be centred in being, they’ll sabotage your life, causing you to lose control. They’ll also perpetuate a state of low self-worth. This can attract the worst people and events into your life in a self-fulfilling prophecy. You’ll know what I mean if you’ve ever let somebody into your life, reactively out of neediness, who then hurt you. You probably didn’t say no enough to them because your boundaries were weak and you kept wanting to please them to feel loved or approved of.
In this example, to take control of your life, you’ll need to focus on healing your low self-worth and to be practising mindfulness to interrupt the reactive patterns of people-pleasing or narcissism. Then you can return to your centre where the light of your true nature will start illuminating and dissolving your reactive patterns and unresourceful states. Also, by coming off autopilot (your unconscious, reactive style of living), you can put space between the impulse to repeat the pattern and your subsequent behaviour. Here you’ll need to use mindfulness and self-inquiry to create the opportunity for liberation. Once you develop sufficient space, and empower your will by shifting into your centre, you can consciously recognise the unhelpful pattern, free yourself from its lure, and choose a behaviour that’s more authentic and supportive of your happiness and wellbeing.
What You Can Expect When You Take Control from Your Centre
When you take control of your life by establishing a strong centre, you’ll be free from reactive limitations. You’ll grow enormously in wisdom and power. The afflictions that distort your true nature will give way to a more light-filled and heart-filled expression of your being. You may for example shift from being ‘needy’ or ‘dominating’ to being in balance, empowered, and at peace. Your relationships will improve. Why? Because there won’t be the old tensions, demands, and power struggles that create conflict, resentment, and disappointment. You won’t be a burden or an oppressive force in your relationships. And you’ll no longer conspire in your self-abandonment by choosing the wrong relationships out of reactivity.
It’s time for us all to start clearing our reactive patterns and to show up for ourselves and others from our centre, in a pure state of being. Here we are radiant beings of light. Our hearts can fill with compassion. And we can stay on our life path, without allowing our patterns to distract or disempower us. We literally clear the channels to the true self, and embody that true self with gusto.
Next Step: for more on how to take control of your life with my tools of inner wellness, and to begin your journey to greater health, happiness and authentic fulfilment, make a call to awakening within yourself and book an Inner Wellness Guidance Call with me.
Leigh Tremaine is a Wisdom Teacher and Inner Wellness Consultant, whose life work is to assist people to embody the magnificence of their true selves with powerful internal practices of body, mind and spirit, and in so doing help the world to be a better place.
What a beautiful post, I read it at the right time and I found it very informative and helpful.
Thank you, Saja. I am so glad it helped!