Control, Part Two

Parts of Control

What would you do if you had more self-control?

1. Get twice as much work done?
2. Break a bad habit?
3. Spend more time improving yourself?
4. Replace your negative emotions with positive emotions?
5. Waste less time watching TV, on social media or diving into the news?
6. Increase your knowledge and performance skills?
7. Create new income sources?
8. Do more good things for the world?
9. Conquer your greatest fears?
10. Have more fun?

What would you do if you had better control of others?

1. Get better people supporting you?
2. Change people’s views?
3. Get a friend or family member to stop abusing drugs or alcohol?
4. Help your kids with their life skills?
5. Motivate your team to do better work?
6. Generate more interest in your service or product?
7. Boost people’s moods?
8. Attract a potential spouse?
9. Get more people to join your group?
10. Help people lead healthier, happier and richer lives?

In all cases, you need to do one of three things.

Three Parts of Control

If you followed the advice in “Control, Part One,” you identified the areas of your life that you need to take more control of. For example, your list might look like this:

1. Pain in right leg.
2. My smoking habit.
3. Son sleeps all morning instead of helping me.
4. I’m not saving any money.
5. My garage is a big dirty, smelly mess.
6. My stupid boss drives me crazy.

So, to take more control of these areas, you need to either START something, CHANGE something or STOP something.

“If one can start something, change its position in space or existence in time and stop it, all at will, he can be said to control it, whatever it may be. — L. Ron Hubbard​

For example, to take control of the six examples above, you could do the following:

1. START doing the leg stretches for five minutes each morning before getting out of bed.
2. CHANGE from smoking cigarettes to vaping e-cigarettes.
3. STOP my son from sleeping in with loud marching music at 7 AM daily.
4. START saving money by asking my bank to automatically transfer $500 to savings each Monday.
5. CHANGE the location of a few items in my messy garage.
6. STOP being a jerk to my boss.

In all six examples, you take control of the problems, all by yourself!

Exercise

1. Write your list of things you want more control of. This can be control of yourself or others.

2. Next to each item, write one Action Step that you can take to START something about it, CHANGE something about it or STOP something about it.

The Action Step can be anything you can do: small, complicated, fun, difficult, satisfying or whatever you will actually do. It must be something YOU can do, all by yourself.

Do Your Action Steps

1. Sometime today or this week, DO each of the action steps you wrote down.

2. If needed, do the easiest action steps first. Then, as you see your success, the difficult steps will be easier.

3. Persist until you complete all of your action steps.

Repeat the exercise above.

15 More Examples

1. My company income is dropping because we are just ignoring several horrible articles about us.
To take control, I will START writing a positive article each night before bed.

2. The government says I owe $145,000 in taxes.
To solve this, I will CHANGE my tax lawyer.

3. I have lung cancer.
To start taking some control, I will STOP breathing smoky air of every kind.

4. I have to give a speech next week and I’m so terrified I can’t sleep.
I will START my practice speeches today.

5. I just lost my job of 20 years and can’t find another job like it.
To take control, I will CHANGE my career to something I love.

6. My wife wants a divorce and will take half of our possessions, cash and business because of my bad habits.
To take control of the situation I will STOP my bad habits.

7. When people disagree with me, I get really angry and say things I regret.
I will START listening to people’s views before getting angry.

8. I feel really depressed after watching the news.
I will CHANGE how I spend my time with uplifting shows and long walks.

9. I never have enough money for anything important.
I will STOP wasting all my money on stupid stuff or expensive meals

10. I can’t find any new clients to buy my services.
I will START making 50 calls per day.

11. No one wants to go on a date with me.
I will CHANGE my bad moods to good moods whenever I am communicating with potential dates.

12. My daughter won’t take responsibility for her schoolwork.
I will turn off her wi-fi to STOP her from wasting time until her work is done.

13. My husband doesn’t spend time with me.
I will START being interested in his interests.

14. My team is bored and not very productive these days.
I will CHANGE their pay system so they get big rewards for big production.

15. No one seems to like me.
I will STOP making critical comments of anyone or anything, completely and forever.

Next, read “Control Part Three: Why You Feel Frantic, Helpless or Incompetent.”