By Debbie Hagen

Who is living your life? Is it you? For the past few months, I feel as if someone else is living mine. Ever since returning to full-time work for someone else, I have struggled to keep “me” in my life. Ever feel like that?

Maybe you feel like you have no choices. Maybe you feel that everything else is more important than yourself. Know what? You’re wrong. YOU are the most important person in your own life. Everything that happens is in your control. Even when (like for me currently) it feels as if everything else is taking over, and you have no control, it is simply an illusion. You are always in control; you simply have to take the controls back from whomever or whatever you have relinquished that control.

We ALWAYS have the choices to make our own life. I know that, but I often forget it. I suspect you know that and you may have forgotten it, too.

We can actually ONLY live our own lives. Anything else is not living, but rather going through the motions. When we don’t live our own lives, something or someone else will jump into it and try to take it over. That someone or something will make you doubt yourself, question your ideas, make you not believe what you know to be truth, and suck all your self-confidence right out of you. Don’t let it happen!

A life is a terrible thing to waste. Start living yours today!

Listen to your heart, not other people. Do what makes you happy, regardless of what it is. If you don’t know how to change things to make it different, don’t worry.

Start small and do your best. Take a first step by taking one step in the right direction and making a decision that you know will lift your heart. You can start momentum that will keep you moving into more control of your own life. Even if it means doing nothing for a few moments (or even your entire day off), then do it.

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Deborah Hagen, 65 of South Chatham, MA is a Registered Nurse who has spent her career helping others. She was a shop owner of Deborah Ann’s Rainbow in Dennisport on Cape Cod. She shares her journey with South Shore Elder Services and our readers as a Guest Blogger hoping that her experience can help others in their lives.

Posted in Voices