Day 236: Choosing Before Life Chooses for You
Choosing is a topic that is coming up a lot lately.
I notice it in my writing, my videos, and certainly in responding to video comments.
It always seems to be a "yes, but" situation for people.
That's a justification for not choosing.
It breaks my heart to witness the struggle that goes on in women's minds.
The old stories, rules, beliefs and just plain old thinking habits that keep them trapped in the in-between.
They speak in what comes down to old platitudes that they were taught growing up.
Then those beliefs that they never even consciously chose started to tell them what was possible for them. And they obeyed.
Choosing something different is how we grow and change. It's how we build a self-led life, a life of sovereignty.
When I broke my foot the other day, it created a series of choices to make.
Do I go to a doctor that can do X-rays? Yes, I'm sure it's broken.
What do I do about the dogs when I can't go down any stairs? Someone else has to take care of them until I can.
Those were easier choices because the alternatives were not good choices at all. I could decide to not go to a doctor, but the pain was too great.
I could try to go down the stairs, but that also would be too painful.
There's a theme here.
Choices become easy when the pain of another choice is just too great.
Even when it requires us to do things that we wouldn't normally choose.
I avoid doctors whenever possible and I don't like being separated from my dogs.
But, the pain overrode those preferences.
Too often we do exactly that. We wait until the pain becomes so great we have no other choice and then we choose the only real option.
That's not exactly choosing.
That's waiting until the choice is made for us by circumstances we can no longer avoid.
It's more like the road is ending and you wait until the very last minute, when you can see the end, to merge onto another road.
Choosing boils down to self-trust.
And self-trust is built by keeping promises to ourselves in small ways, over and over, until our nervous system starts to believe we are safe with our own decisions.
We have to trust ourselves to make good choices, and that comes with a track record.
So you may want to start now with small choices to convince yourself that you're able to make good choices, and give yourself the confidence to make bigger and bigger ones.
And the more confident we are in our ability to choose, the quicker and more firmly we can make those choices.
This isn't rocket science, it's just building the muscle with practice.
A sign that you aren't confident about choosing is a scenario like this:
"What do you want for dinner?
I don't know. You pick.
Do you want spaghetti or rigatoni?
Which sounds better to you?"
This is a sign of giving up even the most simple of choices.
It would take about two seconds to take a breath, go inside, ask yourself what you want and say it.
You know what you want. You just don't feel confident choosing.
And that confidence will not arrive because you thought about choosing long enough.
It comes from choosing.
Start small by making one new conscious choice each day.
What do I want for dinner?
What do I want to wear?
What do I want to say yes to?
What do I want to stop pretending is okay?
Watch the little shifts in your life multiply.
Feel your confidence grow.
Every honest choice becomes evidence that you can trust yourself with the next one.
Today's Gentle Practice
Think about one small choice you usually hand over to someone else.
Ask yourself:
What do I actually want?
Don't explain it.
Don't justify it.
Don't turn it into a group decision.
Just let yourself choose one small thing clearly today, and notice how it feels to trust yourself with the answer.
With you,
Lynn
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