Perspective

Here’s an interesting question: who is in control of your life?

There are two main answers: either you see something or someone else as responsible for what happens to you, or you see yourself as the primary agent, mainly responsible for how your life plays out. Proactive people are those who, in essence, do not depend on the environment to guide and shape their life, but rather take active responsibility and do things on their own. They focus on their scope of action, on what they want, and on how they can bring those things about. Naturally, their attitude puts them in a frame of mind that focuses on solving problems and seeking opportunities. Broadly, when it comes to their life path, they are the ones calling the shots.

Compare this to the opposite: someone who is reactive. As the name suggests, this is a person who acts only as a response to other people’s actions, or according to the environment, and less from their own innate agency and desire. This is a more passive, more conditional, and more dependent position. It’s more about what you “should” do or are being made to do, than what you genuinely want to do. Blame, indecisiveness, victimhood, people-pleasing powerlessness, and lack of responsibility all belong to this mindset, as well as the belief that other people can make you feel certain emotions or force you to do something.

Now, I know what you’re thinking—surely it’s impossible to be truly proactive? After all, none of us is one hundred percent in control of our lives. This is true. Being proactive, however, doesn’t necessarily mean you always get your way; rather, it’s an orientation of mind and an attitude that says I can learn from mistakes. I can use my potential. I can try something new. In fact, a proactive person is also able to recognize when they don’t actually have an influence over outcomes, and they can comfortably relinquish control.

So, it’s not that being proactive means you are entitled and enabled to make the world exactly as you like it, rather that you have conscious awareness of your own scope of action, you have an “internal locus of control,” and you are willing to actively engage with obstacles and mistakes rather than passively assuming you have no control or responsibility. It’s not really the outcome or result that matters but the attitude.

Because a proactive person knows that they are in charge of their actions, their feelings and their inner interpretations, they make efforts to create situations that actually align with their values. A reactive person quietly hopes that things will align for them, or that others will help them, or else they quietly resent when this doesn’t happen, or resort to blame.

Proactive people consciously create the conditions they desire, and they know that they are the only ones who are empowered to do so. This takes a degree of mindful awareness, honesty and courage. It also means they have to be mature enough to shoulder some risk—if they fail, they know that only they are responsible and can blame nobody.

Let’s return to the question: who is in control of your life? Well, it depends on you! You can choose to be in control of your own life, or you can forfeit that choice to others. The thing is, nobody can force you to take charge of your own life—you either embrace that agency or you fail to embrace it.

Now, what does all this have to do with cultivating an attitude of inner calm? As you can probably guess, those who are calm and composed as people tend to act from a proactive mindset. They feel calm because they are self-assured and confident in their own agency. They’re not anxious in situations because they know that someone is in control—them! Because they have fully claimed their agency, they know that they always have options, they can always become aware of them and make conscious choices, and they can always make the best of even the worst possible outcomes.

When you are reactive, you have no such inner security. You are waiting for others to determine your fate, or sitting ineptly and complaining about what they choose for you. This is an innately anxious position. You are at the mercy of other people’s actions—what could be more stressful than that? Because you doubt or ignore your own ability to take responsibility or find solutions, you may feel that there really aren’t any solutions until someone or something else comes and provides them. Instead of feeling competent and filled with optimistic hope, you are naturally pessimistic, always on guard for the next bit of trouble.

So, if we want to be genuinely calmer and more relaxed people, how can we start moving toward the proactive rather than reactive mindset?

Drop Blaming and Complaining

Reactive: Look at all these things and people and situations that aren’t the way I want them to be . . .

Proactive: What is the way that I want things to be, and how am I going to do make that happen?

When you complain, you are putting yourself in reactive mode. You are communicating to yourself and others that you are not responsible, and you relinquish your agency in favor of someone else’s. One way to be more proactive is to get positively ruthless with the bad habit of complaining. Nothing good ever comes of complaining! You may think you feel a bit better after whining about something you’re unhappy with, but all you do is disempower yourself further (and probably bore others).

This takes a bit of awareness. Be honest if you notice yourself ranting and moaning about things, and just stop dead in your tracks. Then ask yourself one important question:

What action can I take here?

This puts you in active, problem-solving mode. Stop waiting for someone to come and save you; think of ways to help yourself. If you can act, then act. If you don’t like something, have the courage to change it or remove yourself from the situation. Think of it this way: not acting is also a choice, and if you remain in a situation you don’t like, what does that say?

If you can’t act, well, then you can still proactively choose your attitude. You can choose not to respond at all. Just because you find a situation uncomfortable, it doesn’t mean you have to complain—or worse, look for someone to blame. How you react to circumstances is far, far more important than the circumstances themselves. You might not be able to take conscious action or do much about a situation, but you still have plenty of power over what you focus on, how you interpret the situation, the attitude you commit to having, the words you say, and the way you respond. You always have options. When you complain, however, you shut your eyes to those options and get stuck on the fact of your discomfort or annoyance.

Blame is harmful for the same reason—why hand your power over to someone else? Being in the victim role may feel good in the short term, but when we complain about how others act, we are forgetting one crucial piece of information: we, too, have the option to act. Blame can sometimes come from unconscious expectations, or a feeling of entitlement. If you catch yourself blaming someone, it’s time to get honest—are you expecting them to take charge of a problem that’s not really theirs to fix? If they are genuinely in the wrong (it happens!), then ask yourself this: does your being angry and indignant get you any closer to what you really want? It can be very freeing to realize that we don’t have to control others to get them to behave in the ways we want—we can act directly ourselves, for ourselves. This instantly releases anxiety and self-doubt and helps us feel calm.

The Key to Calm, Focused Flexibility—Be Responsive, Not Reactive

Reactive: Change is scary and threatening, so I’d better hunker down and ward it off.

Proactive: I trust myself to engage with change productivity, and welcome the ways it can help me evolve.

As we said, you always have options. True, sometimes you don’t have very many, or you might not like the ones you have, but you are never a victim to circumstance and can always step up and take responsibility for your experience. Whether proactive or reactive, change will come. Life is filled with change, but we can adopt different postures to this change. When we respond (not react), we engage dynamically and consciously with people and things around us. We answer life according to our own values and principles, and have a conversation with elements in our environment rather than taking orders from it like a slave or shutting it out completely!

The old saying goes: brittle things break before they bend. Just because you know who you are and take sure, conscious steps to making your own life, it doesn’t mean you’re rigid or uncompromising. In fact, you are a pro at adjusting and adapting. You evolve, you try things, you fail, you change your strategy, you try again. You are curious about the new, not fearful of it. This is what allows you to grow and improve. It’s not that you are a control freak, but rather you are always aware of the fact that you have a choice. Instead of fearfully clinging to what you know, you embrace novelty, explore, create, and take risks. The irony is that it’s this way of living that is actually easier and less anxiety-provoking.

Nip “If Only” in the Bud

Reactive: One day, I’m going to XYZ, if such-and-such happens, and then maybe . . . and then I hope . . .

Proactive: I am taking steps toward the things I want to create for myself—right now.

Anxiety is often characterized by overthinking, rumination and endless, pintless “what if” thoughts. In the reactive mindset, we dwell in this same space. We say things like:

“If I had a little more cash right now, then . . .”

“If I had a better family upbringing . . .”

“One day I’ll finally start my big dream . . .”

“Just as soon as the winter is over, I think I’m going to . . .”

Really, these are nothing more than flimsy excuses and daydreams that go precisely nowhere. It’s mental activity that never materializes into anything valuable in the real world—and that’s a few short steps away from anxiety and worry. Commit to not using “if” or “one day” in this way. If you’re honest, you’ll see that behind this language is often procrastination, fear, avoidance, or the quiet hope that someone else is going to rush in one day and rescue your life for you.

Obviously, nobody is suggesting that you abandon making big dreams for yourself. However, if you are engaging in daydreaming instead of taking active steps in life to create what you want, you’re doing yourself a disservice. Dreams and blue-sky thinking are there to inspire and fuel purposeful action—without action, they are just pleasant stories you tell yourself that leave you in exactly the same position as you started.

In that spirit, let’s condense some of this down into practical steps we can take right now.

No More Blaming or Complaining

Whining about the weather. Gossiping about that person at work who annoys you. Listing a family member’s faults to another family member. Going on a ten-minute rant to a friend about how mad you are to get that speeding fine you didn’t deserve. And on and on. We all do it.

The first step is to become aware. Whenever you notice yourself complaining or blaming someone, literally imagine a giant red stop sign in your mind’s eye and tell yourself to stop. Create a moment of space. In that space, become aware of the fact that you have a choice. Then, choose to answer this question: what action can I take? Breathe deeply and carry on, feeling how much calmer and in control you feel.

You could keep a complaints journal where you record all your misgivings, but under the condition that everything that you write down in there must be addressed at the end of the day. By the following, you need to take one concrete action toward resolving the issue. You’ll soon train yourself to see how pointless complaining is and empower yourself in the process.

No More Reacting, Only Responding

Actively notice what causes you to feel anxious or out of control. Pause and write these down somewhere. For example, “I might lose my job at the end of the year.” Once you’ve put your fears down on paper, look at them, and acknowledge them. Acknowledge how you feel about them. But then, take action. Underneath that, write down as many options and opportunities you can identify. If you find yourself focusing on something else that worries or frightens you, write it on a separate page and repeat the process, finding potential options for this worry, too.

You’ll find that deliberately training your mind toward choices and potential solutions actually calms you down, empowers you, and maybe even gets you excited for new ventures.

No More Daydreaming, No More Excuses

Tell yourself that daydreaming is simply not as exciting or as interesting as actually getting on with building the life you want. Again, begin with awareness and notice the language you use and how you speak about your life. Notice if you often say the following kinds of things to yourself:

“Ah, I’d love to be a masseuse, but I just don’t have any training or anything . . .”

“Wow, I’d love to live in a house like that one day! If only.”

“I wish I hadn’t given up horse-riding when I was child.”

You’ll recognize these statements because they are so passive and reactive. If you find yourself saying things like these, stop, slow down, and take a closer look. How can you transform these excuses, daydreams, and regrets into beneficial action right now? Maybe you could investigate just exactly what it would take to learn to be a masseuse, or you could look in earnest into how to make your dream home a reality. Maybe you could book to have an outride that very weekend. Often, we speak like this not because we genuinely are out of options, but just because we’ve convinced ourselves that that’s the case. How many anxieties, regrets, fears, and resentments would disappear overnight if people took them out into the light, blew the dust off them, and took concrete action to bring about what they desired?

Create Perspective by Creating Mental Distance

So, we can encourage a relaxed, proactive mindset in ourselves by refusing to let complaining, reactivity, and daydreaming get in the way of what matters most: taking action toward our goals. There is another key way in which a calm and relaxed attitude goes hand in hand with the right psychological perspective—mental “distance.”

In the above section on proactiveness, we saw that being able to choose and to take control can only actually happen when we are sufficiently aware of what we’re doing. If we’re lost in emotions, triggered, and stuck in knee-jerk automatic reactions, then we are reactive. To be proactive, we need a little space from that engulfing emotion. We need to take a step back, and from there gain a clear picture of what we’re doing, what our options are, and what to do next.

Anxious = trapped or bogged down in strong emotion

Calm = able to step above and outside of that emotion

In fact, you could almost say that the degree of anxiety you experience around an issue is directly proportional to how “close” you are to it. Stepping outside of yourself and your emotions for a moment, and taking a look at the issue from a distance can not only help you solve the problem, it can make the whole thing seem like less of an emergency! Then, once you’re calm, you can take more relaxed, conscious action, instead of being reactive.

Great! So how do we create this sense of psychological distance? Does this mean numbing ourselves out to emotion? Or getting all cold and clinical on our lives as we look down at everything from the clouds? Thankfully, no!

Introspection is Not Mind Chatter

Before we go on, it’s worth noting what psychological distance isn’t. Our inner voice can be a great ally, helping us analyze, reflect, weigh options, interpret, remember, and plan. But I probably don’t need to tell you that not all self-talk is beneficial. Mental chatter is useless and simply creates more anxiety. You’ll know it’s mental chatter when:

• It goes round and round in a loop that never stops

• It’s often negative/pessimistic

• It prevents you from solving problems, rather than helps you

• It makes you feel distracted and disconnected

• It’s based in the past or future, and not the present

• Most crucially: it increases anxiety while decreasing beneficial action

Reading the above list, you can probably see that the experience of anxiety and the action of negative self-talk are essentially one and the same. Many of us attempt to gain psychological distance only to find we are doing more of the same mental chatter that only makes us anxious. So let’s now turn to another question—what we are attempting to distance from.

Mental chatter, anxiety, and a loss of conscious awareness can swallow up our feeling of self-control and agency. The more unaware we are of what is happening to us, the less we are able to take charge of the situation (i.e., we can only be reactive and not proactive). Mental distance is one way we can separate ourselves from strong emotions, and the content of our mental chatter, so we can begin to ask, “Wait a second—what is this? What am I doing here?”

Without mental distance, we just take our own narratives as gospel and fail to see any way out. On the one hand, we have:

Anxiety, narrowing of awareness, loss of agency.

On the other hand, we have:

Calmness, broadening of awareness, control, and responsibility.

Panic and fear shrink our perspective and rob us of the ability to choose the best for ourselves, whereas conscious awareness opens our field of view and lets us make healthier choices. Sounds great, but the trouble is, of course, to find a way into that awareness and broadness of vision when you’re stuck in the middle of an intense emotion—not easy to do! In fact, you’ve probably noticed that it’s much easier to see other people’s blind spots than it is your own. You have distance and perspective; they’re too close to see what you can see.

Thankfully, it is possible to learn to create mental distance in ourselves, even in the midst of moments that have us losing our heads.

Kinds of Distance—And How to Create Them

There are many ways to get wrapped up in a strong and engrossing situation. Imagine you are upset after having a fight with your partner—your body is filled with stress hormones and your heart is pounding, your head is racing with thoughts and you feel chaotic and disorganized, your feelings are all over the place, and all you can focus on is how hurt and alarmed you feel. Okay, now what?

The first type of distance you can help yourself create is spatial, i.e., distance in space. This is obvious: you’re upset and overwhelmed in your shared home, so leaving the house for a while and taking a walk can give you the shift in perspective you need. But you can also achieve the same result by just changing the room you’re in, your proximity to a person or your bodily position (for example, stand up if you’re slouching). You could simply imagine a different location and see how this changes your view on things.

You could also gain social distance. This is a more abstract distance between yourself and another person or people. So, even if you stayed with your partner in the same home temporarily, you might find yourself gaining a sense of distance by formally breaking up, for example.

Temporal distance is distance in time. When we’re feeling reactive, anxious, or overwhelmed by strong emotion, time seems to stop and we lose the ability to clearly think about the future clearly. But if you can slow down and remind yourself of the future consequences, or remember that the present moment is not going to last forever, you give yourself some breathing room in time. In our example, you could actively tell yourself, “I’m upset right now, but I’ll sleep on it and I know I’ll be thinking more clearly tomorrow morning.” This broadens perspective and brings some calm.

Finally, hypothetical distance is simply the space we make for ourselves when we imagine that the situation in front of us could possibly be different. This is a big deal. If we can simply acknowledge that there is an option to experience something different than what we’re currently experiencing, we are no longer trapped in a moment and can start to think of alternatives, solutions, or creative ways forward. For our example, perhaps you are standing there having a loud shouting match with your partner, when you suddenly realize, “Wait. It doesn’t have to be this way. Maybe I could deal with this argument in a different way than I usually do. Maybe I could calmly remove myself and take a few deep breaths.” This puts you straight into a proactive mindset and will dramatically lower your anxiety.

In a way, all distance is created on the back of the realization that the current situation could be different than it is. And you can make it different!

Having perspective on a problem and viewing it from a distance doesn’t magically make problems go away or difficult feelings vanish. But it does allow you to temporarily get bigger than those problems, rather than have them overwhelm and swallow you. The problem remains the same, but when you can see it from different angles and when you can retain a degree of awareness, you will instantly feel calmer about it—and with this calm you can access more options.

Use the Power of Your Imagination to Create Distance

What unfolds in any moment is automatically interpreted by us—we tell a story about it. But, we can tell a different story.

If you’re in an immediately overwhelming situation (like having a fight with your partner), you may need to quickly create a bit of distance in the moment. But once you’ve cooled off, you are still left facing the problem. We can defuse strong emotions in the short term, but once the dust settles, we will still need to tackle the underlying problem with patience and focus. In this case, it’s worth sitting down and deliberately working through the problem alone, where you can introduce some helpful distance.

A journal is the perfect way to do this. Some people even enjoy talking to a “pet rock” or recording their voice. Sit down where you won’t be disturbed for a while and try some of the following techniques.

Advise a Friend

It’s easy to see what he best course of action is—when it’s somebody else’s problem! Take the time to imagine that your problem is actually happening to a close friend of yours and not you. Pull out all your ego and assumptions and resistances and excuses and just look at the plain facts of the story. You might like to write out a brief summary paragraph of the problem as you see it. Then, put little quote marks around the paragraph and literally imagine that those same words were coming from the mouth of a someone you care about. What is your response? How would you advise them?

This seems too simple to work, but it can be useful because we are often impeded from making decisions or acting wisely because denial, fear or excuses get in the way. We imagine that our problems are super complicated, and we may not notice ourselves ignoring certain features of a situation or twisting others—until we imagine it from someone else’s perspective. Sometimes doing this can be relieving in itself because you suddenly realize your problem isn’t as big as you thought it was.

Picture Another Version of Yourself

Granted, the above technique may not always work, and you may genuinely have a complicated case on your hands. If so, try another technique where you imagine what you think of the problem—but from the future. Imagining your future self gives you a different perspective and reminds you that what is happening right now is not what is always going to be happening. Turn your mind to consequences and likely outcomes. After the sting of any strong emotions have worn off, think about what your future self will want.

If you can, think about similar decisions and problems you’ve had in the past, but add a temporal element to them. Maybe when you zoom out you notice that you always do XYZ—and then regret it a few weeks later. By factoring in your future self, you weigh up the present more accurately. At the very least, you can breathe a sigh of relief by simply knowing that the present problem is unlikely to continue unchanged forever.

Reframe Perceptions

During meditation or mindfulness practice, you train yourself to recognize your thoughts as thoughts, and your feelings as feelings. You see them come and you see them go, and practice not attaching to them, but merely having awareness of their constant flow. You don’t need to practice meditation to learn to do this, though. Get into the habit of simply noticing sensations and perceptions.

“My heart’s beating really fast right now.”

“I feel disappointed that she said that.”

“I’m scared and I hate what’s happening.”

Importantly, just notice these things, without arguing, interpreting, analyzing, praising, or judging them. You don’t have to “accept” them either, just see that they’re there, and that’s that. Once you do, you can start to see that it’s your choice how you frame and interpret those neutral sensations. For example:

My heart is beating fast > I must be nervous > I shouldn’t be nervous, I’ve done this a thousand times before > if I’m nervous there’s something wrong with me > and so on.

If you notice this happening, you can intercept and experiment with reframing sensations in different ways, thus creating some distance and bringing a calmer perspective on things.

Perhaps your heart is beating fast because you’re doing something new and exciting? Perhaps your heart is beating fast because you’re human and doing something a little nerve-wracking, and it’s all perfectly okay? To get this distance, however, requires we first slow down, notice what we’re doing, and then notice the places where we can make different choices.