Choose When You Get to Choose
You get to decide to choose – or not – when faced with a choice.
For the longest time, I was really good at deciding not to decide.
I would stand with a choice before me – and overthink the crap out of it. I’d explore every possible “what if?” scenario, fear getting my choice wrong and having to suffer due to that – until the choice was no longer mine to make.
Opportunities passed me by. Things happened outside of my control despite my having had the choice to be in control – but not taking it. I crowned myself the King of Indecision for almost 2 decades.
I learned a lot from that time in my life. And despite frequently deciding not to decide – I had some interesting life experiences both good and bad.
But I was frequently left wanting. I constantly lamented not living to my potential, half-assing my way through things, and always felt lacking.
Not choosing is a choice. And many people live that choice all the time. Why? Because they don’t think they can choose. Or rather, they don’t think they can choose correctly without suffering if they choose poorly.
The disempowering messages of advertising; business, religious and political leaders; and the like cause us to see lack, scarcity, and limitations among a few, scarce, potentially poor choices.
Be thin or be rejected. Buy that car or be thought poorly of. Hold that job or forever be held suspect. Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps and accept no help lest you be viewed as weak. Look familiar?
It seems easier sometimes not to choose so that you don’t get it wrong. But not choosing has some rather unpleasant consequences.
Anxiety, depression, and other consequences
Simply put – when you have a choice but don’t choose – you open yourself up to the whims of the world.
Not choosing doesn’t empower – but disempowers you. It leaves you vulnerable to this, that, or the other thing. Other people, environments, and situations will throw you about like a plastic bag in the wind.
And that wind might be gentle – or it might be a tornado.
Not choosing means not taking control over a given situation.
When we yield control in that way – and make no choices – that disempowerment can turn unpleasant. It can lead to depression, anxiety, uncertainty, and worse. These consequences of not choosing to make choices can then be compounded.
That can lead to the act of choosing going from being difficult to virtually impossible without major second-guessing, anxiety, and depression stemming from over-analysis.
These and similar unpleasant consequences can be avoided by choosing when you have a choice.
Choices are made by first being aware that you have them. Awareness of choices requires you to look at them, think about them, consider how they will make you feel, and if the intent behind them is something that resonates with you if you act.
That awareness might begin externally – but the analysis of it is internal.
Examining and knowing your thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions – aligning with or against the choice – makes you mindful. And mindfulness is how you take the control that you can.
That, FYI, is control of yourself. Because you, and you alone, control your thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions. Or rather, you’re empowered to take that control. And often that’s via choosing to make choices.
Choosing to take control
After getting hit by a car crossing a street – and a whole lot of lessons learned while recovering – I started to reexamine my indecisiveness.
This was not a quick process. It took a combination of self-examination, therapy, meditation, mindfulness practice, and action. But undoing nearly 2 decades of being indecisive wasn’t going to happen overnight.
I began to see that when I had a choice before me – choosing was seldom a death sentence. Any suffering from a poor choice was often far, far less than I imagined it would be. As Paulo Coelho states so eloquently in The Alchemist,
“Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself.”
I came to see that most of my indecision was borne of fearing to suffer. What’s more, I saw how most of the suffering I DID experience resulting from a poor choice was not nearly as terrible as I feared it might be.
Thus, I began to make more choices. Big and small, rather than stand at a crossroads or retain my crown as the King of Indecision – I would choose when I had a choice.
And it paid off in spades. I started to much more often live life – rather than let life live me. There were amazing experiences I had that I wouldn’t have had without making a choice. I met and married a most amazing partner after making choices I had previously avoided in numerous relationships.
When I chose to stop trying to live in the molds of the world created by others, I was more content, better centered, and felt the control I had always desired for my life.
I still have plenty of bad days. But overall, releasing the disempowerment of indecision by choosing to make choices has been empowering.
Choose to empower yourself
Though the idea of choosing wrong can be scary – making a choice, right or wrong, is empowering. The decision is a matter of the now. Being present, here and now, opens the door to being in touch with your conscious self. It also allows you to see how your ego connects between your conscious and subconscious self and the world around you.
Ever notice how advertisements, leaders, and other aspects of society either tell you there is no choice, or that the choices are lacking and scarce? When you don’t think you have a choice at all – you might choose not to choose.
Take politics as a perfect example. If the number of people who choose not to vote went out and voted – a lot of the worst leaders wouldn’t be in power. The silent majority would keep moving things forward.
But they want you to believe that your vote doesn’t matter. Because as much as they want the votes, they know most people would oppose them. Thus, they prefer keeping it murky and having you choose not to choose.
That is ultimately disempowering. But when we decide to choose – we empower ourselves.
The only real control you and I have is over ourselves. Specifically, apart from our general appearance, we can only control our thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions.
When you have a choice, you analyze how it will impact those elements. Choosing means you have decided to make the choice and assume control over it by making it. That empowers you.
Of course, it might not be a great choice. You might choose wrong. And while that could be the case – the suffering from that wrong choice is probably not nearly as awful as you might fear it to be.
Decide to choose or not
When we decide to choose, we decide to empower ourselves. Empowerment is how we take control of our lives and can choose and decide to better them. That’s how we leave toxic relationships and jobs, start exciting and uncertain ventures, begin new relationships, and experience life as fully as we can.
Nobody is here to just exist. While it’s important to work for the greater good – via kindness, compassion, and empathy – we’re not drones or slaves to anyone else. We are each individually endowed with the ability to think, feel, intend, and act. Being the only one in our heads, hearts, and souls is a gift.
How we use our gift is wholly on each of us alone. We decide if we will make choices and experience life actively through them – or choose not to choose and experience life passively.
The power is ours to choose. Or not. You and I get to decide to choose or not when faced with a choice.
I, for one, prefer to take control and choose for myself to experience my life as fully as I can. In that way – I choose to find and/or create the path I most desire to take for my life.
Do you choose when you have choices before you?
This is the five-hundred and tenth exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are ideas for – and my personal experiences with – mindfulness and walking along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.
I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world along the way. Additionally, I desire to empower myself and my readers with conscious reality creation.
Thank you for joining me. Feel free to re-blog and share this.
The first year of Pathwalking, including expanded ideas, is available here. My additional writing, both fiction and non-fiction, are available here.
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