“The comfort zone is a place that never grows anything.” Author Unknown.
As I dig deeper into my vulnerabilities and try to understand the technical aspects of being happy (or figuring out the physical things I need to do to be happy.) I’ve come to realize that happiness isn’t just emotional, it’s also deeply spiritual.
Spirituality in my life was tainted by how I saw religion as a child. Growing up in a home where Christianity wasn’t a choice, but rather a requirement for acceptance and survival; I only saw the flaws in religion. I saw hypocrisy, fakeness, and a country club for the white suburban members of my church who looked at me and my adopted siblings as a charity project; and for my parents, a solution to infertility. I felt like I was a human band-aid for the miscarriages that my adopted mother suffered more than six times in her younger life.
I deeply questioned religion, I questioned my own spirituality, I despised it for a long time. The questions I had about religion, combined with my immaturity about viewing it, left my questions unanswered for many years. I turned my own spirit and spirituality into the scapegoat, and I neglected this key area of my life. In areas that I had weak or no philosophies to guide me, I struggled. I found myself on a quest to do things without spirituality, even while believing in the human spirit. I simply didn’t think this contradiction was something that I needed to resolve, so I didn’t. I was living a life without leveraging one of the greatest powers in the universe. I had made the unyielding power of the human spirit my enemy, hiding from it whenever I could.
There is a concept called prima mobilia, or the first cause, the primary reason that we do things. This first cause is driven by our self-mastery, our self-control, or self-discipline. With this concept, I’m learning now that I can undo things in my life. With self-discipline, I can approach my blind spots with true love, respect, and a self-compassion that I haven’t been able to do in the past. It’s not easy, but let’s look at the work I’ve compiled to help me understand how to take control of my life.
The Universal Law of Control: you feel good about yourself to the degree to which you feel you are in control of your own life.
Brian Tracy
Being adopted was something that I used as a roadblock to lots of things in my life. I used my abandonment to absolve and excuse the problems I created in my world. I used it as a conversation ender when things got too close to the heart of the matter. I didn’t see stress as a lack of control in my life, I saw stress as an enemy, something to avoid, a side effect of the effects of the world on me. When confronted with a problem I didn’t want to take responsibility for, I would tell myself well, “That’s just the way I am because of my abandonment”, or I’d use it in other ways to neglect my personal responsibility for things. I was out of control, and that made me unhappy and stressed.
I’ve been working now to change my perspective from an External Locus of Control to an Internal one. Today, I accept that I am where, and what I am is because that’s what I’ve decided to become. As I have mentioned in past articles, I am in command now of the USS Dan Oostra, and it’s made me a much better person because of it.
True happiness and satisfaction, built on self-discipline and mastery, come from new laws I’ve adopted. I use these laws to help tell me what happens or fails to happen for me. I see some laws as being general and universal, like the law of cause and effect. But there are other laws that are specific to single areas of activity in my life, like money and wealth creation.
The law of belief is something that I’ve known about for a long time, but I didn’t put it into the words that I needed to really understand. We don’t believe the things we see, rather, we see the things we believe. Our beliefs have an inordinate impact on our lives and thinking. Our beliefs form the master program to the computer that we use in our subconscious minds. We can rarely do more than we think or believe that we can–so, in order to change our lives, we must believe that we can. I know that from reflection on my past, that I rarely exceeded my deeply held convictions concerning my own capabilities.
By taking actions consistent with the beliefs you have about yourself, the actions themselves have a back-flow effect that causes you to believe in that way. This is a core principle to self-fulfillment.
Whatever you expect, with confidence, becomes your own self-fulfilling prophecy.
Your outer world tends to become a reflection, a mirror image of your inner world.
There’s a lot here to unpack and for the rest of this morning, I have more work to do. The last thought I want to leave with is that what I believe about myself and my character. Character is fluid, and we can change our character with careful choices, practice, and self-mastery. I am working on becoming a change master. I challenge you to do the same. I want to be an expert at change, I want to grow from change, I realize now that all progress comes from change. I absolutely believe that better things are possible for all of us when we tenaciously hold to the beliefs that power our goals and dreams.
Have a great day today! I love you! You are amazing, you are the best.
