Your Life’s Story
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Assuming responsibility and taking control of your life
Your life’s story is more than a list of events, mixed with a few successes and disasters. It’s the foundation for working towards the future you want.
Successful people begin to take responsibility for their future by following their passion and making it the major force in their life. People who are passionate about what they do often find their seems to move very quickly. Instead of feeling drained at the end of the day, they are energized by what they have accomplished. They do not feel the knot or sinking feeling in their pit of their stomach as they look forward to another week. Instead, they feel a sense of anticipation toward the week ahead. They are driven by an almost unstoppable force that gives them the energy and enthusiasm that infects everyone they meet during the course of their workday.
A good place to start putting your life into high gear is the history of your life so far. Here are three questions to point the way.
Take time out to review your past for the learning to build your future.
The value of the past is the learning you have gained. What’s past is gone — or should be. People who allow the past to rule their present cause themselves problems and pain. To deal with the current effects of past events may be sensible. Trying to undo the past itself is futile.
What you have learned – knowledge, skills, experience, understanding – is your raw material. Even if you plan to change, you have to start from what you have. It’s never too late to add to your learning, but you’ll still have to use what you’ve learned up to now to gain that fresh capability.
Don’t focus only on formal learning. Most people have a wealth of informal learning that’s just as useful – from hobbies, interests, parenting, and simply managing the world around them.
Don’t waste time cataloging your weaknesses.
It’s not a good plan to focus on the negatives. You may want to improve some things, but no one ever built a sound future on overcoming weaknesses.
Focusing on weaknesses is a bad habit from years of schooling, where report cards linger in detail on anything identified as “could do better.” Most of us, when we consider our lives, are heavy on what needs to be “put right,” not what’s going well. We are our own harshest critics, always looking for the weaknesses and downsides to our lives.
Your strengths are where you should start.
Your strengths are the best tools available to you right now. And those strengths are what they are.
You may wish they were different, but you cannot change them before you start. Making the best of what you have is sound advice. If you take on more than you can handle in the beginning, the chances are you’ll quickly give up. Pace yourself and take time to let your strengths grow.
Avoid what you don’t enjoy or do well – then forget about it.
People look at the world in one of three ways:
Don’t plan to live life in a way you should know to avoid. It’s as unwise to be over-positive as it is to be too critical of yourself.
If you’ve never found classroom learning enjoyable or successful, why sign up for classroom courses? If you want to get fit, but the thought of attending a gym makes you sick, find another way to tone up your muscles. Don’t make it hard for yourself, in some mistaken belief that the worse the medicine tastes, the more good it will do you.
Find another way
Know what you don’t handle well and avoid it. Don’t beat yourself up because you ought not to feel how you feel, or you should be better at math or double-entry bookkeeping.
If it’s genuinely important or necessary to you, deal with it, however hard that is. If not, forget about it. Don’t let some slick salesperson for this or that program convince you he or she can magically make your aversion disappear. The only disappearance they can guarantee is your cash.
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