Give Up, Push Through, Or Find Another Way?
No matter the obstacles, you always have a choice.
Life is seldom simple. Very rarely do you get to go from point ‘A’ to point ‘B’ smoothly and obstacle free. And every time you come across challenges and obstacles in your life, you can give up, push through, or try another way.
That doesn’t always feel true. There are plenty of times when it feels like you’re stuck, trapped, and without recourse.
The trouble is, you always have choices – but they’re not always welcome, good, or desirable choices. When choosing between the lesser of two evils, a bad or worse situation, or degrees of loss – it feels like there’s no true choice being made.
Why is that? I think sometimes it comes from messages that choices should always have grandiose impact and effect.
But no matter what the situation is, when you choose, you decide on change.
Yet even when what you’re choosing between is poor and less-than-desirable, you’re still empowered when you choose.
That’s because not choosing always disempowers you.
What is empowerment?
It’s too easy to take the meaning of being empowered as being given power by another.
Power given to you by anyone who is not you is artificial. Sure, there’s a degree of power to being a parent, a guardian, a boss, a teacher, and the like. But that’s not about power as much as it is about authority. And they aren’t the same.
Authority is chain-of-command, accountability in groups, and mentors sharing wisdom with associates, students, and the like. It’s not true power – though many will claim power as authorities.
True power, however, belongs to individuals. You ultimately choose your life experiences. Similarly, when you come across obstacles, you decide if you give up, push through, or find another way to deal with them.
Making those choices is taking the power that is yours into yourself. And that is what empowerment is.
Empowerment is claiming your power to live your life on your terms. It’s never a one-time matter. You are constantly given situations where you decide to be empowered or allow artificial powers and/or authorities to disempower you.
Anytime you choose – big or small, amazing or less-than-desirable – you empower yourself.
Leaving it to random chance disempowers you
You can’t count on getting lucky when you allow random happenstance to decide your fate.
Yes, you might get lucky and by not choosing, still manage an amazing outcome. But while it could feel like a win – it can also ring hollow because you lucked into it.
When you are not choosing for yourself – you’re not empowering yourself. On any level whatsoever where you do or don’t choose.
By not choosing, you cede your power to random chance, circumstance, or perhaps fate. But when you decide not to decide or choose not to choose – you are disempowered.
Choice is like any other muscle in your body. The more you use it, the stronger it gets. Hence, the more you actively choose – the more choices you find you can make.
That’s why, no matter the obstacles, you always have a choice.
Give up, push through, find another way?
I believe that every choice presents these options. No matter what the choice might be – these three options always exist.
Giving up is a choice. It’s not the same as deciding not to decide. It’s a conscious, active choice not to offer resistance, put up a fight, or push against an obstacle.
There is no right or wrong here. Despite the notion of “Never give up, never surrender” – sometimes it’s best to give up. But you alone will know when and why that’s the case – nobody but you is in your head, heart, or soul, to make this decision.
Pushing through can be fraught with challenges. Sometimes it feels too hard, too frustrating, and too difficult. There are times when pushing feels like the only choice – because you are not willing to give up and you have a goal that the given obstacle won’t get in the way of.
Pushing through is a choice, which may or may not get you where it is you desire to go. But choosing is what matters here for your empowerment.
Finding another way is the other option. What that is and might be you won’t know until you face the obstacle you’ve reached.
Maybe you can go over it/under it/around it rather than through it. Perhaps the given obstacle is a message to change what you are doing. Possibly, some way you didn’t expect may open up for you to choose.
The truth is – there’s always a choice to be made. And if the immediate options of give up and push through feel wrong – then you can choose to find another way.
Right, wrong, and other constructs
When it comes to choices, it often feels like there’s a right choice and a wrong choice. Good versus evil. Strong versus weak. And the like.
When you place these in universal moral fabrics – it’s easy to lose sight of what matters most when it comes to choices. But the constructs of the given extremes aren’t so important when all is said and done.
What’s important is what the choices mean to and for you, to and for your empowerment.
That doesn’t give you carte blanche to be an asshole, intentionally cause others to be hurt or harmed, or any other selfish, self-righteous position. What it does is empower you to look at the given choice and see how it works for you.
That does not mean you can or should ignore the impact on others your choice might have. Take elections, for example. When you knowingly vote for someone intent on hurting others for their agenda or false power – you must take that into consideration. And given that you sure as hell wouldn’t want to be harmed in the way that person is causing harm – I hope you’ll choose mindfully and wisely. But I digress.
When you choose for yourself – and someone not you feels hurt because of it – that’s not the same as the above. That’s because your choice was made without intent to cause hurt. You can’t control how anyone else feels. And sometimes what you need to do, and the choices you need to make and the empowerment that comes of them, are too important to avoid for the sake of someone else.
Choice, even in the face of obstacles, empowers you. When you’re empowered, you can help empower others. When more people are empowered – things improve for everyone.
Giving up, pushing through, and finding another way with choice isn’t hard
It’s all about working with mindfulness of your thoughts, feelings, and intentions to direct your actions.
When you recognize and acknowledge that you always have choices – even when they, frankly, suck – you can decide how your life will play out. Knowing that any choice is better than no choice at all, you can use active conscious awareness – mindfulness – to decide what choices to make, and thus strengthen your ability to choose (just like building strength in any other muscle).
This empowers you – and in turn, your empowerment can empower others around you.
Taking an approach to positivity and negativity – from the vast cylinder that exists between them – shifts matters in a way to open more dialogue. In that form, you can explore and share where you are between the extremes and how that impacts you here and now.
Choosing thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions for yourself employs an approach and attitude of positivity for realizing amazing potential and possibilities for your life.
Lastly, the better aware you are of yourself in the now, the more you can do to choose and decide how your life experiences will be. When that empowers you, it can also open those around you to their empowerment.
To me, that’s a worthwhile endeavor to explore and share.
Thank you for coming along on this journey.
This is the four hundred-and-eighty-seventh entry of my Positivity series. I hope that these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, re-blog, and spread the positivity.
Please visit here to explore all my published works – both fiction and non-fiction.
Please take a moment to sign up for my newsletter. Fill in the info and click the submit button to the right and receive a free eBook.
Follow me here!
