The Most Significant Ways To Reclaim Your Life

How To Make Sense Of Chaos

You may believe your life is spinning out of control.

However, it's a misguided perception because you're invested in your circumstances and unable to see an alternative solution.

I'm drawn to the tale by Anthony de Mello which highlights our reaction to life:

Everyone was surprised by the Master's updated metaphor: "Life is like a motor car."

They waited in silence, knowing that an explanation would not be long in coming.

"Oh yes," he said at length. "A motor car can be used to travel to the heights."

Another silence.

"But most people lie in front of it and allow it to run over them and then blame it for the accident."

Our greatest challenge in life is overcoming our sense of helplessness. However, this too is an illusion and not what's taking place.

"Circumstances are powerless, too. Your perception of outside events is solely dependent on your thinking and mind-set. And since your thinking and mind-set ebb and flow, it makes little sense to take the content of your thoughts as written in stone and requiring action," affirms author and sports psychologist Garret Kramer in The Path of No Resistance: Why Overcoming is Simpler than You Think.

When we become invested in the drama around us, we cannot make sense of it and assume chaos is detrimental.

In fact, upheaval may be what we need to advance us to the next point in our life.

The most significant act we can undertake to reclaim our life, is to surrender. I realise this goes against every principle of setting your life on track. Nevertheless, what if this simple understanding propelled you to a new way of life?

Author Mary O'Malley states in What's in the Way Is the Way: A Practical Guide for Waking Up to Life, "Opening to Life brings you into full engagement with what is happening rather than keeping you caught in a conversation about Life. We could call it surrender, but this doesn't mean being defeated. It means finally giving up your war with what Life is bringing you."

The Process Called Life

Surrender does not mean apathy, yet something more significant. It entails yielding to the process called life, by allowing what needs to transpire, irrespective of your thoughts and preconceived ideas.

Your ideas and beliefs about the world give meaning to what is taking place around you.

To reclaim your life, requires finding your own path and following the journey wherever it leads. It's a rewarding adventure, given the many discoveries made along the way.

Thus, it pays to be vigilant and know what's important to you.

It's easy to be distracted by unimportant matters. Many people succumb to this way of living because they react to what happens before them, instead of focusing on what's essential.

"Saying yes to reality-to the things we cannot change-is like choosing to turn around and sit in the saddle in the direction the horse is going. Sitting that way is mindfulness, an honouring of the here and now without the distractions of fear or desire," avows author David Richo in The Five Things We Cannot Change: And the Happiness We Find by Embracing Them.

It's In Your Response

How you respond to life, reflects whether you're pulled by situations or people that don't relate with your deepest values.

Life proceeds with its own agenda, directed through you. Yet, it's derailed by trivial matters since we lose sight of what we value most.

I liken it to working on a computer and besieged with pop-up messages from a mail program.

If you're like most people, they respond to the messages, texts or incoming calls as they arise because they're habituated to do so, like Pavlovian Conditioning.

What if there's a better reaction instead of plunging ourselves into unimportant issues?

The choice is not to allow external events to disrupt your inner stability.

We must be mindful of the excuses that keep us trapped in our comfort zone. This safe harbour is where we avoid confronting life's pressing issues while delaying the inevitable.

Eventually, it overwhelms us because we've grown accustomed to running away from our problems instead of meeting them head-on.

"People automatically thrive when they stop making circumstantial excuses for their feelings. They find clarity, take judgment off the table, and then feel a connection with everything around them," states Garret Kramer.

Life needn't be a series of unfortunate events. You have the power to take affirmative action to reclaim your life. First, you must discover what's important to you and let go of any distractions that don't complete the picture.

I assure you, life will pull you in every direction not of your choosing. If you're not resolute, you'll find yourself in a place you care little for.

This is why many people are unhappy in intimate relationships because they're enticed by the initial spark that alights their interest. They respond like a child with new toys, believing the situation will stay the same. It seldom does and soon enough they find themselves stuck and unable to navigate life.

Life is not to blame for your circumstances. It results from your less than unwavering commitment to pursue what's important.

If you're in a position that does not benefit you, ask yourself, "What really matters?"

Continue to pose this question for thirty days until answers appear. What emerges will be insights giving you clues to what you value most.

Pursue it.

However, what arises, may go against your better judgement and force you out of your comfort zone - that's okay, go with it.

Listen, for something to be of value, you must let go of fixed ideas not in alignment with a greater vision for your life.

Tune In To Your Inner Wisdom

There's a place within you, a universal wisdom that knows your needs. You may not be aware of it as it's drowned out by the incessant chatter in your mind.

This radio mind distracts you of what's essential.

To live a spirited life, turn down the volume on your thoughts and tune in to the ever silent, infinite wisdom that lies deep within you.

I assure you it's there.

People claim not to hear it or that it doesn't exist because they can't get quiet enough to perceive it.

It may take months or years to drown out the incessant chatter and allow the silent voice to direct you to the life you're meant to live.

What's the rush, anyway?

Your Instagram and Facebook friends will still be there, so set aside your communication devices for now.

Don't go another minute living a complicated life, claiming it's a series of trials and tribulations.

Be vigilant in your response to life and trust there's a greater plan for you, beyond your understanding. You needn't know the plan in its entirety right now.

Follow the trail, via your emotions to reclaim your life. Take one step at a time.

Everyday, life will show you what needs to be completed, who you need to meet with, what books you need to read and the resources you require.

As the opening tale proposes, step out of the way of the motor car and into the passenger seat to assume your role as creator and navigator of your life.

http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Most-Significant-Ways-To-Reclaim-Your-Life&id=9509239

The 3 Words You Have to Stop Saying

We think they don't matter, but they're a sign of a larger issue.

The statement, “I don’t care,” has become a common non-answer to almost any sort of question—where or what to eat, what to watch on television, or where to go on vacation. In many cases, “I don’t care,” really means “I don’t have an opinion,” with the implied plea, "You decide.”
“I don’t care” can also mean, “I do not have an interest or investment in the question or situation.” And there is a whole host of situations where I genuinely do not care, and where that attitude is morally neutral. I truly do not care, for example, whether the local baseball team makes the playoffs.
However, I am starting to worry that the “I don’t care” response is expanding into more areas of life, especially where we all should have a moral care, concern, or interest. When individuals and institutions genuinely do not care, the results can be moral apathy, moral callousness, and finally moral indifference. Apathy and callousness are stages on the way to indifference, which is one of the world's most dangerous and devastating orientations.

Moral apathy is generally considered to be a lack of motivation oroomph to realize certain goals. Someone who demonstrates apathy may be taken as lazy or just disengaged, but a person can be apathetic about one set of goals or circumstances while quite dedicated to others. Apathy tends to be localized and confined but it can seep into other areas of life. Acting apathetically can become a habit, as Aristotle would say, and one can progress from acting apathetically to being apathetic.
Addiction, for example, can be both a cause and consequence of apathy. Many whose addictions become more severe tend to lose their motivations in other parts of their lives, including any motivation to stop using.
Moral callousness

is a kind of insensitivity to the care, concern, needs, or well-being of others. Callousness often has a strong undertone of selfishness; one puts her self-interest ahead of the interests of others. Here, too, there may be a progression. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) argued that all people have a duty to help some others at some times. When one's own definition of “some others” and “some times” shrinks, a person becomes more callous, more unwilling to act in ways that meet the needs of others, despite recognizing those needs.  In a more extreme form, a morally callous person will blame others for having needs or being in circumstances that require help.
Some people can become morally callous to their own selves. These are cases in which a person so undervalues her own concerns and interests that she does not see herself as having moral standing. She might think to herself that her interests do not matters because they are hers. Or she may think herself weak or dependent, or some other harsh judgement, for having these needs and requiring the help of others. This is a special kind of moral callousness.
An institution can be morally callous. Universities, for example, have long recognized the ubiquity of sexual assaults on campuses. Allocating few resources for prevention education programs and survivor services; pressuring students not to go to the police; and operating with student conduct systems woefully ill-equipped to address sexual assault cases all demonstrate institutional callousness. A school may be more concerned with avoiding bad publicity than with the rights of the victim, or for that matter, the accused perpetrator. Some individuals within a college may be caring and compassionate, but the callousness of the institution dominates.
The bad news is that people can become increasingly apathetic and callous. The good news is that people can also become less apathetic and callous. For a variety of reasons, one can become motivated to make positive changes; we see this all the time when someone stops using alcohol and drugs, or has any experience that pierces the hardened shell that callousness creates. And one experience may create a crack that leads to more cracks. Compassion can replace callousness, which may motivate people to act in ways that tend to the care of others—or themselves.
Moral indifference, the potent and devastating combination of the worst forms of moral apathy and moral callousness, belongs in its own category, because unlike the others, it does not admit of degrees.

This is what makes it so dangerous. 
Moral indifference is the complete absence or silencing of moral emotions. Without these moral sentiments or emotions, our moral systems cannot exist. David Hume (1724-1776) claims that reason alone cannot be the basis for our moral systems. It isn’t contrary to reason, Hume points out, to prefer the destruction of the entire world to scratching my finger. He also admits that choosing his own total ruin is not contrary to reason. So what makes it morally troubling? Our moral emotions and sentiments. Hume claims that reason ought to be the slave of the sentiments, but I believe the influence is mutual. We need our moral emotions to be shaped by our reason, and our reason needs to be tempered by our moral emotions.
But as I wrote in an earlier post, our palate of moral emotions seems to be shrinking—and we pay scant attention to moral development. The emotions that are more other-regarding are being supplanted by narrower and more self-interested emotions. When more and more people tend to understand themselves not to have an investment or stake in the well-being of others, it becomes easier, and more convenient, to wilfully ignore entire categories of others—people, animals, the environment—with needs and legitimate expectations.
Where a person becomes incapable of cultivating moral emotions and recognizing the needs of others, she becomes morally indifferent. There is no motivation to helps others (apathy) and there is an utter disregard of the interests and concerns of others (callousness).
Moral indifference can also exist on the levels of organizations and broader social bodies. For example, the National Football League arguably demonstrates moral indifference. It seems quite obvious that the league has known for years the long-term effects of head injuries and concussions. And yet, like the tobacco industry, it refused to admit any culpability or to assume any proactive responsibility. Only in the face of multiple lawsuits has it made any attempt to provide appropriate support for its retired players.
There seems more than a whiff of indifference in the attitude of, "The players knew the risks and they freely chose to participate.” In some sense, this is true. But when team physicians seem to have been complicit in clearing players who were still exhibiting symptoms, the bargain seems fixed in advance—and on some level, the players are not seen as persons but rather broken pieces of a board game.
It isn’t contrary to reason to prefer billions of dollars of profit to the prevention and treatment of severe head injuries. But it is contrary to many moral values.
Nobel Prize Winner and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel famously said, “The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.”
Moral indifference is the evacuation of moral emotions, which makes the most devastating acts possible

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/philosophy-stirred-not-shaken/201409/the-3-words-you-have-stop-saying
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