Living a confident, empowered, and balanced life is all about having a sense of control. It’s about believing you have what it takes to achieve your desired outcome. When we feel uncertain about who we are and what were capable of, it’s not very likely we’ll take risks and grow to reach our potential.
Having a sense of control over our life leads us to take more risks, reach for greater opportunities, and be more successful in generating favorable outcomes. It has also been linked to increased levels of life-satisfaction.
This is because a sense of control can empower you to make change and believe you can improve areas of life where you aren’t highly satisfied. Do you feel a sense of control over where you’re headed and the responses you make?
Below are 3 ways we can instill a much greater sense of control and begin living an empowered and significant life.
Your personal mission, vision, and values statement
If you lost everything, your career, your loved ones, and the life roles you inhabit, who would you be? Often our sense of self is tied to all the external and unfortunately impermanent aspects of our life.
Our real strength and personal power comes from who we are deep down inside. The one thing that can hold strong despite external circumstances is our life vision and personal values. Developing a personal foundation based on your vision, mission, and values provides a sturdy core from which to base life decisions and make choices.
Through coaching I have seen how powerful it can be when someone connects with who they are. There is a true sense of empowerment and inspiration that wasn’t present before. Below are three considerations to help you establish a strong personal identity and help guide your decisions.
1. Develop your vision and know where you’re going. Who do you want to be as a person?
2. Develop your mission and know how you’re going to get there. What will it take to become this person?
3. Establish your values and base your decisions on these. What are your top 4 or 5 values and how would you expect someone who holds these values to live?
Setting clear and effective goals
If there is one area where many people have vast knowledge it’s goals. My prediction is that every personal development blog has discussed goals in some form or fashion. For good reason, it’s important to have this sense of agency and self-efficacy.
Unfortunately, knowledge doesn’t equal application. It’s much easier to know what we want than it is to establish a feasible plan to get there. How many times have you set a goal to start a new project, lose weight, or make more personal time, and didn’t follow through?
There was something that held you back and got in the way. Could it have been a lack of clarity for how you were going to get there? Or maybe you really didn’t believe it was possible? The acronym B.A.M., which I learned about from a coaching mentor of mine, has really helped me to conceptualize my goals more effectively.
B.A.M. stands for Believable, Achievable, and Measurable
In general believing in our goals and having a way to gauge our progress is crucial. Those times where we fall short of our goals comes from a looming self-doubt that is lurking below the surface. If you want to lose weight for instance, but can’t visualize yourself as thin and healthy, it’s not going to happen. You have to believe it and see it.
When we believe in our goals and have clear signs of progress it helps us stay motivated and really follow through. Also, when we achieve goals is helps us gain confidence in our abilities and develop self-trust that we can do what we set out to do.
Achieving goals has been shown to relate to a greater hope for the future. As we achieve our goals, we increase our level of hope and our future continues to look brighter. As time goes on, we will start to set loftier and more impressive goals as we continue to expand as a person. Start small and see success and you will gain a sense of control and true empowerment.
Live a life in balance
Having balance between life domains is how we can start to live effectively and have more fulfillment. A basic area of focus is the domains of EMSP, or emotional, mental, spiritual, and physical. There are many other domains to keep in balance, such as financial, relationships, and career, however EMSP provides a good basis to start getting organized and balanced.
Emotional
Do you have balanced emotions? Are you able to manage your feelings and deal with negativity? Do you have moments where you experience joy, peace, and love? Everyone needs to have positive experiences and develop emotional awareness in order to manage emotions such as stress and anxiety. Learning to stay mindful is a major key in emotional balance.
Mental
Are you open to learning new things and make efforts to grow and develop intellectually? Are you willing to consider other people’s points of view? The mental domain involves what we think about and has a focus on gaining knowledge for personal development. Make time to read or listen to audio books, read from you favorite magazine or blog, or connect with a mentor. Do whatever it takes to increase your knowledge in this ever expanding world.
Spiritual
Do you have a strong relationship with your creator? Everyone has spiritual gifts and a purpose for their life. Discover and begin using your spiritual gifts and talents. Seek truth and enlightenment, and show compassion and forgiveness for yourself and others. Spiritual development can help you grow in faith and follow your vision and purpose.
Physical
When we feel good physically it makes everything else significantly easier. Exercising, getting good sleep, and having good eating habits are all important aspects of physical balance. Do you take care of your body when something isn’t right? What about managing addictions that are holding you back? Begin changing behaviors that are bad for your health and you will see immediate benefits in all domains.
All of these ideas will get you started in your journey to greater life-satisfaction and fulfillment. By setting effective goals, repositioning irrational beliefs, and living a balanced life, you will gain greater confidence and feel better about yourself. Fulfillment and satisfaction come from being where we desire to be and developing congruence between who we are now and what we want to be.
Take control of your life and begin to thrive!
