How to Take Control of Your Life: The LifeGide System

Does your life feel out of control, as it does for millions of people today?

This is a huge problem in our high-tech, always-connected world, in which many of us have to juggle work demands, family responsibilities, outside activities, unexpected disruptions, traffic, addictive social media, and sometimes genuine crises. It can be overwhelming, disorienting, and make the desire for control feel impossible. 

But it is not impossible. 

Taking control of your life does not mean trying to force every situation to go your way. That really is impossible. Real control means understanding your situation and your options, knowing how to chart a path forward and where to focus your energy, and making steady progress day by day, even as the world around you changes constantly.

I have been interested in personal life control as long as I can remember. I started reading books in psychology in high school, majored in psychology and minored in philosophy in college, and soon learned that feeling in control was a strong personal value. I am hardwired that way.

Starting out as a news reporter, I got addicted to the fast pace early. I returned to my college to be its news director, then later launched my own marketing and consulting firm. Talk about control challenges! Multiple clients and deadlines, creative staff who did not want to be controlled, outside expenses like printing and advertising, and ever-changing technology made this a tremendous challenge.

Over time, reading widely on all aspects of how to manage the challenges of life, I learned the science-backed truth that every living thing is a living system. You are a living system, your family is a living system, your business or organization is, and so are cities, states, nations, the world and more. 

So one of the big mistakes of early authors on the topic of how to take control of your life was to treat people and organizations as machines. Machines are predictable, controllable, understandable. Living systems are complex, somewhat unpredictable, and naturally resist external efforts or forces that try to control them. But they are naturally driven toward what is called homeostasis, a steady state. When they are hungry, they seek food. When they are cold, they seek warmth. You can use this to your advantage, as you will learn here.

I learned as CEO of a marketing and consulting firm that while you cannot force people or rigid outcomes, you can manage your resources and influence your direction if you know how to do it right. That is what real control looks like.

To make this practical, the LifeGide System is organized around three core questions:

The LifeGide System: Three Core Questions

To stop spinning your wheels and take control, you only need to answer three practical questions in order:

1. Map Your Life: Where does my life need attention right now?

2. Take Control: What part of this can I actually control?

3. Make Progress: How do I make things better, starting today?

Each question corresponds to one core part of the system designed to move you from confusion to steady action and increasing control:

1. Map Your Life: The 9 Areas of Life

Before you can fix a problem, you have to locate it. Most people get caught in a mix of interrelated problems like a swarm of wasps and easily feel overwhelmed. Instead, we divide your life into nine distinct areas (or dimensions) so you can pinpoint the exact one that is causing you the most trouble at any given time. 

Each area is identified by one simple word, which is a symbol for a cluster of related things. Once you understand them clearly, you realize that everything you ever encounter in your life will fit in one of these nine areas. This is a powerful organizing system to help you increase control.

We work from the outside in—starting with the visible world around you, then moving inward.

The Outer Life (What We Notice First)

• Relationships: This is our code word for all the people in your life: family, friends, marriages,  learning how to connect positively as well as say no when needed. I do not call it “People” because people are resistant to control. Relationships is where you can exert more influence in a positive manner.
• Finances: The money you earn and own, creating a clear spending plan, eliminating debt, saving consistently, and freeing yourself from money fear.
• Work: Your job, career direction, professional skill, daily focus, and doing work you can take pride in. If you are a homemaker, your work is taking care of your home and family, whether you are paid in money for it or not. We have a separate category for what you do in your free time:
• Leisure: Intentional rest, active play, exercise, creative hobbies, and guarding free time from constant intrusion.
• Environment: Everything surrounding the other four, including the natural environment, the built environment (home, office, roads etc.), digital environment (your phone and computer use), and the worldwide flow of forces and information. This includes the economy, demographics, politics, geography, technology, legal-government structures, mass media, and more. This is the single area most people overlook when they are thinking about control because it is not in your face, readily apparent, yet it strongly influences daily stress levels. Right?

The Inner Life (What Goes On Inside Your Skin)

• Mind: The source of your control, including clear thinking, learning, sound judgment, and breaking the habit of overthinking.
• Body: Getting healthy food and restorative sleep, daily movement, and physical energy as the fuel for everything else.
• Spirit: Faith, prayer, conscience, personal meaning, finding a deep center of peace, and connecting to a Higher Power. For some people of faith, this includes the Holy Spirit dwelling and acting within them.
• Emotions: Managing anger, fear, and stress in the moment; emotional resilience; and bouncing back after hard blows. Learning to interpret emotions as signals to guide your control activities.

Take the Next Step: Read the complete guide to the 9 Areas of Life and rate where you stand today.

2. Take Control: The Control Spectrum

Once you know which area needs attention, the next mistake is trying to force things you have no power to change.

Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl noted that between what happens to you and how you react, there is always a space. In that space lies your freedom to choose. The quickest way to open that space is asking: “Which part of this can I actually control?”

Most advice tells you things are either in your control or out of it. In daily life, reality is far more nuanced. LifeGide uses a 5-level Control Spectrum to give you an honest, practical response to any situation:

1. Control (Direct Power): What belongs strictly to you. Your choices, your words, your physical effort, and your personal attitude.
2. Manage (Handling Dynamic Demands): What you cannot dictate entirely, but can handle with skill. Your time, your daily energy, your budget, and your stress levels. In a business, you may manage other people. Here you will learn better ways to do that.
3. Influence (Interpersonal Power): What you can affect through persuasion and clear boundaries, but cannot decide alone. Your colleagues, your family, your clients, and your community.
4. Adapt (Changing You When You Cannot Change It): This includes things that impact you in some way but are outside your influence. Economic changes, aging, company reorganizations, weather, and most of the things we listed under Environment above. When the facts change, you change your behavior to continue moving forward.
5. Accept (Making Peace): What is completely outside your power. The past, painful losses, and other people’s free choices over which you have no control or even influence. Accepting does not mean giving up. It means refusing to waste energy fighting unchangeable reality, and moving on with your life.

Take the Next Step: Learn how to sort any problem using the Control Spectrum