take control | David M Masters

Losing Your Energy Take It Back

You’re growing and changing, making radical progress, but you feel like you’re losing your edge, your momentum is slowing and you feel like you’re losing your grip. You know you’ve got to find the energy to keep going because you know if you let go, all your hard work will have been for not. It’s time to stop losing your energy take it back.

While you’ve tried to keep focused on your position and keep moving upward and onward, you may have found yourself letting others drain your energy, or maybe you have consciously given away your precious energy reserves. In either case, it’s alright. You can reclaim your lost energy, recharge and get going again.

Losing Your Energy

There are many ways to experience energy drain, one is to let others get to you. When you’re feeling uncomfortable, upset, angry, or disgusted about anyone or anything in your circle of influence, it not only distracts you from your mission, but it drains your precious energy reserves. It is important to acknowledge the situation, if you must, let it go, and move on. In a sense, saying, “Oh well… I care but not too much.”

If you let someone be responsible for negatively affecting your state of mind, you have given them control over you. Stop doing it; take full responsibility and control of your own state and preserve your energy.

If you’re needing support or compliments from others to make you feel good, attractive, or feel as though your life is worthwhile, then you become dependent on others for fuel which is fleeting. Your true power and energy comes from within, not from others. The trap, here, which potential can overdraw your energy account, is if you fall into the pleasing of others to make you feel better about yourself, you will not only be distracted, but you will also be watching your energy go down the drain.

Unforgiveness is a black hole that feeds on your energy. If you’re harboring bad feelings about someone or something that has mistreated or robbed you from feeling good about yourself, you must let it go, or else be a slave to that person or circumstance forever. Forgiveness is the only way to repair the damage.

Set boundaries to limit how people can have access to your feelings and your life. If someone is constantly dragging you down, holding you back, or leading you astray, establishing firm boundaries and enforcing them can protect you from letting these kinds of people drain your energy. You have the responsibility for creating and monitoring your own boundaries concerning other people and their access to your physical, mental and spiritual states.

Take It Back

While significant energy loss can be exhausting, constantly being aware of who you are and why you are here, will help you preserve your energy and keep you focused. Knowing and honoring your purpose, message, passion, and mission (PMPM) will help you discern when it’s time to limit someone’s access who may be draining your precious energies.

Even though you feel like you’re losing your grip, or losing ground, not to worry (worry is another energy drain) just survey your surroundings. Be objective as you evaluate your situation, while monitoring what is going on all around you, then make the changes you need to make to keep the energy you need to keep going on. Keep in mind increasing your passion can build up the additional energy necessary to move you further, faster, more productively and with even greater results.

How to Do What You Want

How to do what you want, if you really want to.

Sometimes you want to do something so bad but it just seems too impossible, distant or out of reach. You can feel like you’re unworthy, not educated or qualified enough, or feel like someone else would be better or more respected for doing that thing that you want to do.

Focusing only on the ultimate goal, the end game, can be just too intimidating because it seems so far off or impossible from where you’re standing right now.

You have the power to take complete control over making your dream come true, or not.

What’s the answer to how to do what you want, if you really want to?

Keep the idea of your ultimate goal out there but take your focus and refocus it on taking small steps that lead you closer to your goal. You don’t have to do it all in one fail swoop. Just move a little closer to it each day or each week.

So, what do you want?

Want to live a stress-free life?

Do something relaxing every day, meditate, take a walk in the park, take a bubble bath with scented candles.

Want to start a new, or build a better, business?

Schedule time to research strategies and ideas – being certain to include taking action (not just research) – every week.

Want to write?

Then write. 500 words a day doth a writer make.

Prioritize

You can prioritize whatever you want and if you are moving toward it on a regular basis, sure enough, you’ll get there.

To prioritize and move closer to what you want (what you really, really want), all you have to do is what everyone else does (I know, they make it look so simple. Right? Well, it is).

Do the Doing of It

Make a plan, and do it. The difference between those who take and those who don’t is all in the doing of it.

Let’s say you wanted to publish a novel (you can use these steps to achieve any goal)

1. Write down what you want

Publish a novel

2. Break down your steps in miniature, each one moving you closer

Create a main storyline plot

Create character profiles for key players and their roles
Create an outline of major events (or chapters)

Write the first chapter as a rough draft

Write the second chapter (rough draft)

Followed by subsequent chapters…

Revise each chapter, flushing out the characters, dialogues, and interplay… (one chapter at a time)

Edit each chapter in succession, one-at-a-time.

3. Determine how much time you will have to allocate for moving toward what you want (daily, weekly, monthly)

I will set aside one hour each day to write my novel, a little each day.

4. Make dates with what you want, set times and dates to keep with yourself for the doing

8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. weeknights

9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. on weekends

There you have it.

Make time every day for the doing, and every day you’re closer than you were the day before. Before you know it, your first novel is ready to submit.

Then you can,

Celebrate!

Those Who Take Action and Those Who Don’t

There are two kinds of people, those who take action and those who don’t. All of the people on this planet are born with a dream, a dream to believe, achieve, be or do something unique and meaningful, but few, very few, do what is necessary to realize their dream; that is to take action.

How can you tell the difference between those who take action and those who don’t take action?

Those who don’t take action are all around you. Wherever you see large groups of people, most of them are just like the majority of the rest of us. They are passive in their pursuit of life. At best, how they spend their time and efforts are basically focused on being a supportive part of the machine, which is integral to the continuation of the machine.

They engage in all the activity the powers behind the machine have given them to distract them from the dream they once had and keep their minds so busy, I mean frantically busy, so they couldn’t have the attention or time to focus on their dream if they had one.

Then there are those who vaguely remember their dream, and think about taking action. These people might even start to research about their dream and taking action to start creating their dream in an attempt to raise their awareness about their dream. They spend the spare moments they are able to glean from the crowded highway of life to research, to increase their knowledge, until they feel confident enough, that they know enough, to take action. But there’s so much to learn. So much information, in fact, that you will never feel like you are informed enough or prepared enough to take action. You’ve spend so much time on preparation and learning that there is no time left for taking action.

Then there are those who boldly take action. You may not know them, personally, but you know who they are. We spend our time and money on them and we focus our attention on them. We watch and support the people who have taken the action to live their dream. We watch them living their dreams in the movies, on TV, on the stage, or on the field. We buy their tickets, play their games, and wear their clothes. We admire the way they think, display their skills, and share their lives with us. We listen to their music, their words, and pay attention to the action they take. We see them, we watch them, we love them and we hate them for what they do.

And what is it that they are doing?

They are living their dream.

Sometimes, we wish we could live a dream, like they have, but feel that we’re just not good enough, or lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time for good fortune to shower down on us, like it did those people. But the truth is,

There are two kinds of people, those who take action and those who don’t.

The people whose work we admire had a dream and took action. In fact, they took massive action.

They didn’t have the time; they didn’t have any more time than you or me. They made the time… Every day.

They’re no better than you, anyone you know, have ever met, or anyone else on this planet. They’re just like you and me.

You might be sitting next to one of them right now. It’s easy to tell the difference between someone who has taken the action to achieve their highest and best and someone who hasn’t. Want to know how?

Ask them what they did today.

Today.

You can tell if a dreamer is tracking their dream and taking the action to make it come true by what they did today to move closer to their dream.

Oh, they might talk the talk; talk is cheap. Did they take action, today?

If they did not, they are still a dreamer, and that’s a good thing. Sometimes our dreams are all that we have, and even if we don’t live our dreams, maybe our dreams can inspire someone else to break free from the mob and take action.

It’s so simple. The people, who achieve their dreams, take action to move them closer to their desired outcome every day. Every day.

Just the fact that you have a dream alive inside you means that dream has already come to pass in the future. It’s already there, already a done deal. Your dream is just waiting for you to arrive. And right now, it’s wondering where the hell you are.

Do you have a dream? Are you ready to take the necessary action to achieve your dream, to make it come true once and for all? Are you ready to live your life on the other side of the screen? Not always watching, but becoming the person you were meant to be? To do the things you were called to do?

Then do it.

Yes, study, raise your awareness, courage, and prepare. But don’t get stuck there.

Take action.

Take action every day.

Be the best you can be.

Live a better life, your best life and make the world a better place.

Do Others Control You?

When you get upset at someone else, about what they have done, or some injustice you’ve suffered due to people, events or circumstances beyond your control, you actually bequeath to another (whomever you feel the offender is, whether it be another person, organization, government, system or even God) complete control over you.

While it feels as though someone or something outside of yourself has insinuated circumstances which has in effect victimized you in some way, as might be the case in terms of the loss of a job or a loved one, or the diagnosis of a severe illness, it is up to you whether you allow yourself to become a victim, or not.

If you feel bad, allow your feelings to be hurt by someone or something outside yourself, for every moment you allow your thought processes to be distracted by someone or something else due to your emotional state, you are forfeiting control.

Who You Blame is In Control

The object of your mind’s focus (whoever or whatever they are) is indeed in control of you and your emotional state. If you are blaming a circumstance, person, place or thing for things going badly or some injustice which you have suffered, then you are a willing victim to the object of your attention.

Is that what you want?

If someone has wronged you, do you really want that person to continue to further victimize and have control over your life?

In terms of psychopaths, narcissists and those along the Anti-Social Personality Disorder spectrum, they revel in the idea that they are honored by being remembered by you and are constantly in your thoughts. They feed off your negative attention and it empowers them to conduct more discontent in the world, as they continue to further enjoy the fruits of their efforts to drag you down and you continue to sink into depths of despair.

Your discomfort, loss, sadness and depression is their continued reward. They arrogantly acknowledge complete control. They assert their win and your loss as they enjoy every minute of it.

How to Stop Giving Away Control

The key to taking back control of your life is to stop blaming someone or something from causing your current negative emotional state.

If you want control of your life, you need to assert control and the only way to do that is to accept full responsibility for things being as they are.

Stop Blaming

Take Full Responsibility

You must find a way to stop blaming and start taking full responsibility.

A common method of taking responsibility is to accept the fact that your life is a journey, a path you travel which will have many experiences, some good, some bad, all to experience a full range of emotional states and allowing you to gain knowledge and grow as a result of the myriad of experiences you have along the way.

I, on the other hand, enjoy taking it a step further, imagining myself in a far-off place high above the world where we live out our life’s journey. In this place, I selected my parents, the time and place of my birth, the circumstances surrounding my journey as well as the challenges and obstacles that I would face to maximize my experiences throughout the course of m life.

I imagine myself as if I were off-camera (so to speak) hooked up to advanced equipment, enjoying having all the experiences that I have while hooked up to this equipment.

From this perspective, I am much more likely to not take things personally. It’s as though all my life experiences are part of a film I am watching, though I am able to experience all the sensations of my character in this medium.

If this is too far out of a concept for you to wrap your head around, no problem; you need not go that far out in space.

Just find other ways to stop blaming and accept full responsibility for your life. Find ways to release the emotional pain by any ways or means possible and retain the learning from all life events.