Throw Yourself in the Driver’s Seat of Your Life and Commit
Each day, we are helping to write the story of our lives. While we may not be the sole architects of what happens, we do what we can while we strive. We may steer part of our lives consciously, but not all our steps and turns are taken with clarity.
Sometimes, we forget that we are the in the steering seat, as we lose ourselves in the momentum of our journey. We may become attached to driving one way, so much so, that we forget that there’s another play. Before we know it, years have gone by, and we look back in our rearview, thinking of who we could have been and what we could have seen.
We realize that we could have taken a different path.
And that it’s now time to shift gears.
What mistakes are we making — that prevent us from living the best possible story for our lives?
1. We Don’t Write Down What We Want We Want
“If it is not written down, it does not exist”–Phillipe Kruchten.
Unless we have fixed written targets to aim towards, we drift aimlessly, flapping about in the wild unknowns of the sea of life. With a fixity of purpose, we move forward, rather than in wasteful circles.
We begin to glimpse a greater view of reality, as we ascend towards a vision that frees us from the burden of being motionless and apathetic towards life. Consequently, we liberate our sense of inspiration. As we make our ascent, we gain confidence and positive momentum, despite the frustration.
After all, if we’re not moving forward, we’re moving backward. There is no such thing as standing still.
“ Look at almost any great success, and you’ll find there’s been massive frustration along the way”–Anthony Robbins.
As we move forward, we will experience plenty of frustration along the way, but our relationship to it will gradually change. We’ll begin to anticipate the jagged turns of life, and if we don’t, we’ll let them go more quickly. And so, we metaphorically speaking, usher in new views that further enhance our experience of life.
We begin to flow with Being more than before, so much so that in glimpses, we begin to lose our sense of separateness.
In May 2017, during an interview with Jimmy Kemmel, Jim Carrey poignantly described this state of being: “I used to be a guy who was experiencing the world, and now I feel like the world and the universe experiencing a guy.”
We too can merge with the winds of life. Reality can become more exciting, daring, and present. Although it may not be like that all the time, it can imbue those qualities more than before, if we decide to commit and throw ourselves in the driver’s seat of our life’s journey.
We can start by simply deciding how we want to remember the story of our lives. A vision of our lives can be simply articulated by writing a paragraph as short as five sentences. Yet throughout our school years, no one ever even suggested to us that it’s something we should do. We spend more time planning our holidays, than we do planning our lives.
I wrote a short vision for my life a few years ago, and it’s helped guide my choices ever since. Here it is:
If our future vision is daring enough, our past becomes nothing more than a springboard of a story from which we catapult ourselves from. We stop living from our past. We start living with what TED Speaker, Phillip Zimbardo describes as a ‘future orientation’. With clear, articulate visions for what we want, we can regain our childlike wonder for the future.
If the temptation to move backwards arises, we can write a story for what kind of life we want to avoid. Doing so will mean we’ll be more likely to live in the space between Order and Chaos, where meaning is generated, as Jordan Peterson eloquently describes in his book 12 Rules for Life.
2. We Let Our Aims Turn Us Into Overambitious Goal-Oriented Robots
The 3 Mistakes We Make With Our Goals
- We aim for something incredibly difficult, nebulous, and use a distant-deadline, which quickly leads us to discouragement and procrastination. It is nobler to aim for something small and achieve it, and then to slowly build on what you’ve achieved by aiming for something higher.
- We have too many goals at once, frittering away our focus and time in the process. Extraordinary results are determined by how narrow you can make your focus.
- The more you want something, the more it controls you. By obsessing over our goals, we stop appreciating the present moment, and each new day we’re given. We start to put too much pressure on ourselves to achieve. Consequently, it’s fair to say that we would have been better off emotionally speaking at least, without any goals.
What’s the solution? Skip the distant New Year’s Resolutions. Have no more than 3 goals per quarter. The short time horizon of 90 days immediately focuses your attention towards taking action. And if you couple that with focusing on a process, instead of committing to an outcome, you won’t be attached to your goal.
You’ll be in the driver’s seat.
3. We Don’t Focus on Gratitude And the People We Care About
In our pursuit of lofty heights, we can forget those around us. We can stop reaching out to the people we care about. Today, many of us care more about updating our Instagram story than sending a message to a person we’re thinking about.
We can close ourselves because we feel the pressure of our ambitions caving us into a corner. In time, if we don’t check ourselves, we can end up becoming narcissistic, ambitious individualists.
A goal should never be important than a person to cherish. Often, our worries and existential woes are caused by an excessive preoccupation with ourselves. We can heal our worries, by, thinking and caring about others more.
The more we close ourselves and focus on ‘making it’, the more likely we’ll fall into a negative spiral that will be hard to escape. Without a positive filter, you’ll miss the moments of life. You won’t cherish the hug your partner gave you. You won’t care for the sun beaming on your face. You won’t bother to pay attention to the fact that you have the ability, if you’re lucky, to walk.
You’ll start taking everything for granted unless you build the habit of instilling gratitude into every edge of your life.
Take a moment each day to give thanks.
Summary
- Write down what you want for your life and write down what you don’t want, commit to the prior.
- Don’t let your aims turn you into an overambitious robot.
- Care more about the present moment and the people in your life and you’ll paradoxically end up caring and loving your own journey a lot more.
Conclusion
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