Being the leading lady in my own life

I have been doing a lot of thinking about something lately.  And, oddly, at the same time, I have been bombarded with other blog posts on the same topic.  Clearly, this is a message meant for me.  Today's post (on Ex-Consumer, but written by Bernice Wood of Living the Balanced Life) says:

"Many of us live our lives in autopilot. We do things based upon how the culture around us does them. We don’t even stop to think if it is the best way for us. We basically let life happen to us rather than being an active participant."

I feel like I haven't made decisions in my life.  I haven't come to where I am purposefully, but more by default.  I work every day because it's what expected of me, or what I feel I have to do.  (Although, don't get me wrong, I actually enjoy my job for the most part.  And I LOVE that I'm able to work from home, part time!)  I choose packaged food, because it's there, it's easy, it's convenient.  But what's in that food?  We watch lots of tv (and pay for cable) because it's what "everyone" does.  It's what's "normal".  But what do we WANT our lives to be?

We have gotten to where we are by a lack of planning.  Two examples from today's blog post (Is she in my house, watching me???):

■You snooze the alarm several times before jumping out of the bed, racing around to get ready and rush out the door, all the while fussing at your small children, husband and the dog.

I hate mornings.  I drag myself out of bed after hitting the snooze alarm as many times as I can get away with.  Then I rush my kids to get dressed, eat, get shoes on, get out the door.  I'm cranky and irritable with the kids.  They (amazingly) do get a fairly healthy breakfast every morning, but they are often rushed to eat it.  I need to make decisions that will lead to peace in my family and my life.  I need to get up, get dressed, and be relaxed before my kids get up.  Or at least before we need to rush around.  Then I can proceed as a happy mom who won't be snapping at everyone.  And who has time to get everything done.  But getting to that point isn't the "easy" path that I naturally fall into.  I need to make a conscious effort to get there.

■You go by the grocery store several nights a week on the way home from work because you don’t have anything for dinner. Or you just run through the drive-thru at the local hamburger place.

We're getting better about this, but still not 100%.  But for YEARS (at least 6), we did this all the time. We ate fast food at least 5 times per week (counting lunches).  One of the kids is incredibly picky with food now, and it's really our fault.  We've let her order for herself for all of these meals we've eaten out.  So now she doesn't think she should be stuck with the one meal I want to make for dinner each night.  Our lack of planning (and waste of time and money!) has led to issues that we're now trying to recover from.

I wonder how we got to this point.  Why didn't we decide what our life should be like and then work to make it happen?  I seriously don't know why anyone would choose to NOT make decisions, if they thought about it.  It's what we've done.  I wonder how many people are like us.

So, we're trying to start from scratch.  Which is difficult when you're 38 years old and have been living this way for so long.  We need to rethink every aspect of our lives and choose how we want things to be.  And then take some action to get to that point.  It's not going to be easy, but I really want to be in charge of my own life!