Internal Control and Personal Mastery

One main source of happiness is our autonomy, the desire to direct our own lives, our destiny. Destiny is born from our habits, our habits are born of our consistent actions; these actions are descendants of our emotions and thoughts. Our everyday thoughts and emotions can find our ultimate happiness. Our self-awareness is how we grasp control of our thoughts and emotions.

Self-love must exist before we begin the transformation of Internal control. We must believe we are worthy of love and belonging. That is the only difference between the one of shame and guilt. Shame focuses on self, but guilt focuses on behavior. Guilt is our failure to do per our personal values. When we can look in the mirror and feel guilt and not shame, then we can forgive our past and learn to be comfortable in our skin. We can allow ourselves to appreciate our uniqueness that we can share with the world.

If you find yourself saying, “you are selfish,” “you are clumsy,” “you are stupid,” then you are shaming others, and you will want to replace those words with “your actions are not generous,” “you steps were not agile,” “what you thought, in that case, was not your smartest thought” which leans toward guilt and not shame. You focus on the action and not the person. You are removing blame, which never helps in the learning process.

There are 3 types of belonging, private, interpersonal, and collective.  Private which is about self and loneliness. Interpersonal is the bond formed between 2 people. Collective belonging is a pattern of collective attachment among socially diverse individuals within contemporary societies. 

Self-love will teach us private belonging. The type that Angelou speaks about. You belong to no one and everyone. You only belong to yourself, to stand alone.

“YOU ONLY ARE FREE WHEN YOU REALIZE YOU BELONG NO PLACE — YOU BELONG EVERY PLACE — NO PLACE AT ALL.”  ― MAYA ANGELOU, CONVERSATIONS WITH MAYA ANGELOU

Once you start to feel a comfortable sense of private belonging, you will be more robust to manage interpersonal and collective belonging. This is where inner control becomes crucial. I will define inner control as the ability to sense emotions as they arise, make sense of them, and productively direct them.

Wisdom is developed in the reflection of life, the sum of all your experiences reflecting on those experiences, but the character is built at the moment. We must balance analysis with a focus to ultimately build character. The thinking process that happens in the duration between a stimulus received and the action is taken can define this.

This analysis, if guided by principles, will shape and define impressive character. Your principles and values need to be your internal scorecard to control the outcome and control your happiness. On the other side of the ledger, if we fail to have inner control and the moment between stimulus and action is short and emotional, we will be classified along a gradient from “mildly irritating” to “bat sh%t CRAZY.” This will lead to a failed sense of interpersonal or collective belonging. In the absence of love and belonging, there is suffering and unhappiness.

In many ways, telling you to have inner control is like telling a short man to be tall. We know what we want, but how do we get it? You will have to trust body wisdom because the brain is not wired directly to inner control but through the emotional center. We feel in our gut the emotions that arise. We must become self-aware of the physiological responses in our bodies. While we have hundreds of emotions, let us look at 10 common emotions and some possible actions to avert negative actions when we feel emotions bubbling up.

We rejoice most when we marry emotion and action, but they are very separate yet linked. Psychiatrist and psychotherapist Bianca Previdi, M.D., says that the persons with the best emotional regulation are not those who feel the least intensely but ironically feel the most intensely and can metabolize the emotions the fastest.

10 Emotional Signals and Actions Suggested For Internal Control

TRAP IT > MAP IT > ZAP IT

Take better responses to take control of your destiny.

A few Tactical Questions that can positively orient your thoughts

• Set your alarm for 8 times in a day, and when it goes off, ask yourself.
  • “what are you thinking about?” and “what is the emotion you are experiencing?”
• At the end of the day, ask yourself 3 questions:
  • What did you learn today?
  • What did you contribute today?
  • What did you enjoy today?

YOU WILL FIND MEANING AND HAPPINESS WHEN YOU CAN FIND BEAUTY IN A FLOATING FISH HEAD IN A BOWL OF DIRTY WATER.

Sooner or later, we will meet crises. It usually rares its ugly head on average every 3 months, and how we meet it will determine our future happiness. Illness, tragedy, and death are life’s big 3 that can send you for a toss. We need to be prepared and safeguard against them. We must have the mental toughness to ride these out.

It is our locus of control that determines our happiness. The more control we think we have to determine our future, the happier we tend to be. It is when we are not in control; then we tend to become unhappy. It s never too early or too late to reinvent yourself, so pivot your life toward inner control and ultimately toward personal mastery.

in part 3, I will dive into the aspect of Money and Job

if you have not read part 1 – the biggest secret to happiness

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