Have you ever wondered if you could achieve and enjoy your life more? Do you feel like your days could be filled with more joy and meaning?

You are not alone. Many people ask the same questions, but few care enough to actually answer them. You are one of the few who made that effort, and for that, I genuinely respect you.

Taking back control over your life can feel overwhelming at first: in most cases, it isn’t obvious where you should start. Thankfully, all it takes is patience, a bit of commitment, and a few well-executed strategies.

In this article, we’ll discuss 7 specific, actionable steps to take back control over your life and make it meaningful. Without further ado, let’s begin.

7 Steps to Take Back Control Over Your Life

Getting your life back on track is a gradual process, and, to not overwhelm you, we will start with small steps that gradually get more complex.

The first step to fix your life is to realize that it’s unfulfilling and doesn’t match your values.

1: Realize That Your Current Life is Unfulfilling

Most people live mediocre, meaningless lives. They wake up, spend hours working on a job they hate, consume brain rot content, eat junk food, and go back to sleep. No variety, no purpose, and no progress.

There is no clear direction or meaning in an average person’s life. And that’s why they feel like they have no control, like life is hard and constantly blows them around.

The first step to taking back control over your life is looking at it objectively. Do you really believe that maintaining the same mediocre habits and environment will bring you happiness?

Do you really enjoy working on meaningless tasks just to get by? Are you sure that mindlessly consuming content and eating processed foods is good for you in the long run?

Probably not. If you were content with this (or similar) lifestyle, you wouldn’t click on this article. Realize that your current life is unfulfilling, and you’ll already solve half of the whole problem.

This step isn’t about getting sudden motivation, but about consciously deciding to take control over your health, mind, relationships, and personal development. The sooner you do it, the higher the chances you’ll get out of stagnation.

The next step to taking back control over your life is focusing on your health and fitness.

2: Take Care of Your Health and Fitness

Physical health is the foundation of progress. If you want to work effectively, make progress, and simply feel happy – you should have a healthy body. Having no illnesses or problems to deal with frees up resources for higher creation and purpose.

Therefore, if you want to take back control over your life, you should start with your health. Thankfully, taking care of it isn’t difficult, and it only requires a few consistent habits:

• Waking up and going to sleep early
• Drinking 2 liters of water daily
• Exercising 3 times a week (preferably cardio and resistance training)
• Cutting off alcohol and tobacco
• Eating complex carbs and protein
• Going outside daily

These things aren’t hard to do, and there is no need to over optimize them. Simply taking care of your body and avoiding junk are enough to get into and maintain a good shape.

However, the hard part is actually starting them. Start with just two simple habits: watch the Sun 5 minutes after waking up and drink a glass of water.

This simple step will allow you to gain momentum, get used to effort, and gradually transition into a healthier lifestyle. After 2 months, you’ll be able to stay consistent with working out, avoid vices relatively well, and feel better.

Other than that, all these habits will help you build discipline – the ability to keep working and doing the right things no matter how you feel. This is crucial: relying on short-term emotions won’t help you make consistent, lasting changes.

The next step to take back control over your life is working on your mental health.

Related article: How to Resist the Urge to Eat Junk Food

3: Work on Your Mental Health to Take Back Control Over Your Life

People talk about physical health frequently, and regularly set “lose weight” and “get in shape” in their New Year resolutions. But what about mental health?

Due to many various factors, like COVID-19, political instability, and increased social media usage, there is a rapid decline of mental health in the world. We can’t influence those larger problems, but we can remain happy and stable despite them.

Unlike physical health, it takes more time and effort to stabilize your mental state and prevent serious illness. First, dig deep into who you are, why you behave the way you do, and what you believe in.

Then, try to analyze what holds you back from obtaining genuine peace and happiness. Maybe it’s the fact that your life isn’t aligned with your values, or that your environment slowly saps away your fulfillment.

How to Improve Your State of Mind

Whatever the core reasons are, address them directly. If you can’t do that, adopt a few more habits that help improve your mental state:

• Meditate for 10 minutes daily
• Write 5 things you’re grateful for every morning
• Go out to parks without your phone
• Read a chapter of a meaningful book (e.g. Discourses by Epictetus)
• Sit alone in a room without stimulation (or just with light ambient music)
• Reflect on your path and seek areas for improvement
• Do a hobby that you genuinely enjoy

Before you move on to the next step, spend some time mastering your health. You can’t build a skyscraper on a weak foundation. I understand that it may feel hard at first, but trust me: the peace, calm, and contentment you’ll acquire are entirely worth it.

In short, just like you work daily to improve your physical health, you can also work daily to improve your mental one. These things aren’t difficult to do, but if you keep doing them for weeks and months, they will make you feel much better.

After you’ve successfully improved your health, it is time to move on to the next area: gaining confidence and expertise.

Related article: How to Be Happy in Any Situation

4: Start Gaining Skills and Expertise

True fulfillment requires full belief and confidence in your abilities. Some people go years without realizing that, and end up deeply regretting choosing comfort over struggle.

There is no better way to fix your life and find your purpose than building useful, interesting skills. Whether you want to learn something professional and in-demand, or just build something for your soul, there are many things you can learn:

• Spreadsheet software (especially Excel)
• Coding and data analysis (SQL, Python, or R)
• Woodworking
• Writing and articulating your thoughts
• Voice acting
• Basketball
• Long-distance hiking
• Fishing
• Cooking
• And much more.

Depending on your current priorities, you can either choose to learn something career-related, or you can pick something you simply find enjoyable.

The most important part is dedicating at least 1-2 hours a day to hobbies you find important. You may suck at it at first – and that’s okay. On average, it takes 20 hours of practice to get decent at a skill.

That means, if you give a skill just 2 weeks of consistent attention, you’ll already be better at it than most people who haven’t tried. This will make you more confident in yourself and open opportunities for further growth.

After you start practicing a good skill(s), the next step to take back control over your life is learning to push through adversity.

Related article: 30 Masculine Hobbies to Start

5: Learn to Push Through Adversity to Take Back Control Over Your Life

On your path, you’ll inevitably encounter obstacles that will test your resolve. Whether it’s sudden bad news, academic failure, or abandonment by a loved one – you’ll have to learn to push through it.

It’s tempting to break down and let these things determine your future. After all, it frees you from effort and responsibility for your life. But here’s the deeper truth:

Most of our suffering is self-imposed. There are things you can’t control: external events, possessions, even relationships with close people. But, no matter what happens with the external, you can choose your response.

You can choose to stay composed, find a rational solution to the situation, or let go of it if there’s nothing you can do. This way, not only will you thrive, but you will also preserve your stability without long-term consequences.

If that still doesn’t help, find a reason to keep moving forward. Maybe you want to deeply change people’s lives, or maybe you want to guarantee a good life for your family.

There are many other ways to push through hardship, and we’ll discuss them later. For now, recognize that the only way towards success is through resistance.

Sad moments come, but they also eventually fade. The more you fight back and the more you keep pushing, the sweeter the process and the ultimate reward become.

As you keep exercising, healing your emotional wounds, and building new skills, the next thing you should focus on is gradually dropping your bad habits.

Related article: How to Emotionally Detach From a Situation

6: Gradually Drop Your Bad Habits

What you do you eventually become. Our habits shape not just our lifestyle and wellbeing, but our lifestyle and attitude. The better your habits are, the better all these things become. And the worse they are, well…

Bad habits’ effects aren’t immediately obvious. You can eat ice cream, smoke every day, and not feel any consequences for a while. But if you keep doing that for months and years straight – you’ll start gaining weight and coughing uncontrollably.

This is exactly what makes bad habits dangerous: they stealthily take away your energy, attention, time, and health, until you’re left with nothing but regret and instability.

Solution? Quit whatever bad habits you have as soon as possible. You should do that not only because it will make you feel better, but because it will amplify the positive effects of the good habits mentioned above. Now, how do you do it?

• Evaluate a bad habit you want to quit
• See how harmful it is in the long run
• Feel disgust towards the possibility of your life turning out that way
• Make it hard to do that habit and replace it with a better one.

For example, if you want to quit TikTok, recognize its long-term adverse effects on you – irritability, anxiety, numbness, dissatisfaction, and even depression. Delete the app, install a blocker if necessary, and replace scrolling with more productive activities.

Finally, after all the things you’ve completed, the last step remaining to take back control over your life is saying ‘yes’ to beneficial opportunities.

7: Say Yes to Beneficial Opportunities to Take Back Control Over Your Life

A common problem people have is a supposed lack of opportunities. They react to life instead of shaping it how they want. They wait for a savior to magically fix things, even if nobody actually comes to save them.

Despite what a lot of people think, luck isn’t something that somehow comes and chooses random folks. It’s something that you can cultivate by grabbing opportunities when they come.

I’m not just talking about big opportunities, like getting offered a job or house of your dreams. I’m talking about small, seemingly insignificant opportunities – to learn, grow, and invest into your future.

No matter how busy your work/study schedule is, you still have free time to do something unusual and interesting:

• Go on a trip to another town or village
• Build a valuable project (articles, video games, music)
• Visit an event that matters to you
• Go fishing on a nearby lake
• See a movie you’ve always wanted to see

In short, you have dozens of small opportunities to grow spiritually, expand your worldview, and become a more well rounded person. The final step to fix your life is to expand it with excitement and memorable moments.

The more you practice this skill, the better you’ll get at spotting little opportunities you’ve missed before. You’ll gradually obtain more knowledge, a richer internal world, and certain satisfaction with your life’s trajectory.

How to Deal With Setbacks and Stagnation

On your journey, you’ll inevitably deal with setbacks. Old friends may abandon you, your habit consistency may fall, and you may relapse back to bad habits to escape from the chaos of this world.

In case these things happen, remember: setbacks are normal and expected. You should not feel guilty or beat yourself up over mistakes. Instead, you should take a deep breath, detach from negative thoughts, and ask yourself:

• What caused me to make this mistake?
• What are the potential consequences of repeating it consistently?
• How can I avoid making it happen in the future?
• What can I do to improve my life and performance even more?

As an example, if you’ve found yourself excessively scrolling or binge-eating in recent days, ask yourself why it’s happening. The most likely reason is dissatisfaction with an external event outside your control.

Then, acknowledge your emotions, recognize the nature of that external problem, and address it accordingly (fix it immediately if you can, accept and forget about it if you can’t control it).

Once you address the core issue, move on to minimizing your bad habits or mistakes even more, whether it’s by making it harder to do them or distracting yourself with a productive task.

Aside from that, remember: success is a slow, gradual route. The results of your actions take months, sometimes years to fully materialize. The key is to enjoy the process, stay grateful for what you possess, and remember why you started.

Take Back Control Over Your Life, for It’s Yours to Live

Most people live reactively. They peak in high school, gradually fall off, and drown in comfort that ultimately makes their lives meaningless and unfulfilling.

Thankfully, it doesn’t have to be that way. You can take back control over your life and make it better. But, to do that, you need to take full responsibility for your future and gradually take small, proactive actions:

• Accept that your current life is unfulfilling
• Take care of your physical health
• Work on your mental health
• Start gaining skills and human capital
• Learn to push through adversity
• Find and gradually drop your bad habits
• Say ‘yes’ to beneficial opportunities

I’m not going to fool you or set false expectations: results won’t be instant or immediately obvious. But, if you believe in yourself and keep doing those small, insignificant steps every day, you will start seeing improvements:

You will feel healthier, more energetic, and more at peace with yourself. You will develop genuine confidence in your abilities and strengths, and that will translate into better opportunities and relationships with others.

Finally, there will be a point when you’ll look back and thank your past self for staying committed on this journey. Even if the world gets chaotic, you won’t be afraid. You’ll simply be calm and certain that things will turn out fine.

Lift weights, read books, enjoy nature, and stay the kind man you are. Good luck, and have a peaceful day, brother.

If you liked this article and found it useful, make sure to share it with friends who need this message and leave a comment below. See you next time.