To find, one must seek; to love, one must become the beloved.
DeBreen
You can decide what you choose to be consciously or unconsciously, but you cannot sidestep the deciding. It is either happening automatically, as a response, or intentionally, as a creation, but it is happening—continuously.
Neale Donald Walsch
Most of the time, given the opportunity, I prefer not to choose. My general preference, when the time to choose arises, is to let my spouse or friend or client or employee make the choice for me: where to dine; what to work on; where/when to exercise; which movie to watch or music to listen to.
This is not a comfortable or flattering thing to admit about myself, especially since I am the type of person who likes to ‘work out’ my body. How strange then to realize that I am quite lazy when it comes to choosing in the realm of the everyday and mundane. How hard is it really, to make a choice? Why would I rather deflect an opportunity to make my own choice onto others? And yet, to not choose is making a choice too, isn’t it?
“The truth is, if what we choose to do with our lives won’t make a story meaningful, it won’t make a life meaningful either.” “Life has a peculiar feel when you look back on it that it doesn’t have when your actually living it.” Donald Miller
Perhaps the problem with choosing comes from the fact that there is so much from which to choose. If choice making was always about this or that; black or white; yes or no; stay or go, perhaps choosing would be easier. On one hand I wish that making a choice was a one-and-done deal, like when I say I choose to lose weight, gain strength or improve my health status, then BAM, my choice is made and I’m done. Wouldn’t that be grand? No more decisions to make. But that system wouldn’t work too well for me if I made just ONE unwise choice. How could I undo a poor choice if I only had a one-and-done choice making system?
Fortunately, for all of us, life is full of choice making opportunities, except when our perception tells us otherwise. If we feel stuck, plumb out of choices, then it’s time to remind ourselves this one thing: as long as we are breathing, we may choose; and we may choose as many times as is needed and we may choose differently every time.
Even though I am a lazy choice maker, I am grateful this life I live is not a one-and-done game of chance. No, this life is more like playing the slot machines with the statistical advantage stacked in my favor, because I am privileged to choose; and my choice to choose means I may choose over and over and over again…or not.
In this life, it’s a happy, powerful sentiment to know we have the authority to re-write our life’s story line if we find our story less than meaningful. If by our choices we choose to do the same things enough times, eventually the statistics play out in our favor and our choices become our habits (for better or worse); then our habits create our life (for better or worse). So here’s to the wonderful, wacky world of choice making, and here’s my note to self: You CHOOSE…like your life depends on it!
Two days ago I wrote about how an early morning run triggered some mindful introspection when I jogged into the sun’s warming rays and how my absorbing the warmth of the sun transported me to another place… mentally…and how my thoughts spilt over in every direction, just like the rays of the sun. Today as I revisit that run it occurs to me that the positive energy I enjoyed from that ‘warming moment’ was the result of my decision to engage those uplifting thoughts and ideas and make them my own even for those few fleeting moments. While I was exercising my body, I was also exercising my mind. Even now when I re-connect with those thoughts and ideas, I am warmed, I am encouraged, I am challenged…to become the very best that I can be…in my body and in my mind. Today I read a blog by Dr. Caroline Leaf, a cognitive neuroscientist with a PhD in Communication Pathology who specializes in Neuropsychology. She says that “our brains are designed to reflect the mind.” To me this means that if our mind absorbs (receives, learns, assimilates, understands, or latches onto) ideas and thoughts, then we will eventually reflect (project, imitate, emulate, repeat) these thoughts upon our brains; thereafter our brains respond to our thoughts and transfer our thoughts into our bodies. So, if our brains reflect our mind, which is always changing, then our brain is also capable of change or growth, which in scientific terms is called neuroplasticity. And if our brains can change by our mere choosing of thoughts, then it seems that we can ‘change our lives for the better’ one thought at a time. The choice is ours and ours alone ~ we simply decide ~ or not which thoughts to think.
Think...Feel...Be....BodyWise! 