The journey of life is a series of choices. Some choices are simple and clear-cut, while others are difficult and require courage and conviction. But the outcome of the journey is what matters. To make the journey of life meaningful and purposeful, we need to make good choices and exercise inner control.
Inner control is the most important element of self-leadership. Studies show that people who are in control of their lives are more likely to be successful at work, have healthy relationships, and have strong connections to their spirituality.
We all have come into this world for a limited time, to undertake a life’s journey with varied experiences. As we move ahead, every day we get closer to death by a day. We, therefore, desire to achieve many things, out of that success, happiness and long healthy life are perhaps the most important ones.
However, the majority of us couldn’t succeed in achieving everything we desire due to various reasons. One of the basic reasons, I feel, is about control, both on the internal and external world, that we could exercise in our lives.
Now comes the crucial question – how much control do we have over our own life? Can we reach a destination we desire?
Since ancient times, philosophers, thinkers, spiritual and religious scholars have been deliberating this aspect of life. A whole lot of literature is available for reading. Earlier, almost all religions considered God to be the only supernatural power controlling our lives, and thus our destiny. Destiny is a predetermined course of events. Destiny is what’s ahead in our life’s journey. There is one view that we can’t change our destiny, what is to happen will happen.
There is however another view that ‘destiny is something we can effectively shape and change’. We are able to potentially design our own destiny.
Now here comes the question, how to get control over our inner and external world so that we are able to script our journey of life. Off-course there are no easy solutions. Thousands of self-help and motivational books have been written recommending recipes of varied nature. On YouTube too, we may find videos and Ted talks by various inspirational speakers highlighting this aspect of life. There is a billion-dollar industry of mindfulness promoting the science of meditation to gain control over the mind.
As we age, we keep on expanding our awareness. Awareness is nothing but knowledge or perception we acquire about the world. With awareness, we know the world around us. We learn and grow through that very awareness. Take your own example, compare your awareness when you were in school and then in university and now where you stand in life’s journey.
This awareness helps us in navigating our journey. The decisions we make, actions we take, and the choices we keep on making depend on awareness. It’s of 2 kinds, first, awareness about the outside world and second, self-awareness, our own awareness, inner world. How much we know about our own self is another critical requirement for the expansion of awareness. As we expand our awareness to unexplored areas, an increase in scope for opportunities arises. We never know, where we will come across an opportunity that can change the course of our journey.
Our eventual destination of the journey changes with change in the course of the journey. So, to redesign our destiny or the destination where we intend to reach, we need to keep on expanding our awareness. The first prerequisite for authoring the script of life’s journey.
Imagine a very large godown, which is filled with thousands of items arranged randomly. In the darkness, you focus a torch in your hand in a particular direction and whatever item the light falls on, that item will be visible. Likewise, there are huge opportunities lying everywhere in front of you. What you need to do is to throw light and be aware. The torch is your intention. You focus your attention/light on an opportunity and then start working on the same (with your intention).
The same logic applies in our life. Unless we have focused intention on our goal or purpose, we can’t move in the direction of achieving the same. Most of us, however, live our lives without any purpose. Without purpose, life becomes meaningless, we just exist, don’t live. If we have a strong purpose, then our decisions, actions, and behavior will be targeted in that direction; otherwise, our journey is aimless drifting. Therefore, we all must ensure meaningful existence and then strive wholeheartedly in the desired direction. To be focused and attentive for our purpose is not an easy thing especially when we are living in a world full of distractions.
It’s a big challenge now, more specifically for those who are studying, whether in school or university. We need to check distractions that are part and parcel of our everyday lives. On one hand, we have social media, which is transforming our social lives while on the other side, we have an inherent tendency of the mind to wander aimlessly in different directions. Even if we have a wide and expanded awareness and a focused purpose, but if we lack willpower then the whole scheme of things fails. To achieve what we desire, willpower to execute is critical.
We are overpowered by Akrasia at the crucial moments of decision-making. Akrasia is a Greek word for lacking command of the will. We often become victims of conflicts that normally arise whenever we attempt to decide anything important. As conflicts arise, Akrasia gets strengthen and the result is we are not able to make decisions.
One of the biggest problems of humanity is the inability to exercise complete control over our inner world. Most of the time we are on autopilot mode, the mind is working in the default mode network (DMN).
Most of the actions (more than 90%) are unconscious, automatic, and impulsive. We are not conscious and mindful in the sense, it’s not “present in the moment“. Because of this nature of mind, we are not, truly speaking, the author of our behavior, actions, and choices we make. Our self-awareness is poor. We fail to exercise complete control over our own minds.
Unless we are fully aware and conscious about things that are happening inside our minds and in the world around us, we can’t understand the nature, quality, and extent of any problem that we encounter inside and outside us. However, if we start living mindfully, we become increasingly aware of what is going on around us. This is called meta-awareness, to be aware of awareness. When we are stressed or emotionally disturbed, we regain equilibrium much faster if we are mindful. In other words, we have the ability to recover faster from virtually any distressed and troublesome situation. When we suffer from anxiety, stress, negative or depressing thoughts, mindful behavior helps us in overcoming such mind-related problems.
Our life is not simple. It’s an outcome of highly complex and interwoven events we experience from time to time. Everyone’s reality about the outside world is different, we therefore perceive, interpret and respond to things differently. There is no fixed prescription for achieving success or desired goals. However, we keep on expanding our horizon of awareness, we create more opportunities for ourselves. We have the innate ability to convert any potentiality to actuality if we continue to remain focused and attentive, though a certain extent of uncertainty and unpredictability will always be there at every corner of our life journey. However, we have all the capabilities to script our destiny. What’s required is the “will to create the meaningful purpose of life“.
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