Every body continues in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a straight line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it.
Newton’s First Law of Motion,
translated from the his Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, Latin for “Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy“, often called the Principia (sometimes Principia Mathematica), a work in three books, first published July 5, 1687
Who and what are the biggest obstacles to you becoming the Great! All the time! by becoming the full and complete owner of your own life? Think about and try to answer this question. But don’t answer it saying it is the people standing in your way or the circumstances causing you problems. It’s not your spouse or your boss or your kids or your teachers. It’s not your lack of disposable income or that you are fat and ugly (if you happen to be that) or that you are less educated than you would like to be (if you happen to be that). It’s not any of those things or anything like any of those things.
No. The single and biggest obstacle to you becoming Great! All the time! and seizing full and complete ownership of your life is you and your inability to overcome your status quo – you and your inability to proactively change your life.
Your ability to own your life and be Great! All the time! is directly dependent on your ability to choose proactively to do it by developing first the intention and then the attention to do so. This bears repeating. The first step toward owning your own life is developing proactively both the intention to do it and then the attention to get the job done.
Proactive intention or proaction is driven by carefully considered, selected, and internalized values. Proaction requires recognizing you are responsible to make things happen in your life and then doing whatever it takes to make them happen.
Proaction is needed not only for the major value-driven vision and mission aspects of life, but also for the smaller issues that arise in achieving those visions and missions. You won’t be able to own your life and be Great! All the time! without choosing to overcome the status quo holding you back. Just like you won’t be able to clear out the clutter in your closet without choosing to simplify your physical existence either.
Only you have the ability to control your relationships with the people, places, things, and ideas surrounding you. Your proaction will allow you to begin to establish a unity of purpose and direction in your life. By being proactive you will create and maintain the internal environment in which you and other people can become fully involved in achieving your life’s objectives.
The biggest obstacle to your owning your life is the status quo. It is an absolute law of physics that an object at rest will remain at rest until acted upon by an outside force. Only an outside force will change an object’s vector, velocity, and position. The only way you can change and overcome the status quo of your life owning you is to affirmatively, proactively choose to be the force of your life and impress your force upon your life to change your status quo.
You can, should, must, and will choose to own your life instead of it owning you. It is your responsibility as a lifeowner to choose proactively to own your own life. To intently and intensely apply your life’s precious resources of self, time, effort, energy, emotion, intellect, property, and people to promote what you believe is your practically perfect performance of your life. If you do not choose to define and implement your own definition of Greatness!, then you will never truly own your own life. Some person, place, or thing in your life will always own at least bits and pieces of you, if not your entire being.
Before we discuss proactive change a little bit more, let’s first discuss in the Part 2 of this series of posts on proaction the four quadrants of change and discover in which quadrant you must exercise your proaction in order to seize control or and own your own life instead of it owning you.
[reminder]What do you think is the first step you should take to overcome your status quo and bring about change in your life?[/reminder]