Take Charge Of Where You Are Going in Life; Your Life Compass
‘Why do you have the life that you have?’
Have you ever reflected on this?
What is the first answer that comes to your mind? Because whether you like it or not, you played a part in this! In fact, the sole responsibility for this lies squarely on you and you alone. This may be a bitter pill to swallow, or a source of incredible liberation and empowerment, depending on the way you have set up your thought processor (your mind).
So think about your life; Why do you spend your day doing whatever it is that you do?
Why do you drive a certain car?
Have a certain job?
Why are you an entrepreneur?…
Or a loyal employee in a big company?
Why does one person like to sing in the rain while another can’t stand the rain!?
Why do some people travel the world while other people choose to focus on making money and their career?
Why do some people excel in life, while others 'live lives of quiet desperation?'
The answer is:
Your Decisions.
The 3 core decisions that shape our lives are:
1. Our decisions about what to focus on.
2. Our decisions about what things mean.
3. Our decisions about what to do to create the results that we want.
If this is true (it is), then we would do very well to meticulously set up the system that determines our core decisions.
So, let's dig a bit deeper...
‘What determines our core decisions?’
Pain and Pleasure.
Everything we do in life, we do to either gain pleasure, or avoid pain. And we will do more to avoid pain, than gain pleasure.
(This will be the focus of an upcoming article, but lets dig even deeper for now!)
'What determines what you link pain and pleasure to?'
There are a number of overlapping factors…e.g., subconscious or conscious beliefs, current emotional state, etc.—but the biggest influence which is behind everything you do is:
Your Values.
Values are the emotional states that are most important to you in life.
Some examples of values include
- love and connection
- happiness
- control
- excitement
- security
- variety
- consistency
- comfort
- health
- calm
- passion
- etc.
We all have 'moving towards' values—the emotional states we want to experience the most or that give us pleasure (examples listed above), and 'moving away from' values—the emotional states we will do anything to avoid because they give us pain. For example: guilt, shame, anxiety, stress, etc.
Now, importantly, it’s not just the values that we hold dear. Many people share similar, or even the same, values. But what is different, and makes all the difference in the quality of our lives, is the order of our values. Which value is more important to us will determine our decisions.
It is our values hierarchy that is determining the decisions that we make, and it is our key decisions that shape our entire lives!
For example: If one person's highest values are consistency and security, and another person's highest values are variety and excitement, are they going to make different decisions? For example, are they going to make different decisions regarding a career path? Which one is more likely to be an entrepreneur? Would it influence the partner they choose? The vacation they take (or don’t take)? Their lifestyle?
Absolutely!
Your values are the compass that is guiding you through your life. They are guiding you to make certain decisions and take certain actions consistently. The direction of our lives is controlled by the magnetic pull of our values.
For the majority of people, these values—this invisible force that is shaping our entire lives, is buried in their subconscious.
Which would be all well and good, if we had consciously set it up in the first place, and our values hierarchy had permeated in our subconscious as an automated guiding force pulling us in the direction of our ideal life.
But here comes the kicker:
The majority of people never consciously set this system up. It has settled in our subconscious mind through our experiences with our peers, teachers, our culture, through our conditioning in childhood, through exposure to television and media, through the random experiences in our lives!
Some people unfortunately have very little, to no awareness about what makes them happy in the long term, and live like a leaf in the wind, chasing instant gratification—instant pleasure (to distract themselves from the pain of their current reality). Other people are aware on some level, and therefore lead quite successful lives—and the definition of success that I am referencing here is living a life in which you experience lots of subjective pleasure, and the least amount of pain possible! If success is not that, then what is it?
What I am proposing, is that having absolute clarity of what causes you to feel pleasure, and absolute clarity of what causes you to feel pain, allows you to design your life in a way in which your goals, your values, and your beliefs are completely aligned, and will be congruently pulling you towards pleasure, instead of pulling you apart if there is a lack of congruency because of a lack of awareness!
If you’ve ever found it difficult to make a decision, or you have fallen victim to ‘self-sabotage,’ it is more than likely, for one of two main reasons:
1. You are unclear about your values hierarchy, i.e., what makes you most happy in life, and therefore making a decision becomes an internal torture. (When you are clear on what you value most, making most decisions becomes quite simple)
or
2. You’ve got conflicting values. For example, what would happen if your highest 'moving away from' value was rejection, and your highest 'moving towards' value was business success? You're going to be tearing yourself apart, that's what! To achieve business success you have to be willing to risk rejection, it's part of the territory. But, because of your subconscious value hierarchy, you will never fully commit, and will wonder why you're not achieving the success you desire.
If we want to truly live our life on our terms, where we experience tons of pleasure and the least amount of pain possible, we need to be clear on what we value most. We do this by questioning ourselves, to find out what we value most in life. Not the material possession or the action—but the value—the emotion, or feeling, behind it.
When we make distinctions like this, a new world opens up to us. We have so many more options. Why we do certain things or act a certain way becomes clear, as does the ability to understand why other people might make very different decisions to us. If you've ever struggled to understand yourself, or other people, herein lies the answer.
And the best part is this: This is just taking stock. Once we know why we do what we do, we can change certain values in our hierarchy consciously.
Can you envision the difference that can make in the direction, and the control we have, of our lives?
What would happen, for example, if a person whose number one 'towards value' was independence, decided to bring 'love and connection' up his hierarchy?
Would their life change?
Would it change a little or a lot?
This is the power that we all have, available to us at all times, if we expose ourselves to this level of meta-cognition.
Some people never do, because they associate more pain than pleasure to the small amount of effort and time required to learn these skills.
These same people are happy to expel plenty of effort and time in researching, and envisioning and deciding which flat-screen TV best complements their lounge-room.
I'm not saying which is 'right' or 'wrong.'
But I am saying that we all have a choice.
Peace :)
