Everything in life is choice
This for some people is quite a confronting statement. The truth is whether we acknowledge them as conscious or not, our life is made up of countless decisions that we make on a daily basis. Some choices we don't even think about, we just do them out of conditioning such as getting dressed before leaving the house. Other choices are less obvious like what groceries we buy at the shops, how conscious are those choices? Are they based on short term gratification or are they choices based on the way the food you buy will impact your health and lifestyle. Finally we have slow calculating choices that come across every once in a while that are life altering, these are the scary and exciting ones. No matter how you slice it, everything in life is choice, your current life situation is a culmination of all the choices you have made in the past. So what areas of your life are you unhappy with? Your career? Your health? Your physical appearance? Your social life? Your relationship or lack of? The good news is you can change all these areas for the better by making choices that will create what you want for that area of your life.
Sometimes we choose to do something, sometimes we choose to do nothing. Let's take a familiar example, our physical appearance. We can chose to do something about how we look, this involves accepting the choices we made that created the habits we live by that lead us to the point where we want to change. If we choose to do nothing that is an active choice also, we are unhappy with our current physical appearance however the pain is not enough for us to take ownership and responsibility for the choices we have made that created the habits we live by, here we are still making a choice which is fine we have chosen to do nothing, we have accepted ourselves for what we are.
When we do nothing we are behaving indifferently, we become slaves to our impulses and constantly allow our environment to dictate how we feel and search for external factors such as people, food and events to keep us happy and content, we take no responsibility for our appearance by constantly making excuses as to why we look the way we do, we actively search for any external event to form a reason why we need that piece of cake or why we don't have to go to the gym. We actually become incredibly good at finding little ways of not taking responsibility, so good in fact that we believe we have no choice and almost no self-control and over time these unconscious choices become habits.
Taking responsibility and ownership of our lives and the choices we make is the first step in changing the course of whatever area of our lives we are unhappy with. Once we take responsibility for the choices we have made that have led us here we can consciously assess our choices and change them to choices that are in line with the path that leads us to where we want to go. Not taking responsibility of the choices we have made, blaming others and our environment or making excuses for our current life state will sap all of our power away and change will become virtually impossible. We have almost no power when it comes to changing what happens around us, however we have enormous power to change how we feel about the things happening around us.
Choice + Action = Change
You wake up one morning and catch your reflexion in the mirror, you hate what you see, and it makes you feel very unhappy, you decide to change. Change is very uncomfortable and a slow process for many people but it doesn't have to be. Why is change a slow process? Why is it so hard to change? The truth is it doesn't have to be. The reason most of us struggle with change is our inability or unwillingness to take responsibility for the choices that we have made in the past that have lead us to this point. Once we own our choices, take responsibility we can forgive ourselves, and mourn the passing of that person we once were and begin making choices that will propel us in the direction of the body we wish to create. When we make excuses or blame others or our external environment it makes it almost impossible to change our habits to lead us positively in the direction of our physical goals.
As I mentioned earlier we have very little power over other people and our external environment and unfortunately that is where we focus most of our energy. We blame our partners for offering us dessert, we blame our friends for wanting to go out for dinner and gorging on whatever tastes great at the time, we make excuses for not having enough time due to work or family commitments, we pass our power onto other people and circumstances so easily and avoid taking responsibility and ownership of our choices leaving us helpless and we become slaves to our impulses which we either give into or constantly battle.
We spend so much energy trying to control our external environment and the people we interact with instead of focusing on choosing positively from an internal desire to be better. Just like the poor physique in the mirror created by a culmination of poor choices the great physique we want to see will be a culmination of the positive choices we make. Choose to not have desert because you know that person who ate the dessert every time it was offered became the person we are unhappy with. Choose to make time for exercise during the work week because the person we see with the unattractive body looking back at us chose the easy route and just used a busy work week as an excuse. Suggest eating at a healthier restaurant and choose to drink soda water with lime instead of alcohol because making this choice will create the body you desire.
Your choices require action, if you choose to be healthier but will only be healthy when its easy and convenient you will not get anywhere, anyone can eat a salad at a salad bar, however it takes real choice and power to order a salad at an Italian restaurant when everyone else is digging into pasta, or ordering a salad with your steak while everyone else gets the deep fried potato chips or choosing soda water and lime over wine or beer. Anyone can exercise after work if they finish at 5pm but it takes a committed choice to bettering your life to go to the gym after work when you finish at 8pm after 11hrs at your desk. If you want to change the way you look and become healthier life does not present you with opportunities to be healthy or give you the tools to look great, it presents you with opportunities to choose to be healthy and to use the tools you already have that will contribute to changing your physical appearance, the catalyst is you, you must choose. You have the power, so choose to be better. Is it hard at the start? Yes of course. Does it get easier? Absolutely. Choice is like anything, the more you practice it consciously the better you get at it. At the start you may have to constantly catch yourself reverting back to your old self and consciously make that choice to build your new habit. The more times you choose from an intrinsic desire to be better the more automatic the choice becomes.
I would like to leave you with my favourite quote; "if nothing changes, nothing changes"
*Disclaimer: Individual results vary based on agreed goals. Click here for details.
