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Take Control Over Your Own Life With Two Phrases

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Control over your own life - Choose happy
Image by AnnemarieDeloo from Pixabay

Control over your own life is a huge factor in life-satisfaction.

Those who forge their own destiny tend to be pleased with life. Those at the mercy of other people, fate, or the universe tend to be miserable.

What separates those who have control over their own life from those who don’t?

Control over your own life comes from within

One of my rules to live by is:

If you believe you have control over your own life, that’s true. If you believe you don’t have control over your own life, that’s also true. These are both self-fulfilling prophecies.

Obviously external forces create an unequal playing field. Some face a much harder situation than others.

Still, each individual has a choice: They can control their own life, or they can let the world control them.

For example, in my book The Weight Loss Habit I say to accept that it’s unfair, then take ownership over your weight regardless. … Read more

Book Review: Make Time by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky

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I recently read the book Make Time by Jack Knapp and John Zeratsky.

The book is about how you can reprioritize your time to accomplish more of what’s important. People spend too much of their days on what the authors call the “busy bandwagon,” spinning their wheels without having much to show for it. The book gives a bunch of techniques that it says will help you spend your time more wisely.

The main strategy is that every day you should plan out a “highlight,” which is the most important thing you want to accomplish that day, and schedule a specific time to do it. Then make sure you have no distractions during that time block.

It also argues that you really want to maintain “Laser Focus,” or stick to doing one thing at a time. Don’t pause your work to check e-mail, or Facebook, or to do some other work.… Read more

Eliminate Garbage Time (or Marie Kondo Your Leisure)

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I was recently talking with some friends about the habit of spending too much time on Facebook, and I realized something about myself:

I’ve already followed my own advice from my last blog post. I’ve unfriended the addicts who constantly start arguments in apolitical posts. I’ve unfollowed the people who excessively post obnoxious political content. I hide the sources of annoying shared political content whenever I see it. And I’ve trained myself to just scroll past the political hate by the people who sometimes post hate and sometimes post stuff I want to see.

But I realized there’s another class of political content on Facebook: People who post intelligent, reasoned, non-hate based commentary, which prompts discussions rather than arguments.

It’s just like this. Sure.

Now, there’s nothing inherently *wrong* with this. Except that often I’ll decide I want to take a break for a few minutes, look at Facebook, read their post, then the ensuing discussion, perhaps write up my own response, get involved in the discussion, and check back several times to repeat this process.… Read more