Taking Control of Your Life - An Empowerment Technique That Could Change How You View Everything

By Lynn Marie Sager

How can you regain control of your life?

Pay attention to your language. Listen to the words that drop carelessly from your lips.
Whatever you say often enough, you eventually prove to yourself. Your language is a refection of your thoughts and your attitudes. Your language reflects whether you feel in control of your life, or out of control in your world.

How often do you hear statements like: "I can't," "If only," "I must," "There is nothing I can do," "I was born that way," "She irritates me," "He makes me uptight," "They won't let me," "You need to do something," "Everything is a mess," "I had no choice," "He started it."

Now, take a moment to consider how often you use similar statements yourself.

Statements like these are limiting. They indicate that the speaker has relinquished all power. They indicate that the speaker feels helpless and unable to affect worthwhile change.

If you want to reclaim your sense of power, then you need to retrain your tongue to take back your sense of control. Don't ever think that the words you utter don't matter. Your mind starts to believe anything that your tongue says often enough.

When you change your words, you change your thoughts. When you change your thoughts, you change your perspective. When you change your perspective, you begin to grow. And once you start to grow, you'll start to develop power, self-esteem, self-control and the ability to design your own life. So remove self-limiting statements from your habitual speech patterns. Whenever you catch yourself using limiting words or phrases, use the SPAR technique explained on my website. Retrain yourself to use words that empower you. Don't let yourself make statements that tear you down. If you can, ask someone that you trust to help you listen to your wording.
You don't always notice your own limiting phrases and a partner can help you.

Anytime that you discover a limiting thought, affirm its opposite. Write down the affirmation, say the affirmation, sing the affirmation-do whatever it takes to prove to yourself that you are not limited. Most importantly, don't buy into the myth that you have no control over your life.
Whatever you focus upon determines your life, and you have total control over your focus.

Once you start to practice controlling your thoughts, you'll discover that the power to control your life is as simple as changing your mind.

During class, I often say that things are simple, and then I see everyone looking skeptical. Notice that I said, "simple." Not "easy."

A vast difference exists between simple and easy.

Everything I teach is simple. In fact, a lot of what I teach is so simple that many people consider it obvious. Yes, the rules of the river are simple to understand, but they are not easy to incorporate into your life. Control takes commitment, focus, process, belief and effort. Control is simple, but it is not easy. Control will not happen overnight, but it will begin to happen as soon as you start...

You'll find a table on the Navigating Life Website containing limited statements along side their more powerful opposites. Simply visit http://www.navigatinglife.org and click on our galley, where you will find a link under "Shortcuts to Navigating Life" entitled "Empowered versus limited thoughts." Take a look at it and ask yourself, "How does what I constantly tell myself compare to these examples? Do my words limit me, or empower me?"

From A River Worth Riding: Fourteen Rules for Navigating Life, by Lynn Marie Sager copyright 2005

You can find much more about this topic on Navigating Life's website. Simply go to http://www.navigatinglife.org, and visit the Galley for links to our full articles.

Lynn Marie Sager has toured over two-dozen countries and worked on three continents. Author of A River Worth Riding: Fourteen Rules for Navigating Life, Lynn currently lives in California; where she fills her time with private coaching, public speaking, and teaching for the LACCD and Pierce College. She runs the Navigating Life website, where she offers free assistance to readers who wish to incorporate the rules of worthwhile living into their lives.

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