Your Fate is in Your Hands – the truth or a coaching nonsense?

Your fate is in your hands, you’re the master of your own life, you can do anything, the limits are only in your hand… We all know these phrases. These motivational quotes assault us from all sides, saying we all can achieve success and be great. But is that true? Is it really possible for everyone to have a great career and achieve the peak of their abilities, or is that just coaching bull that we should approach with caution?

What is wrong with my life?

Those are strange times we live in. Our world is ruled by consumption and technology. All-round talented and very attractive people are the newest fashion. We are constantly attacked by advertisements, which constantly make us crave newer and better products. Every day we’re scrolling through social media filled with perfectly framed photos and edited colors. We’re seeing beautiful views from exotic countries, perfect figures of personal trainers, and vegan dinners in trendy restaurants. Our screens show us the picture of a perfect life, filled with happiness and joy.

At some point we start to compare our reality to the one seen on the internet. We quickly realise that our life differs from the ones we see online. We start to overthink those differences. What is wrong with my life? Why did others make it big and I didn’t? Why is my friend on a vacation in Asia, and I’m travelling with a crowded streetcar? Maybe I’m doing something wrong, I’m not talented enough or not lucky enough? We start to harass ourselves with negative thoughts and create improbable scenarios in our heads. But before we end up in this spiral of dark thoughts, it’s worth to stop and think about what we actually can or cannot do to improve our life.

Signs of discouragement, boredom and monotony

It’s hard to tell apart the virtual world from the real one. We know that the online profiles are filled with carefully selected moments from everybody’s life, but we still get caught in that trap. We’re subconsciously comparing our lives to these beautiful, colorful pictures and it’s starting to put us down. We feel bad about ourselves and we begin to feel jealous of all those pretty girls with career, businesses, handsome husband and cute kids. We often forget that it’s all a front created for the internet and it doesn’t always correspond with real life.

We start to think that our life is gray and boring. Days start to look the same. We spend most of our time at work and rarely have the energy to cook something, not to mention going to the gym or a cinema. We start to feel discouraged. We would love to lead such a life, full of success, fashionable places, expensive clothes, and travels. Meanwhile we sit down under a blanket with a cup of tea, put on another episode of the TV series we’re watching and start to doze off after 15 minutes, because we had a really tough week at work. Is that a reason to be sad or ashamed? Do we really have to do everything perfectly everyday and be an #instagirl drowning in compliments? I don’t think so.

“Your fate is in your hands” – is it just a phrase?

Sitting around worrying surely won’t bring us a solution to our problems. If your days really seem monotone and routine and it bothers you, stop to think about what might be the reason. But try to put aside the picture of a perfect online life. Keep your feet on the ground and focus on your actual expectations and goals. Think about what do you want to achieve in general and in close perspective. It doesn’t have to be anything spectacular or grand. You can start with small things to realize in the foreseeable future. Find out what are you missing the most and what makes you feel sad or bored. Maybe you’re spending too much time working and not enough taking care of yourself. Maybe you don’t have the time to spend hanging out with your friends or exercising regularly. Maybe you have been planning to start a course or your own project for a long time but you just can’t get around to it.

Think about yourself for a while and find out what could make your life better and if you can actually do it. Sometimes even the smallest change can make the biggest difference. Of course, not everything in your life can be changed just like that. The will to change and taking the steps towards it doesn’t guarantee a success. But surely enough, if you just sit around moping, nothing will ever change. You can’t expect results if you keep doing the same things over and over again, without learning from the mistakes. The saying about having your fate in your hands seems to have some truth to it. Act, and you’ll see that some coaching phrases make quite a bit of sense.

How to start changing your life?

I’m sure everyone would love to know the perfect recipe for good life and step-by-step of how to be happy. Of course, it’s never that simple, but there are a few tried methods that help the majority of people to get some results. First of all, we have to ask ourselves a series of easy questions. We should think about what bothers us in our life – what makes us constantly stressed, sad, unable to relax, causing us to enter a spiral of everyday routine. It’s good to think of (or maybe even write down) things that we’d like to somehow modify or remove from our lives entirely. The next step is to figure out a plan of action.

We won’t be able to reach our goal without a plan that we can stick to. A good idea is to write down a set of tasks and resolutions for the foreseeable future. You don’t have to wait until New Year’s to do that. That’s when most of us go into a weird fever of trying to change their life overnight just because a digit is changed in the calendar. No point in waiting. If you’re already feeling unhappy right now, you should do something about it.

Change the way you think step by step, try out a few solutions, and start to act upon your ideas. Even if you won’t reach your goal at first, you’ll still have satisfaction of knowing that you took action. The most important thing is to stop standing in one place and letting our dreams pass us by. Sometimes you just have to act, take a risk and seek out new methods that can help us achieve happiness. Just remember to not give up, use your intuition and go forward, no matter what others think.