Who Is Running Your Life?

Most of us move through life with the feeling that we are the ones making the decisions. We choose where we live, what work we do, who we spend our time with, what we believe, what we want, and what kind of future we are trying to create. Because these choices feel personal, we naturally call them my choices and the life that grows from them my life. Yet there is a fascinating question that we rarely stop long enough to ask: How much of the life I am living was actually consciously chosen by me?

This is not a question about whether we have free will or whether some invisible force is controlling us. It is a much simpler and more personal inquiry into how we became the people we are. When we begin looking honestly, we discover that long before we were old enough to make conscious life decisions, many of our ideas about life had already begun forming.

We did not choose our parents, our childhood, our first language, or the culture into which we were born. We did not choose the first ideas we heard about God, money, relationships, success, failure, beauty, morality or what it means to be a good person. As children, we simply received the world that was presented to us. We watched the adults around us, listened to what they praised and criticised, noticed what made them afraid, and slowly learned what was considered acceptable and unacceptable.

None of this is necessarily wrong. We need guidance when we are young, and much of what we receive from our families and communities is valuable. The interesting part is that, as we grow older, we seldom take everything we have inherited back out and examine it. Instead, these ideas become so familiar that eventually we stop experiencing them as something we learned and begin experiencing them as who we are.

The Trolley We Didn’t Know Was Being Filled

Imagine for a moment that your life is a shopping trolley. Before you were old enough to push the trolley yourself, other people were already placing things inside it. Your parents placed some of their beliefs and expectations there. Your culture added its ideas about what a successful life should look like. School contributed ideas about achievement and failure, religion may have added beliefs about right and wrong, and society began showing you what kind of body, house, career, and lifestyle you should desire.

Then life itself added more. A painful rejection may have placed a fear of not being wanted into the trolley. A teacher who embarrassed you may have added a fear of looking foolish. Someone who praised you for achieving may have unknowingly taught you to connect your worth with performance. A difficult relationship may have taught you to protect yourself, while advertising and social media continued adding images of the person you supposedly need to become before you can finally feel successful.

By the time we reach adulthood, the trolley can be very full. We look inside and see ambitions, fears, beliefs, habits, expectations and dreams, and because we have carried them for so long, we naturally say, “These are mine.”

Perhaps they are, but perhaps some are not.

One of the most powerful questions we can ask ourselves is therefore not simply, “What do I want?” but “Who taught me to want this?”

That question does not mean that our desires are wrong. It simply brings awareness into an area of life that often operates automatically. I may genuinely want success, for example, but what does success mean to me? Where did that definition come from? If nobody could see my house, my car, my qualifications, or my achievements, would I still want the same things? If nobody was impressed by the life I created, would I still choose to create it?

These questions can reveal something surprising: sometimes we spend enormous amounts of our lives trying to satisfy standards that we never consciously chose.

Sometimes the Person Running Your Life Isn’t Even There

There is another side to this inquiry that can be even more confronting. Sometimes a person from our past continues to influence the way we live long after that person has left our life.

Perhaps a parent once made you feel that you would never be successful enough. Decades later, you may still be working extremely hard, not simply because you enjoy what you do, but because somewhere deep inside you are still trying to prove that old voice wrong. The parent may have forgotten what was said, or may no longer even be alive, yet the conversation continues inside you.

Perhaps somebody rejected you many years ago, and from that experience you quietly formed the belief that you were not enough. You may then spend years trying to become attractive enough, successful enough, spiritual enough, or important enough so that nobody can ever make you feel that way again. From the outside, this may look like ambition, but underneath it may still be an old wound trying to protect itself.

This is one of those moments where we can begin to see our lives differently. A person does not have to be physically present to continue influencing us. Sometimes we are still responding to people who are no longer in the room.

The question then becomes: How much of what I am doing today is actually a response to something that happened yesterday?

When Fear Becomes the Decision-Maker

Fear is another powerful influence because it does not always announce itself as fear. Sometimes it sounds very sensible. It tells us not to try something because we might fail, not to speak because somebody may disagree, not to leave something that no longer serves us because the unknown is frightening, and not to show ourselves fully because we might be rejected.

After listening to these messages for many years, we can begin to mistake fear for personality. We say things like, “I’m just not that kind of person,” or “That’s simply who I am,” without ever asking whether this is truly our nature or simply a pattern we learned because at some point it made us feel safe.

There is nothing wrong with fear. Fear has an important place in human life and can protect us from genuine danger. The difficulty begins when yesterday’s fear is allowed to make today’s decisions without being questioned.

This is why awareness matters. Awareness does not demand that we become fearless; it simply allows us to recognise when fear is sitting in the driver’s seat.

The Remote Controls We Give Away

We can see the same thing happening in our relationships with other people. Someone praises us, and suddenly we feel good about ourselves. Someone criticises us, and we spend the rest of the day replaying the conversation. Someone does not respond to our message and our mind immediately begins creating stories about what it means. Someone disagrees with us, and within seconds our peace disappears.

There is something almost humorous about this when we really see it. Another human being can speak five words and completely change the emotional weather inside us.

We say that we want freedom, yet sometimes we have unknowingly handed other people remote controls to our inner world. One person has the button that makes us angry, another has the button that makes us insecure, and somebody else has the button that makes us feel important. They may not even know that they have this power.

Awakening does not mean that we stop feeling. It does not mean becoming cold or unaffected by people. It means beginning to recognise the buttons and understanding why they are there. The moment I can see my reaction clearly, there is already a little space between what happened and what I do next.

That small space can change a life.

But What About the Things I Want?

We often describe freedom as the ability to do whatever we want, but there is a deeper question hiding underneath that idea: What if the things I want have also been conditioned?

If I desperately need approval because I learned as a child that approval equals love, then following that desire may not necessarily be freedom. If I need success because failure makes me feel worthless, then even great achievement may still be driven by fear. If I cannot tolerate somebody disagreeing with me because my identity depends on being right, then winning the argument may not make me free.

This does not mean that we should stop wanting things, stop achieving or stop participating fully in life. It means becoming interested in the source from which our actions arise.

There is an enormous difference between doing something because fear is pushing me and doing the same thing. After all, love, creativity, or genuine enthusiasm is moving through me. From the outside, the action may look the same, but inwardly the experience is completely different.

Yogi Gerhard