How to Take Control of Your Destiny: Shifting Mindset and Making Choices
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Recently, one of my clients told me that she never felt she could control her own destiny. In her mind, life events happened without any influence from her. One reason for this belief was that she grew up without financial stability, leading her to create a story of how only people “with money” had choices. However, my client went to college, worked in government for many years and is now in a leadership position in the private sector.
To an external observer, my client escaped her circumstances and broke the cycle of financial instability. Statistically speaking, she would not have gone to college, she would have a minimum wage job, and would have been doomed to repeat the cycle. Yet, she cannot see the choices she has in front of her. Even the ones she made, like going to college, felt to her as if someone else was choosing on her behalf.
At some point in our lives, we have felt completely powerless. For some, this feeling is temporary, driven by specific events. For others, it is the story we created, either learned from the adults around us or as a form of self-preservation.
“Destiny is not a matter of chance. It is a matter of choice: it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.” Unknown
In her book The Choice, Dr. Edith Eger writes that when we feel we have no control over our circumstances, when we believe that nothing we do can alleviate our suffering or improve our lives, we stop taking action on our own behalf because we believe there is no point.
I appreciate that many of us still feel our choices are extremely limited or nonexistent.
Some of us think that we don’t have enough money for choices like leaving our job to pursue our passion. Others believe they cannot bring their self to all aspects of life, including work, because of fear of “not belonging.”
What can we do to shift our mindset and take control of our own destiny? We could start by reflecting on these four questions.
1) What do you want?
I am the first to admit that every time I receive this question I struggle. I am afraid of others’ judgment when they hear what I really want. What if I don’t achieve it? Will their idea of me deteriorate?
Something similar happened with my client. When I asked her, “What do you want?” she could only give me the cookie-cutter, safe response related to her work goals – the things she was quite confident she could actually get. She, like many of us, felt that wanting more than she could safely achieve, was too risky… After all, in her mind, she only had limited choices.
Dr. Eger writes “the problem – and the foundation of our persistent suffering – is the belief that discomfort, mistakes, disappointment signal something about our worth.” No wonder we keep our desires in the safe zone of “achievable.”
“Everything you want is out there waiting for you to ask. Everything you want also wants you.” Unknown
2) Who wants it?
This is a loaded question and our struggle: to understand our own expectations for ourselves vs. trying to live up to others’ expectations of us.
For some people, this could become an impossible choice. Do I pursue my own happiness at the cost of damaging the relationship with my family? Or do I meet their expectations (at least now) and renounce to or delay my own happiness?
The awareness I want to bring is that there is always a choice. I will repeat: There is always a choice. And with each choice there is a result. What is the result that you want to have at this moment?
“To be passive is to let others decide for you. To be aggressive is to decide for others. To be assertive is to decide for yourself. And to trust that there is enough, that you are enough.” Dr. Edith Eger, American psychologist and Holocaust survivor
3) What are you going to do about it?
There are two possible answers for this question in the present moment: nothing or something.
We can discover the answers in questions 1 and 2 and decide to do absolutely nothing about it. And doing nothing is a choice.
We could also decide to take some action – even a small step – towards what we want or what others want for us. And doing something is also a choice.
“You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.” Rabindranath Tagore, Bengali poet, philosopher, and polymath
4) When are you going to start?
Like the previous question, there are two possible answers to this one: now or later. Some of you may be thinking, what about “never”? Well, never means that we would not take any action ever, which is starting inaction now.
As we increase our self-awareness, access our intuition, and fine tune our gut feeling, we will come to sense the appropriate timing for things. Sometimes it is better to do nothing now and revisit later. Other times, we want to start action now to see how things go.
“Timing is a delicate balance between patience and action.” Unknown
One more thing before you go
We have much more freedom than we think. We have choices. Yes, in plural.
The biggest obstacles we all face live within us. They limit our ability to see the choices in front of us.
As long as we are alive, we are always choosing: to act or to stand still, to take responsibility or to blame others, to focus on the present or to relive the past, to take risks or to stay safe.
We can choose to go through life fixing what is broken, pushing our feelings to the very bottom of our being, and constantly proving ourselves. Or we can choose to be fully alive knowing that we are a work in progress constantly learning and improving, that feelings are not fatal and only temporary, and to accept and love ourselves for who we really are: human, imperfect, and whole.
Recall one of your deepest desires, the one you are too afraid to say out loud in the privacy of your own home. What are your choices? Please, let us know in the comments.
As a leadership coach, I enable talent to achieve bold goals with high standards. My mission is to empower underrepresented women in the financial industry transition from mid to senior level leadership positions using mental fitness to achieve peak performance, peace of mind, and healthier relationships.