How to Examine and Take Control of Your Life

Most people begin their lives reacting to whatever life does to them. This may be okay for an infant. But as adults, it’s important to develop the skills required to examine our lives, cultivate our personal values and make decisions that reflect those values. Many people find themselves reverting back to this reactive state in adult life because they aren’t intentional about making decisions and evaluating the outcomes of those decisions.

I love how Tony Robbins explains life. He uses the metaphor of a raging river to describe life. You can read more from his book, Awaken The Giant Within. And this is what he said:

“Too many of us don’t make the majority of our decisions consciously…in so doing, we pay a major price. In fact, most people live what I call ‘The Niagara Syndrome’. I believe that life is like a river and that most people jump on the river of life without ever really deciding where they want to end up. So, in a short period of time, they get caught up in the current: current events, current fears, current challenges. When they come to forks in the river, they don’t consciously decide where they want to go, or which is the right direction for them. They merely ‘go with the flow’. They become a part of the mass of people who are directed by the environment instead of by their own values. As a result, they feel out of control. They remain in this unconscious state until one day the sound of the raging water awakens them, and they discover that they’re five feet from Niagara Falls in a boat with no oars. At this point, they say, ‘Oh shoot!’. But by then it’s too late. They’re going to take a fall.

Sometimes it’s an emotional fall.

Sometimes it’s a physical fall.

Sometimes it’s a financial fall.

It’s likely that whatever challenges you have in your life currently could have been avoided by making some better decisions upstream.”

Why don’t we always take the opportunity to take control of the future of our lives through our values?

Once we understand the circumstances and reasons that can throw us off track we can address the issue of living without critical decision making and how affects our personal values. While we are all individuals and can experience different things that can influence us to misstep, the most common factors that cause us to live unconsciously are:

• Distractions in the present time
• Your attention required in other areas of life
• Lack of intention in the decisions we make today and how they influence our future

As you can see, there is a theme with these three factors, attention and intention. That is why I like the analogy that Tony gives that life is like a raging river because it is. We become caught up in the rapids of doing the things that life seems to demand of us day in and day out.

Goal setting and evaluation are primary tools we can use to keep the raging river of life from sweeping us wherever it wills. Many people set goals. But not many have a disciplined process to evaluate their progress on those goals.

One of the questions I often hear is “what do I do when my family or team sets goals and forgets about them in a short time?” People set goals with the thought of the direction they want to go with their life, but often it doesn’t happen because they get caught up in the river of life that just pulls them downstream wherever that river’s going. The key to ensuring that we’re floating on the right river in the right direction at the right pace is taking time to review the course of our life through regular examination of our progress toward living what we say is important.

Living an Unexamined Life

A quote that many are familiar with was uttered by Socrates right before his trial which ultimately led to him being put to death was “The unexamined life is a life not worth living.”

Do you think is that true? And if so, why is that true? Why is the unexamined life a life not worth living?

Many don’t realize the importance of self-awareness and of living with intention. But at some point, we will all arrive at the end and will have the opportunity to look back and reflect on where the time went and what we did with it. If that is the only time you examine your life, you’ll probably be settling for the status quo, falling in with the herd mentality. The quality of our experience is determined by the focus of our attention. If our attention is fragmented, pulled in a million different directions, easily distracted, shallow and fleeting, then that is what our experience of life will be.

If we are not examining our life and revising our focus toward living our values and goals, we will get distracted and sucked downstream on the river life creates for us, caught up in the current of noise, circumstance, and unconscious decision.

If you wouldn’t want to go out on a hike, without a trail, a planned route, and destination, why would you then want to go through life the same way?

A Philosopher’s Lesson

I think staying true to our values, staying on our chosen path happens best through the discipline of intentional evaluation of our lives on a regular basis.  We naturally tend to resist personal examination, because it brings back subconscious negative thoughts of examinations or tests we were given even in grade school days. We wanted to be right, to get the A, but we were often disappointed so why put ourselves through a self-examination.  The possibility of failing makes us resist that opportunity to examine and reflect.

Socrates actually chose death rather than giving up his right to gain wisdom from examination and reflection. “The unexamined life is not worth living”

He felt obligated to live a life where he questioned not only what was going on in his life but also the rights and wrongs that happened. He would rather give up his life than not be able to question what was happening.

He was such a threat to the s0ciety he lived in because he was such an examiner. He valued the love of wisdom more than anything else. He ultimately was given the choice to stop seeking wisdom through examination and live in exile where he could never question anything or influence anything or create wisdom again, or he could choose to die. And that’s when he said if I can’t gain wisdom by examining my life it’s not worth living. So he chose death.

There’s another saying from a philosopher more ancient than Socrates.  David says, “teach us to number our days aright, so we can gain a heart of wisdom.”  He is saying, examine life based on the brief number of days we have and in that examination of each day, we will gain a heart of wisdom. That’s what makes a life worth living.

Tools to Examining Your Life

So the question I want to ask you how can you number your days intentionally, what tools help you live each day to the fullest? Are there regular activities and personal disciplines that you can engage in daily to help you examine your life?

Here are several tools that have been shared:

• Daily Journaling: Find a process that works for you. Asking yourself questions like what you want to accomplish today, what will make today great, including your daily affirmation or mantra, and a reflection on what made today great or what could have made today better.
• Mentorship: Having the opportunity to gain information from mentors who are willing to speak into your life can be a huge eye-opener rather than when you are the sole examiner of your life. Mentors can point out specific things that you may have failed to examine yourself.
• Evaluate Your Day/Week/Month/Year According to Your Written Values: Formulate a question in line with your values like, “How did today matter in light of my values? How did today’s actions matter in terms of living the life I want to live? Did I create value in the world that God wants me to create?”
• Having a group of people, friends or family, that you can come together with and reflect on your personal compass, values, and goals. Celebrate how far you have come and how much more you get to grow. Create an activity that allows you to examine yourself: “If each person around the circle it only had 30 days longer to live what would you do differently? What would you want to say to each person or to this group of people? What would you want to do together? How would you spend the next few days? What would you want them to know?”

Sometimes you may think back over my task list for the day and wonder if it was all worth it. What were all those emails about? But when you ask yourself the question, did today really matter in light of my values and goals, chances are you’ll know the answer.

Did today matter? If so, great. Do more things like it tomorrow. If you don’t remember anything that made a difference? Do something different tomorrow.

Before you start every day, take a few moments in meditation to connect with God (or your spiritual self), focus on what’s really important in life and decide what you’d like to see happen by the end of the day. After doing this, take some time to prioritize your calendar and tasks for the day. What’s most important? What is realistic to achieve?

When you take just a little time and intention to examine your life, you’ll know where you are in relation to where you want to be and you’ll have a much better chance at making progress.

Ask the Question Steve Jobs Asked Himself Each Morning

Steve Jobs, the man who started Apple and brought it to become the first trillion dollar company in the world, was a master of living and working purposefully. Each morning, when Jobs woke up, he asked himself this one question:

“‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ If the Answer is ‘no’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”

You may think that it is a bit morbid to think about your mortality at the start of the day, but in reality, this is actually very motivating and filled with optimistic to do better in life, every single day.  It helps us “number our days” so we can gain a heart of wisdom, live life to the fullest and create the legacy we’d like to leave in this world.

THANK YOU!

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