How to Regain Control of Your Life
First, acknowledge your bad habits. Then, conquer them.
As humans, we’re excellent at refusing to acknowledge our bad habits.
We ignore them for as long as possible until they’ve compounded so greatly that they demand to be faced head-on.
This tendency to look away from our problems allows them to expand and demand more time, energy and attention, ultimately deterring us from facing these problems because of how big they’ve become. Eventually, we reach a point where we are no longer making conscious decisions about how we’re behaving.
Have you ever realized that you’re scrolling through Instagram, playing a game on your phone, biting your nails, looking in your fridge for another snack, or lost in thought without even remembering how you got there? In those moments, our consciousness is turned off while our unconscious behaviours are pulling the strings.
Recognizing Our String-Pullers
“In an age of abundance, pursuing pleasure for its own sake becomes addiction.” — Naval Ravikant M/br>
Compulsively checking social media. Texting someone we know we shouldn’t. Getting caught in negative thought loops. Complaining. Gossiping. Eating poorly. Holding grudges. Staying up too late.
These urges, tendencies, and unconscious behaviours become our default. When our mind has nothing actively stimulating it, these default behaviours step in and take control of our decisions. If we allow these behaviours to persist, they eventually become so automatic that they have greater control over us than our own will. They begin to pull our strings.
Cutting ourselves off doesn’t always work
Complete elimination does not always work when it comes to the things which control us — especially when these things come up regularly in our daily life. Things like social media, food, or a relationship with a close friend or family member.
This method of ‘abstinence’ is something many of us try: deleting a social media app for a few days, cutting out sugar for a month, deleting someone’s number so you can’t text them — viewing all of this as building a ‘resistance’ to the grip these string-pullers have over us. Ultimately though, taking a break like this does not impact our long-term ability to co-exist with something that feels like it controls us more than we do. It only cuts us off in the short-term.
“A psychiatrist once told me: ‘Whenever I talk to a prostitute, they want to talk about God. Whenever I talk to a priest, they want to talk about sex.’ Whatever you deny yourself will become your prison.” — Naval Ravikant
We all want what we can’t have. This notion of forbidden fruit has been around since the dawn of time. The story of Adam and Eve giving in to the forbidden fruit of knowledge is the very first story in the Bible. The first thing we’re taught when we learn about human weakness is our tendency to give in to temptation.
Trying to live a life of complete abstinence from pleasure and temptation can oftentimes lead to more severe consequences than indulgence might.
We’ve seen priests end up as child molesters. We’ve seen individuals who over-restrict food end up with eating disorders. We all know someone who still cannot get over an ex from years ago because avoidance gives that person more control over them.
We all want to live life on our own terms without feeling like we cannot face someone or something. Living in fear of our string-pullers will only cause us more angst than if we familiarize ourselves with them, re-integrate them into our lives carefully, and frequently reflect on how our feelings toward them have evolved.
*Note: I’m not referring to severe addictions like substance abuse, where the road to recovery often does require complete abstinence in the form of sobriety. I’m talking about every-day tendencies we want to feel more in control of.
Overcoming Obstacles Takes Intention Although completely ignoring something that feels like it controls us doesn’t usually work, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have boundaries. Putting all your greatest vices back into your life, immersing yourself in them, and creating the most challenging conditions for yourself to resist them won’t help you overcome them. Instead, you need to set boundaries and be active about building a resilience towards them.
For example, if you are trying to break the habit of checking Instagram every time you open your phone:
Put it on the last page of your apps, so you have to swipe a bunch of times to get there. Block it so you have to ignore the wall which prompts you to quit the app when you use it. Log yourself out each time you’re done intentionally using the app. Put your phone on greyscale to make scrolling less stimulating. Only download it in the evenings so you don’t waste time on it during the day.
Make your string-pulling behaviour inconvenient and less addictive without cutting it out completely. This weaning off, inching closer and closer to healthy moderation indicates you’re regaining control over your strings.
Step 1: Take Ownership.
To re-gain control over our impulses and take a grip of our own strings, we must first own up to the things we feel compelled to do. This requires thoughtful, honest reflection. We can’t always control our thoughts (though we can get much better with practice), but we can control what we do. And choosing to act in alignment with the person we want to be, with the things we want to spend more time on, in a way we feel more proud of will make us less susceptible to our low-level impulses.
Step 2: Identify Your String-Pullers
Once you’ve owned up to all of your actions, habits and behaviours — even the ones you’re not proud of — you can identify what is causing you to do these things.
To determine what your string-pullers are, ask yourself:
- What are the things you frequently do which you’re not proud of or don’t tell other people about? Why do you feel compelled to do that?
- What do you find yourself doing or thinking about subconsciously?
- What are you most scared of?
- Whose opinion do you care about the most?
Using these questions as prompts for journalling will shed light on the invisible things which are controlling you without your consent. Facing them, owning up to them, and creating a plan as to how you can co-exist with them is the first step to begin pulling your own strings again. We all deserve to be in control of how we act, but it takes intentional work to get there. Stepping out of the shadows and owning up to all of our actions is the first step to becoming the only person who can tug on our strings.