The Incredible Power Of Choice

“One’s philosophy is not best expressed by words. It is expressed in the choices one makes. In the long run - we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are our responsibility.”

Eleanor Roosevelt

I’ve been thinking. . . about how life is filled with changes, challenges, demands, pressures, and a host of other unavoidable dilemmas. That’s reality!

This, too, is reality. We can choose how to deal with these issues. Whining, complaining, moaning, and groaning are popular. In fact, pessimism has become a national pastime. It is the popular way to look at the world. It’s seems too painful or takes too much energy to do something about the undesirable events. Instead, we want others or the situation to change so life will be easier for us.

Choosing to rise above the circumstances is powerful and greatly affects the outcome of the day’s activities. It’s not the events that mold your life, determine your feelings, or guide your actions. Rather, it is the way you decide to interpret and respond.

We must be convinced that we actually have the ability to choose our responses. The value, power, and impact of any life event are determined by your response. Unfortunately, there are many who have conditioned themselves to practice just the opposite.

Internalize this simple yet profound truth. You alone make all of your life's choices and these choices determine the quality of your experiences, what you become and the destination you attain. The seemingly smallest choice, just like a gentle breeze, will set in motion the influences to dramatically affect your life.

Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi invested twenty-five years researching what makes people happy. He discovered that happiness doesn’t just happen. He was also intrigued to find that happiness had little to do with money, power or material possessions.

Csikszentmihalyi’s conclusion showed that “people who control inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as any of us can come to being happy.”

Our present and our future are not a matter of chance but are intricately woven with the threads of our own choosing.

Be careful not to allow yourself to be victimized by the society in which you live. It’s not the culture, the times, the social circumstances. When we blame these elements for our conditions, we return to them for the answers and are continually disappointed. This is the fast track to “victimitis.”

Another roadblock to life by choice is assigning undue control to inherited traits. These people are convinced the quality of their lives have been predetermined through some “gene-o-matic” or DNA mixer. There is no doubt that our social and family conditioning impact each of us but I would be quick to contend each of us possesses the ability to rise above those influences.

Master motivator Og Mandino wrote in The Choice: “There is a better way to live. Choice! The key is choice. You have options. You don’t need to spend your life wallowing in failure, ignorance, grief, poverty, shame, and self-pity. But, hold on! If this is true, why have so many among us apparently elected to live in that manner? The answer is obvious. Those who live in unhappy failure have never exercised their options for a better way of life because they have never been aware that they had any choices!”

“As human beings, we are endowed with freedom of choice and we cannot shuffle off our responsibility upon the shoulders of God or nature. We must shoulder it ourselves. It is up to us.

Arnold J. Toynbee