Who owns you?

Let's talk about ownership. Not ownership of houses, or cars, or crap you don't need, but ownership of your life.

The question of who owns your life is a biggie - much, much bigger than who owns your house, or cars, or the crap you don't need - because whoever owns your life, owns you. And whoever owns you, owns not just your present reality, but also your future potential.

You see, when you don't own your life, you don't live in your reality. You end up a slave inside your own story, trapped in an interpretation of who you truly are, hurtling towards a version of the future that was never intended for you to inhabit - someone else's interpretation of who you are, and of the life you are supposed to lead - your real life.

Without ownership of your life, you end up following paths, making choices, and facing options and opportunities that are shaped by someone else. And living - or, more accurately existing - that way always ends badly, because you are not cut out to navigate this world living in an interpretation of who you truly are and the life you are truly made for: your real life.

When you don't own your life, life is done to you, not by you. But life is not meant to be done to you. As William Ernest Henley wrote in his poem, Invictus, "I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul."

Those are powerful, life-changing, words.

You are the master of your fate. You are the captain of your soul. Hold on to those words, and resolve to reclaim your life and become both master and captain of the road ahead.

"That's all well and good, Andy, but it's not so simple," I hear you say. "I'm trapped, and it's not my fault. I had no choice. People forced me onto this path. I'm not responsible".

Only you are responsible. You did have a choice, even if it may not have felt much like a choice. You chose to allow someone else to own your life. But, just as giving up ownership of your life was a choice, so is taking it back. A choice that only you can make.

So make that choice. Choose to reclaim your life, take back ownership and become all of who you are meant to be. Choose to become the real you.

But, before you make that choice, know this: there is a cost to taking back ownership. And that cost is acceptance: acceptance of the reality of your current situation.

You see, while your present reality may be no more than a pale shadow of what your real life is, you cannot change what you do not acknowledge and accept.

So, to step out of your current circumstances, to move away from the interpretation of you that you have become, and toward the one true version of you - the real you - you must first accept the reality of where you are. Quite simply, if you choose to hide from your present reality - to deny it - you will always be a slave in your own story.

But, if you accept and acknowledge the reality of your current circumstances, you declare in that moment that all is not what it should be. You declare that change is coming; and you wage war on everything that stands between you and your real life.

And, when you do that, you reclaim ownership of your life: you become the master of your fate, the captain of your soul. You become the hero you were always meant to be. You become the architect of your real life.

So, who owns your life? Do you? Or have you placed ownership of your present reality, and your future potential, in the hands of someone else?

You need to know, because your life - your real life - quite literally depends on it.

But how do you find out?

You start by understanding who the real you is, and then you take a look at the gap between who you are right now, and who the real you is.

Once you know the size of the gap, and what it looks like, you work out who has created that gap - the people, places and situations in your life that have dragged you away from who you are meant to be.

And then you go to work. You begin a process of stripping away the interpretation of you, and replacing the void that creates with the real you.

Sounds straightforward and simple enough, right? Well, it is simple and straightforward, but it's not easy. Building the real you is tough. It takes time, it takes courage and it takes focus.

So why not give yourself an advantage - join the growing community of adventurers in the Live a Big Life Academy and tap into tools, resources and courses that are free for all members (and membership itself is free, too - no strings attached). Check it out and sign up here: www.liveabiglife.com/free-membership