It starts with self direction

It is the set of the sails, not the direction of the wind that determines which way we will go.

Jim Rohn

It won’t be easy

I’ve got bad news. The world isn’t anxiously awaiting your self ascendance. It isn’t hoping that you’ll give that big change a shot, so that it can give you everything you need to succeed. The world definitely isn’t stockpiling resources and mentors and clients for that moment when you decide to go ahead with the scary project or life that you want to create. For 99.9% of people, luck won’t happily smile on them and give them everything they want, when they want it.

Self-direction is what gets you there

What does self-direction mean? It means not waiting for the world to give you what you want. It means taking responsibility for all facets of the life you create. It means not blaming the world for not giving you what you want on a silver platter, but instead actively searching out those resources that you need and finding a way to access them. 

It means knowing that difficulties are on their way and that it is up to you to get through them. You don’t have to do it on your own, you can recruit help from others, but it is up to you to go recruit them. It is 100% about you stepping up and ‘taking the bull by the horns’.

It is the beginning of anything

Self-direction is the difference between waiting for serendipity to strike and making something happen at your pace. It puts the ball in your court. 

It is scary as hell. It’s scary because it feels like opening up yourself to the possibility of failure and because it feels like a lot of pressure and because it isn’t what most of us are taught to do.

Yet, we’ve all done it at some point in our life. Every one of us has decided to do something, learn something, create something, and often it was against the grain of what others around us told us we should be doing. Each of us has made a conscious decision to do instead of wait. We have trained ourselves, to some degree, to be self-directed even if we didn’t view it as such. 

Self-direction is the key to adaptability

When you take control of the direction of your decisions and your life, ultimately you are taking a stand on the outcomes that you are going to get. This creates a flexibility in you to adjust the methods and means you use to get to those outcomes. Ultimately, this makes you far more likely to achieve your goals. 

In this way self-direction and the personal responsibility that goes along with it, create a space in which you can tackle any of the obstacles that are bound to come up in your path as you move towards the life you’ve always wanted. 

Where would self-direction make a big impact in your life if you were to start practicing it?