The seemingly insignificant adjustment that can have a huge impact on your life

In my opinion, there are turning points in everyone's life. There comes a point in everyone's life when the "pain" becomes too much and they decide to make a change. This point is vastly varied for each individual. I also think that dissatisfaction with any aspect of your life is a call to action, a yearning from the "real" you for more adventure.

Many people struggle with this because they want to improve their lives but don't know how to go about doing so. The "logical" thing for them to do is to address the consequences rather than the root of the problem. If you feel like you're going nowhere, the following thought process will serve as a wake-up call:

I know that if I work on myself, I can improve my situation.

I must evolve if I want to see results.

My possession. This is my life, and I get to decide what happens next.

Changing who I am will bring about a change in my circumstances. Because of this, I am now in charge of my own life and destiny. Having this confidence makes me less anxious because I know that no matter what challenges life throws at me, I can always overcome them by making the necessary adjustments to how I think about them.

I no longer need to assign blame to external factors. All I have to do is peek inside. It doesn't matter how powerful you are; you still have no say over what happens to you. You just need to worry about the three things over which you have complete and total control. It's what makes up one's life as a whole. Every one of my musings, deeds, and utterances is deliberate. Every waking moment is the result of my own unique set of thoughts, deeds, and words.

Wow, this is some serious freedom. I need to just look inward and make changes to myself whenever I want more of something. It was once said by Jim Rohn that the work you do on yourself is the hardest labor you will ever do. You can exert a lot of energy attempting to make things better, but all that effort will leave you exhausted and demoralized. It's far simpler to alter one's outlook on life and one's own character. Unless you give it significance, nothing does.

Long-term, your life will not be much altered by fluctuating external factors. It's easy to underestimate the impact of even subtle shifts in how you think and feel, how you process information, and how you interact with the world. This seemingly inconsequential shift will ultimately affect the course and outcome of your entire life. If a ship's skipper veers off course by even a single degree, the voyage could wind up on a completely different continent. Changing your path by one degree, like the captain, might not seem like much at first, but it will have a huge impact on your journey after a while.

Most individuals try to make major changes; they try to alter every aspect of their lives repeatedly without success. Instead, you can achieve remarkable success simply by making steady improvements to who you are as a person. You are the catalyst, and you are the catalyst only. Time and energy spent on anything other than altering oneself is time and energy wasted. Focus on developing a better "you" instead of futilely trying to influence the world around you. Everything you know and feel about the world is a reflection of who you are. Become a better person, and you'll see the world transform right before your eyes.