And the truth is there is a lot of scientific evidence showing the physical and mental benefits of mindfulness and why we should aim to be more present in our everyday lives.

Having a more internal locus of control means we believe we have more control over the event.

Having a more external locus of control means we believe that outside forces (other people, the environment, God, etc.) have more control over the event.

Usually our locus of control depends on the event – it lies on a spectrum between “complete control” and “no control.”

When our locus of control is mis-attributed, it can cause a lot of unnecessary harm and suffering in our lives.

When we overestimate our control in a situation, we may become unnecessarily stressed out and anxious over events we have no power over. We can think and fret about them all we want, but nothing we do can change those circumstances. Focusing on these things does nothing but drain our energy. And the less we accept them, the more we seek to change them. Despite being powerless.

And when we underestimate our control in a situation, we may unnecessarily settle for things in our life that we actually have the power to change and improve. So instead of changing the situation for the better, we actually settle for something much worse. Clearly, relinquishing our power in such situations decreases our well-being.

Living a more satisfying and happy life is directly dependent on how accurate our locus of control is. When we exert effort over the things we actually have power over, we maximize our happiness and well-being in the best possible way, given our circumstances.

Unfortunately, I can’t define your locus of control for you. That is for everyone to determine for themselves, given their abilities and situation.

The extent to which we have power over our lives can be hard to distinguish. Our world is vastly complex and it is built on a matrices of different factors. Fortunately, by living more mindfully and consciously in the present moment, we can better determine where we have power and where we don’t.

We can do this by watching our daily choices and actions, and then witnessing first-hand how they affect our lives. The more aware we are, the better we can distinguish which actions are fruitful and which aren’t.

Discovering our locus of control is a constant work-in-progress. It is something that can be continuously refined, so long as we choose to live more consciously. Day in and day out.

In this article, I attempt to answer these important but often difficult questions. I then share 5 fundamentals on Regaining Consciousness, as laid out by psychology blogger Sam Spurlin. These fundamentals aim to cultivate a higher state of awareness toward key areas of our life, such as our values, health, work, thinking, and relationships.

Consciousness is the bedrock of your personal development.

Consciousness is more than just a passing thought, feeling, memory, or imagination, but the underlying awareness that permeates every experience you’ll ever have.

In order to define consciousness, it helps to first think of it as a spectrum of awareness.

On one end of the spectrum, there are lower levels of consciousness, including being distracted, lazy or bored. Usually in these states, we maintain some awareness of our environment, but not very much. We can probably get a lot of tedious chores done while being distracted or bored, but this isn’t the optimal state you want to be in when trying to achieve a big or meaningful goal.

The very lowest levels of consciousness are states like drug intoxication, sleep, or a coma, where we actually aren’t conscious at all – but unconscious. Most of the time we don’t get anything productive or creative done in these states (mostly because “you” aren’t actually around when you’re unconscious).

And on the opposite end of the spectrum, there are very high states of consciousness, like mindfulness and flow. These are states of mind where an individual is highly attentive and engaged with their environment, often interacting with it in very skillful and sophisticated ways (like a painter working on their masterpiece, a baseball player pitching a perfect game, or a life-long businessman pitching a big sale).

Unlike lower levels of consciousness, higher levels of consciousness are very optimal for goal-achieving and success in virtually any domain of life. This is because higher levels of consciousness always include supreme focus and discipline.

What I want you to understand is that, ultimately, the level of consciousness we cultivate throughout our day is the most fundamental components to our well-being and success. Personal development without conscious living is simply impossible – the more aware we are of ourselves and our environment, the more power and control we have to change it.

5 Steps Toward Regaining Consciousness

Sam Spurlin writes about Regaining Consciousness in his insightful e-book. The lessons covered are intuitive and thought-provoking, but also widely applicable to cultivating consciousness toward different (and often underestimated) areas in our life.

It reminds me of a more “contemporary” version of the popular Mindfulness in Plain English, because it’s primary focus is how to practice healthy consciousness throughout our daily activities (even with common things like eating and exercise) – not just during meditation.

Sam understands that cultivating consciousness is not just for Zen monks camping out in some cave, but something that can also be applied to the “American way” of living too. This means we can work on regaining consciousness even with a 9-5 job, bills to pay, and a family to take care of.

In the book there are 5 crucial steps laid out that anyone can follow to facilitate conscious living. I’m going to summarize each step here, but if you really want to read more about each one, I recommend you check out his book for yourself. I honestly couldn’t put it down when I first started it.

Find your values.

Going through life without a clear sense of our values and goals is a sure-fire way to not find happiness. Many people live their lives aimlessly and unconsciously (like a puppet on strings), without ever introspecting and asking themselves, “What do I really want in life? What direction do I want to go in?” To cultivate more consciousness toward our values in life, Sam suggests:

• Make a list of core values and narrow it down to your top 3-5. Imagine what your life would be like if you acted in accordance with these values.
• Don’t chase other people’s dreams – question the values you learn from authority figures, the media, TV, and pop culture.
• Listen to your heart and mind above all else. Do what you honestly think is right.
• Have priorities. Sure, you may value playing video games, but is it more important than taking care of your family or studying for school or doing something more creative like writing a song? It’s up to you.

Take control of your health.

Consciousness toward our health is absolutely crucial for physical and mental well-being. Everyday we make decisions that have to do with our bodies: what we choose to consume, and what kind of physical activities we choose to partake in. The more aware we are of what we eat and how much exercise we get, the better off our health will be. Sam suggests we:

• Make small and deliberate decisions to be healthier. Start by cutting down soda intake and replacing it with water. Or try just going for a short walk every morning. Start with little things and build from there.
• Be a conscious eater. When you eat, don’t distract yourself by reading the paper or surfing the internet. Instead, pay very close attention to how the food tastes and how your body is reacting to it.
• Tune into your body during physical exercise. For example, while running pay close attention to the mechanics of your legs/body, the motions of your breathing, and any other pain/aches/sensations in your body that you may be experiencing. Think of any physical activity as a way of meditating – and your body is the object of your meditation.
• Learn from the wisdom of your body. Our body is always sending us signals on it’s condition (like when you are hungry, when you need to use the restroom, when you tore a muscle, etc.) The more we are aware of these signals, the better we can respond to our body’s needs. You’d probably be surprised on just how much you can learn from your body if you listen to it.

Doing work that matters.

Next to our health, one of the biggest factors in achieving happiness is doing meaningful work with our lives. A dead-end job that doesn’t align with our values can feel like a curse. Instead of inspiring us and motivating us, it drains us of our energy and leaves us feeling empty inside. On the other hand, a meaningful job that actually matters to us is drastically more fulfilling. Here’s what Sam recommends we do:

• Re-evaluate your current job. What do you like about it (if anything)? What purpose do you fulfill? Does it align with your values?
• If you aren’t happy with your job, begin searching for alternative career paths that you find more fulfilling. In the book, Sam mentions how he used to be a teacher (and he liked his job), but becoming self-employed aligned with more of his values and interests, so he made the switch.
• Pay attention to activities that put you into a state of engagement and flow. Very often these passions of yours can point you in the right direction when choosing a job or career.
• A big goal in my personal life is to find work that I love but also serves an important function in improving society.

Master your mind with conscious thinking.

A big part of Regaining Consciousness is taking more control over our education, thoughts, beliefs, and perspective. Throughout the guide, Sam asks us to challenge our old assumptions and beliefs, accept our ignorance about certain topics, and willingly seek to improve our knowledge and attitude about the world. He recommends you:

• Acknowledge that you have a limited perspective. You don’t know everything, so don’t be stubborn and act like you do.
• Try to look beyond any biases or prejudices you may have by looking at new information as neutrally as possible.
• Become an active learner. Choose a topic that has always fascinated you, go to the library, and then take out a few books on it. Read up on it and share what you learned with others.
• Go “Wikipedia surfing.” Go to an article, read through, it and click on any links that interest you. Keep continuing the process until you feel you have learned something new and interesting that you didn’t know before.
• Always maintain a healthy curiosity and willingness to learn. We don’t stop being students after we graduate high school or college.
• Listen to everyone’s views. Respect that other people may have different experiences, knowledge, and beliefs than you do. Ignore the trap of having to label everything “right” or “wrong.”

Nurturing conscious relationships.

One of the most important steps toward conscious living is becoming more aware of the relationships that make up our world. For some of us, we may cling onto toxic relationships that end up hurting both ourselves and the other person. For others, we may have trouble cultivating meaningful relationships. In both cases, cultivating higher consciousness is crucial. Some of Sam’s suggestions include:

• Recognize the “vampires” in your life. These are people who are always being negative and sucking the energy out of you. They are the buzz-kill to every party and the rain to every parade. Stay far away from them. They are miserable – and they expect you to be miserable too.
• Associate with “vampire slayers.” Vampire slayers are people who crush negativity in their lives. Instead of draining you of energy, they empower and motivate you. They encourage you to pursue your values and goals, and they are always around to lend a helping hand when you need it.
• The essential rule of cultivating conscious relationships is to invest positive energy into the relationships that are valuable to us, and let the one’s that aren’t valuable fizzle out. Although it may be painful to get rid of old friends, it is sometimes the necessary thing to do.

Free Preview of “Regaining Consciousness.”

If you visit the Regaining Consciousness page you can check out the first 15+ pages absolutely free.

This is because opportunity is just as much based on our way of seeing as it is based on external circumstances.

Opportunities are a lot like self-fulfilling prophecies.

If we keep our eyes open for new ones, we are more likely to spot them when they actually pop up in our lives. But if we never look for opportunities, we often don’t see them – even when they are actually there waiting for us.

Of course, opportunity has a bit to do with luck and chance, but it also has a lot to do with our beliefs and perspective.

Here are some of the main beliefs and attitudes that correlate with opportunistic thinking:

Believe in free will.

Those who don’t believe they have any will-power or control over their life are going to automatically inhibit themselves from taking advantage of the opportunities that pass us by on a daily basis.

We must not view ourselves as puppets on strings, subject only to the whims of external forces. Instead, we are conscious thinkers and actors that participate with our environments.

Life is not just something that happens to us from the outside, it is also what we choose to make of it. We shouldn’t ignore this power and responsibility.

For more on my take on free will (a compatibilist approach): The Illusion of No Control.

Have an openness to possibility.

To be an opportunist, we can’t be stubborn in our thinking, and we can’t limit our beliefs and map of reality to a single narrow perspective.

Instead, we have to at least show openness to new perspectives, new ideas, and new beliefs that we may not have previously considered.

It’s important to have this sense of flexibility in our thinking, because it opens us to more creative ways of interpreting the information we get about our world, and how we can apply that information in new and unconventional ways.

Opportunistic thinking can often be enhanced when we allow ourselves to view the world a bit more differently than others.

Take quick action.

Sometimes we miss out on opportunities because we keep thinking there will be “something better around the corner.”

Opportunists avoid this trap by taking quick action.

An opportunist doesn’t spend too much time waiting, hoping, or praying for some ideal situation. They know that the quest for perfection often leads to procrastination.

So instead, they stay vigilant for the little (but imperfect) opportunities that pass us by on a daily basis, and they take advantage of these opportunities soon after they present themselves.

They know that if they hesitate too long, they may never get a second chance.

This can be just as true for filling out a job application as it is approaching a good-looking girl at a bar, or buying tickets for an upcoming concert, or following through on a business plan.

An opportunist knows that opportunities don’t sit there and wait for us – we have to take action while they are still available.

Be aware.

Our ability to discover new opportunities is intrinsically dependent on our awareness of our environment and our surroundings.

Techniques that help build awareness (mindfulness exercises like: 100 Breaths Meditation or STOP) can help us process information we get from our environment with a greater scope and clarity.

Having this increased awareness greatly increases our chances of discovering new opportunities. And it also improves skills in problem-solving and creativity. Be aware of your awareness, because it plays a huge role in how you process the world.

Learn optimism.

Optimism is a positive perspective we hold about life that encompasses beliefs and thought patterns like:

• “Good things will happen to me.”
• “I can overcome obstacles.”
• “Life and people are generally good.”
• “I am capable of achieving my values and goals.”

Interestingly, positive psychologists are discovering that our optimism is not something we are predestined or born with, but something we can learn and cultivate on our own. And by cultivating this positive attitude, we often invite good things to happen to us.

This doesn’t mean that a positive attitude alone can give you everything you want (see my post on Dangerous Trends in Personal Development to help avoid this unhealthy thinking). However, I do believe that positivity within reason can be a very constructive outlook on life.

Questions.

• What are some other tips and advice you may have for becoming a better opportunist?

Share them in the comment section below!