Shaping Your Destiny
I’ve always been impulsive. My Mum used to quip that I leapt where angels feared to look, no matter tread. (I have “Activator” in my top 5 on Gallup Strengths Assessment, best captured in the phrase “See, Do”!) This tendency had the mixed blessing of opening opportunities and, more frequently than I care to remember, landed me trouble. While pondering why I was in a pickle again, I would find myself in a negative cycle of thoughts. I never gave this much thought until reading Earl Nightingale’s “The Strangest Secret”. Originally given as a talk, it is full of wisdom captured in pithy quotes. ( It sold more than a million copies, making it the first spoken-word recording to achieve Gold Record status) A few favourites: “You are now, and you do become, what you think about.” And “Each of us must live off the fruit of his thoughts in the future, because what you think today and tomorrow, next month and next year, you will mould your life and determine your future. You are guided by your mind.” A similar, recent comment in a James Clear presentation grabbed my attention, “The stories and information you read today will become the thoughts of your tomorrow.” Mindset is about how your mind's operational functionality is programmed. How you set your mind.
Human beings do a lot of their activities without giving conscious thought to most of it. In the simplest sense, your brain has three structures to it. At the top of your spine, you have your “reptilian brain.” It is in control of your innate and automatic self-preserving behaviour patterns, focused on keeping you alive. That's responsible for your fight, flight or freeze mode. Then you have your limbic system, which processes your emotions. Your conscious thoughts are from your prefrontal cortex, housed in the area behind your forehead. Your brain's number one job is to keep you alive. In order to do that, it learns from experiences and the logic it ties to the feedback it receives as you grow up and develop.
Brains love seeking and finding patterns – if I do this then this will happen, and, this links to that to give this outcome. As you learn your brain makes rules and shortcuts, choosing what it will think and how it will think on it. Brains develop patterns and ways of thinking that influence how you behave habitually. This forms your character that many people know you as and influences many of the descriptive terms that you would give yourself and other people would give you. I tend to be impulsive and grab the moment. Some of my close friends are deep thinkers, cautious and deliberative.
You can set your mind in neutral and wander around on autopilot, going wherever you're led, like a ship without anyone at the helm, being blown by the seas. Alternatively, you can set your mind in the same way you would set your sails on a boat, hold on to your helm and be the captain of your own life.
Frank Owen’s quote beautifully illustrates how little steps can lead to bigger outcomes. If you're thinking about something for long enough, you talk about it. If you talk about something for long enough, you'll do it. Doing something repeatedly becomes habitual. Our habits form our character, and our character, then determines our destiny. If you will choose which thoughts you focus on and feed with constant attention, it can be a life changing starting point.
Do you want to have more control over your life? This means you need to focus on what you can control. (I discovered a few years ago that this concept is one of the underpinning foundations in Stoic philosophy.)
When factors in your life are out of your control, like the economy, natural disasters, wars, other people getting mad with you, it can be exasperating. There are a lot of factors outside of your control. You may not choose what happens to you, but you can choose where you set your mind. If you focus on what you can't control, then everything will seem out of control and you will ‘bleed energy’. But if you choose to focus on what you can control and what you can do, you will feel, and be, more in control. My life radically changed when I realised that life is not so much about what happens to you. It is more about what you tell yourself about what has happened. I started to look at my assumptions and internal dialogue. Rather than look at just what happened to me I started to look for what I could control and influence. I moved from feeling like a victim to feeling like I was in control and could be victorious.
