Know The Power of Choice

Your path to freedom.

About Me Welcome It's About You Choices Basic Goals

About Choices We always have and makes choices. The first step in this whole thing is to know that you always have and make choices. I have people who ask me how I can say that they have choices. They tell me that there are lots of areas where they feel that they don't have choices. Because I believe in going back to basics, let's look at what choices are and where we DO have choices. I define choices as picking between two or more options. Picking between two or more options is making a choice. The key here is recognizing that you have two or more options to choice from. Do I want to get up or stay in bed? Do I want to go to work or not? What do I want to wear today? What do I want for dinner tonight? Those are all choices. You can choose between getting up or staying in bed. You can choose between going to work or not going to work. You most likely have a variety of clothes to pick from. You most likely have different options of food to make for dinner. With each one, you are making a choice. When you choose not to choose, you are also making a choice. You have the option to choose or not to choose. The choices we have are always about ourselves. Not the things around us. We do NOT always get to choose the things around us but we DO always have the choices about how we want to respond to the things around us. We cannot choose if it is going to rain or not. We DO have the choice of how we want to respond to the rain. We cannot choose if someone is going to be in a good mood or bad mood. We DO have the choice of how we want to respond to their mood. I can already hear the arguments against what I just said. "If someone holds a gun to my head and tells me to give him all my money, I don't have any choice in that." Yes you do. You decide which is more important to you. Your money or your life. That IS a choice. "If my boss tells me to go to bed with him or he will fire me, I don't have any choice in that." Yes you do. You decide which is more important to you. Your job or your personal integrity. That IS a choice. The choice we have to make might be choosing the lesser of two evils but it is still a choice. The MAIN reason people feel that they don't have choices is that they don't get to choose the options that they have to pick from. If it rains out, people get upset because they don't have the choice over if it rains or not. We DON'T get to choose if it rains out. We DO get to choose our response to the rain. You were planing a romantic picnic and it started to rain? Take the picnic inside in front of the fireplace and listen to the magical sounds of the rain on the roof. What is happening around us is not always in our control. We CAN choose our response to what happens around us. Personal freedom comes from acknowledging the choices that we make. There can be no personal freedom without choices. We will never feel like we have personal freedom until we see and acknowledge that we have choices. The biggest step towards personal freedom is to see and acknowledge that we always have and make choices. What happens when we start acknowledging that we always have and make choices? We gain more personal freedom in our lives. We gain more control over our lives. We start thinking about the possible outcomes of the different choices we have. Every choice we make ends up with an outcome. Every choice produces a result. We will look at the concept of goals later in the site. It has been said that this moment is the end of your past and the beginning of the rest of your life. The most potent point of power each of us has is right now. Each moment is a now. In each moment we can and do make choices and decisions. In each moment we decide about our future. Personal freedom comes from saying "I choose!" Personal power comes from taking responsibility for the choices we make. First of all, we need to understand the word "responsibility". That word has had a lot of negative associations put on it. Most people have come to associate the word "responsibility" with the word "blame". We hear things like: "Who is responsible for that mess?" "Who was responsible for the accident?" "That person was responsible for me being late." "The blown fuse was responsible for the power outage." The list goes on and on. With each one, we are placing blame somewhere. I know that I spent a good deal of my life avoiding things that had to do with taking any kind of responsibility. I didn't want to take the blame for things. How often do we hear the word responsibility connected with something good that has happened? When do you ever hear things like: "Who is responsible for this neat and tidy room?" "Who is responsible for this wonderful meal?" "That person was responsible for me being here on time." "That person was responsible for me avoiding an accident." When do we ever hear of responsibility connected with giving somebody credit when something goes right? Responsibility is really connected to both, when something goes right or wrong. Having responsibility for something means being in charge of something and making the choices around it. It means means that we get to get the credit or praise when things go right and we get to deal with whatever comes up if things go wrong. I have the responsibility for the outcome of whatever choices I make. I get to take the credit or I get to clean up the mess. If I make the choices, I take responsibility for the choices I make. In that, is personal power. Now that we know that we do always have and make choices, let's find out why we have been making the choices we have been making. Next

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