We get pretty far along in life before we are allowed to start making choices for ourselves. We do not understand the importance of looking both ways before crossing the street or why you are not supposed to be sticking things in the electrical plugs.
" You Can Choose Your Friends but You Can't Choose Your Family"?
Think about the choices we have no control over. We had nothing to do with the one sperm out of roughly 800k released. We have no control over the one egg was released at ovulation when 2 million are waiting. Out of something, we don't understand yet, you were created. Impossible odds.
We have no control over:
The natural color of our hair,
Our eye color
The color of our skin
Our nationality
Who our parents are or even how ready they were to be parents.
If we are born to a wealthy family or a poor family.
We have no control over abuse or neglect we suffer as a child or the love and encouragement given
After a while we understand we can start to make choices for ourselves. Most likely it starts with the food we eat or whether to obey our parents. A little later, we get to pick out what to wear or if we decide to do our chores and homework or face the consequences later if we don’t. We get to decide who we hang out with and if we do drugs or speed down the street. We decide if we are going to have sex and get married or get married and then have sex.
After a while we understand we can start to make choices for ourselves. Most likely it starts with the food we eat or whether to obey our parents. A little later, we get to pick out what to wear or if we decide to do our chores and homework or face the consequences later if we don’t. We get to decide who we hang out with and if we do drugs or speed down the street. We decide if we are going to have sex and get married or get married and then have sex.
Thankfully, decisions we made in our early years didn't follow us as close as those later in life. For example, I made decisions in high school that I never would have made if I would have been in college. I learned I didn’t want that in my life. Hopefully, we come to the conclusion that if we make better choices, we will feel better, look better and act better. We can decide to change our eating habits and start exercising to change our outer self and we are learning to not worry and stress as much to change our inner self.
Just because our decision making changes and we become more knowledgeable, does it suddenly make our problems go away?
We have learned not always. You may still have an illness you have been struggling with or you may still be overweight. You may still have a broken relationship or be in financial troubles. The change will come so slow you can't even see it. However, if you never made the new decision, a new outcome is impossible. You can choose to do life a different way to be physically, emotionally, spiritually and socially healthy or you can choose to stay the way you have been and get what you always get.
For a moment, think back when you made a decision to change the choices you had been making in your life.
Maybe the decisions were not serving you well?
How long did you struggle with indecision and with regret at the choices you didn’t make?
You can see when something makes you miserable, but maybe you can’t find the resources or strength to change.
Are you allowing the choices that you refuse to make, affect your future?
Are there choices you continually make, even unconsciously, that make your life more difficult?
Making different choices involves 6 steps
- sacrifice
- self-discipline
- denying your feelings
- seeking wise counsel
- not giving up
- forgiveness.
You are going to need self discipline to sacrifice.
You are going to need self discipline when you deny your feelings you have been following unconsciously for this long,
You are going to need self discipline to not give up and have forgiveness,
And by seeking and consulting wise counsel, that will only strengthen your self discipline.
You can’t solve your problems with the same thinking you use to feed them.
I know you are serious about wanting change in your life or you would have stopped reading a long time ago. To say the very least, speaking for myself, I am excited for you as i am sure there are others, some that may surprise you.
Please let us know your progress so we can celebrate your victories with you. And by no choice of our own, the decisions you continue to make very well may be just what someone else may need to hear.
Because the only thing that stays the same is that everything changes.
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