How To Run Your Own Life - Don't Let Others Do It For You

It can make you really mad! One day you wake up and realise that your life is being shaped entirely by other people. Almost everything you do is decided for you while your needs, goals and dreams are right at the back of the queue.

Actually, don't get mad because this realisation is the first step in running your own life. The thing is that you have do have choices about what you do; it's just that it doesn't seem like it now. So how did you get into this situation?

It probably started years ago; we are conditioned to it. Remember as a child how you got saddled with all manner of unwelcome obligations. How else did you get trapped into playing boring games or stuck with the torment of being polite to unwelcome visitors? From experiences like this we learn to be wary.

When we leave childhood behind, we discover that commitment can bring bigger self-sacrifices. It can develop into an inescapable sense of duty or even complete overwhelm. Commitment gets a bad name and we avoid it when we think we can. You can see that we do this for understandable reasons but by doing so we hand over control of our lives to other people.

The key point is that we do need to make some commitments, as long as they are of the right sort, in order to run our own lives. So what makes the right sort of commitment?

The dictionary defines commitment as a pledge or promise. This means that you can make a pledge to yourself. You can promise yourself that you will act on what is important to you: a dream, a project, a relationship. It's commitment that makes the crucial difference between good intention and real action. Without commitment your dream will stay just that - a dream.

Your time is finite because there are only a fixed number of waking hours. This means that you have time for only a limited number of commitments. So making a commitment inevitably means avoiding anything else that conflicts with that commitment. This can involve some tough choices, yet they are essential if you are going to make progress.

Be careful what you commit to. When another person invites or expects you to make a commitment, before agreeing take a look at the impact it will have elsewhere. Many people suffer from overwhelm because of over-commitment. A recent client described it to me as 'spinning plates' - as soon as one plate was attended to, he had to rush off to keep another spinning, then another and so on until he was back at the first or a plate came crashing to the floor!

Running your own life depends on the commitments you make. Here's a simple 6 step guide:

Consider a dream or a goal that is important to you:

1. What commitment (promise) could you make to yourself to move this forward?

2. What would you need to start doing to make the commitment?

3. What would you need to stop doing to make the commitment?

4. As a result of your answers above, what is the 'cost' of making the commitment?

5. What is the benefit of making the commitment?

6. Do you wish to go ahead and make this commitment?

Article Source: http://www.leadershiparticles.net

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