How often do we catch-up with friends or family members who complain about their current circumstances? Their conversation will be about how difficult life is, the way other people are treating them, what everyone else is doing wrong, or how ‘the system’ is set up to make sure they can’t progress and succeed in life.
Then, if we ask them if they think their life could be better or they’d like to be happy, the answer is a resounding YES! But the way they explain it is:
They would be happy if…
- life treated them more kindly
- people treated them better
- everyone else did things right
- if the system was set up to support them
And the list goes on and on.
In other words, those complainers believe that their own progress and happiness is in the hands of external factors such as people, conditions or circumstances.
What a load of hogwash.
My life, your life, or anyone’s life will only get better if we finally, once and for all, acknowledge that we alone are responsible for our own lives, our own outcomes and our own happiness. Period.
If you aren’t happy with your health and fitness, who do you expect will get you fit and healthy other than yourself? Are you waiting for food manufacturers to reduce the fat, salt and/or sugar content of their products? Are you waiting for a friend to become available so you’ll have someone to workout with? Are you waiting for ‘the magic pill’ to be invented that will miraculously melt away those layers of fat around your belly? If so, then you are going to be waiting for a really, really long time.
What if you don’t like the boss or the job you are in? Are you waiting for your boss to move on or waiting for the company culture change? Again, it’s probably going to be a very long time before one of those happen.
What about the money that seems to just slip through your fingers and as a result, you don’t have any savings? “They” make everything so expensive, so are you waiting for “them” to make things cheaper so that you can continue to accumulate things that you don’t actually need? Perhaps a rich relative will die, or maybe you will win the lottery. Well, the chances of either of those happening are pretty slim.
The fact is that “they” aren’t going to change – the people, the situations nor the systems. So what’s the point of sitting there complaining about it? Either accept things as they are and stop complaining, or you do something about it.
Listen up people.
No-one is coming.
No-one else is going to fix your life.
No-one else is going to get you fit and healthy.
No-one else is going to put you into another job or move you to another company.
No-one else is going to build you a financial nest egg for you.
Come on. This isn’t shockingly new news. You know this. You may not like it, but you know it.
As a child, your parents were the ones who ‘made’ you do things. But you aren’t a child anymore. No-one else is going to ‘make’ you do anything. You are the adult now and you have to parent yourself, which means that you have to make yourself to do what you don’t feel like doing. Stop looking to people, circumstances or conditions outside of yourself to do what needs to be done in order to get the results you want.
Look, I’m not saying these things to be mean or to make you feel hopeless, nor so that you can feel sorry for yourself. In fact, by facing the truth of who is responsible for your life, I’m giving you hope.
You now know who that hero is that will come and fix things for you.
It’s you. Yes, YOU.
You have the power and capacity to drastically alter any area of your life.
So why don’t you want to?
And please, stop lying to yourself or anyone else when you say “But I do want to!”
No you don’t. You want things to change. You don’t want yourself to change – your decisions, your behaviours or your actions.
“But I can’t because…”
You can. And everything that follows “because…” is simply an excuse your brain is throwing up at you, in the guise of ‘a valid reason’.
Our brains are wired to keep us from doing anything that feels dangerous. And the brain perceives a shift out of the comfort zone as being dangerous.
Just watch what your brain does when you make a decision to get up early to exercise. Look at all the excuses it will bombard you with in order to keep you lying in bed. That’s when you need to make it clear to your brain that your decision to exercise in the morning is non-negotiable. Don’t even enter that discussion (yes, you know that you have conversations with your own mind!)
The good news is that our brains are the most incredible tools that we can use to support us in achieving whatever we want. Unfortunately, most people allow their brains to use them, not the other way around. However, you can tell your brain what to do. I heard Tony Robins put it this way: I don’t negotiate with my brain. I decide what I’m going to do and my brain just has to follow. I don’t enter into any discussion or negotiation.
You can create a ‘non-negotiable’ rule with your brain for any area of your life where you want to experience a different outcome.
But it is you who has to make that decision. You have to action that decision. You have to silence the excuses. You have to make the change.
If you want your circumstances, conditions and outcomes to change, first you have to change. Once you change, then circumstances, conditions and outcomes will follow suit.
Stop making up excuses as to why you can’t change. You can. You just have to decide to.
