If someone took control of your life tomorrow, what’s the first thing they would change?

What a brilliant question.

And what a hard question to answer without showing a certain degree of vulnerability (read also my story “Vulnerability is a Differentiator”).

How honest are you going to be when answering this question?

Or perhaps, how self-aware are you to be able to answer the question properly?

And critical, who would take the control over your life?

In my case, whether my wife, my kids, or my friends would take control may result in very different outcomes.

And I think this is probably the same for you. I didn’t ask yet, so any answer is mere speculation, but I will ask when I get the opportunity (I’m typing this on a plane to Ljubljana).

Therefore, I’ll answer this brilliant, thought-provoking question for myself first.

What’s the first thing I would change about myself when I took over control.

Disclaimer first…

I have control. I own my own destiny. And I can make any change I want.

For the sake of the exercise, I just stepped about of my own being, boarded my little drone, and started to circle around me for a few moments to change the perspective.

Here’s what I came up with.

I would switch a few wires in my brain. I’m a thinker, and often I’m an over-thinker.

I can think of myself out of a brilliant idea just because I try to see it from every angle.

I often try to convince myself why the idea is not so great anymore, and I usually succeed.

There’s an element of procrastination, but I’m not too fond of it when people give me that feedback.

Let alone if I give that feedback to myself. And that’s precisely the point.

In an ideal world, we would not need someone to take over control and help us change.

We would do that to ourselves. We would grow mechanisms to adapt to our context, picking up the signals sent to us constantly.

But we’re not in an ideal world. Perfect self-awareness does not exist, and we need to get feedback to grow and improve.

Plus, our context changes constantly and ever faster, and how we deal with that is increasingly becoming an immense skill in itself.

So we need a little help and should be open to it.

I can spend hours thinking by myself about the things I need to improve, but I have known already for many years that I get more out of a good conversation with someone who knows how to challenge me AND who has my best interest in mind.

But, not many people combine both qualities.

People who know how to challenge me and can do so without having a personal agenda.

People who know me well enough.

Therefore, not all feedback is good feedback. It’s always seen through the eyes of the beholder.

It’s always up to you what you do with the feedback you receive.

But if, upon reflection, you conclude that the feedback given is valuable and will help you grow, you’ve already changed.

Your turn: If someone took control of your life tomorrow, what’s the first thing they would change?

Do more of what makes you happy!

Erikjan