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BE AN EXPERT IN YOUR OWN LIFE

Written by: Jonathan Payne

Article Overview: To be experts in managing our lives, and therefore to take back the power of choice, we need to know ourselves. We need to be clear about what motivates us, what we aspire to be, what energizes us and what drains us, what moves us toward our goals and what gets in the way.

BE AN EXPERT IN YOUR OWN LIFE

Do motivational speakers ever have bad days? I guess they do. And are time management consultants ever late for meetings? I’m sure it happens. Do financial planners sometimes experience cash flow problems? Well, no one’s budget is foolproof.

Where the motivational speaker, time management consultant and financial planner have the advantage is that they know what to do to get out of the situation. Their expertise gives them the ability to understand and acknowledge their predicament, make a choice to change the situation and then, if they want to, to use their skills to move on.

We are all experts in some area, and should be experts in managing our own lives. Unfortunately many of us are not. Life tends to control us rather than us control life. When we find ourselves in difficult situations our first wrong move happens at the very first step – we fail to acknowledge that we have a problem. And even if we navigate that one successfully, we then get stuck on what to do about it. Because we either don’t see the problem or don’t know how to find a solution we are robbed of the power of choice. We cannot choose to move on because we don’t know we have to or we don’t know how.

The problem is that we are not experts in managing our lives. We really don’t know enough about ourselves to manage ourselves effectively. Knowledge is power, and power is the ability to create change. If we lack essential knowledge about ourselves we also lack power over our lives, and therefore don’t have the ability to make choices to move us beyond negative situations into positive living. And if we don’t have power over our own lives, someone or something else will. If you have ever had the feeling that someone else is pulling your strings, you will know what I mean. And if you have had that feeling it means that, for whatever reason, you have been robbed of the power of choice regarding your life. At times like that it is useful to ask yourself whether you really have no choice, or whether you simply lack the resources to make the choice.

To be experts in managing our lives, and therefore to take back the power of choice, we need to know ourselves. We need to be clear about what motivates us, what we aspire to be, what energizes us and what drains us, what moves us toward our goals and what gets in the way. We need to be aware of how we tend to react and respond to certain situation and why we respond that way. And if those responses are unhelpful or negative, we need to be aware of alternate responses, or other ways of handling the situation. In other words we need to have the ability to choose. Without that self-awareness, however, our reactions are instinctive, not chosen. Instead of moving us on, our default responses drive us deeper into the rut.

Attending courses in self-awareness, engaging a life-coach or reading books to understand what drives us are not acts of self-indulgence, they are what people do who want to expertly manage their lives so that they are able to understand the situation they are in, make the choice to change and know what to do in order to change for the better.
Being the expert about our own lives gives back to us the power to choose and to change for the better.

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Article Tags: budget, cash flow problems, choices, difficult situations, financial planner, financial planners, knowledge is power, management consultant, management consultants, motivational speaker, motivational speakers, negative situations, predicament, time management



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